Ok all you cable cutter experts I have a couple of questions for you.
I cut the Cable TV/Direct TV cord a number of years ago. I opted for all Amazon stuff. Amazon FireTV Recast for HD TV over the air, my own HD TV antenna placed high in my attic and a Amazon Firestick to manage it all.
It has worked pretty well for several years, but recently Amazon announced they are dropping support for the Recast in 2026 and the DVR has stopped recording certain programming. This leads me to believe it is planned obsolescence and I need to look for alternatives. In addition, Amazon Prime Video now has excessive advertising for a service I’m paying for. Yes, I know I can pay more to make the advertisements go away, but it ticks me off that they decided one day to just start throwing them at me, when before they didn’t.
I’m an Amazon prime member because I don’t like paying shipping and my wife loves the Amazon Alexa music availability, but I’m at a loss as to what to do about the HD over the air program recording options.
I’ve found these possibilities 1) Tablo Gen 4 Quad and 2) BitRouter ZapperboxM1 3)TiVo and 4) SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV: 2/4 Tuners HDFX-4K
Some have subscription costs for a guide some have pretty bad reviews and some of them require you to have their iPhone/Android app to manage the channels and recordings. Nothing is as easy as the Recast was/is.
I wondered if anyone at DMS has had any similar experiences with the Recast and has decided upon an alternative.
Right now I’m leaning toward a Tablo solution, but it doesn’t seem ideal. Any recommendations? I tried SlingTV during the NFL playoffs and it sucks.
In all seriousness, I got nothing. SO subscribes to some streaming services and we occasionally watch things.
Linear TV was badÂą (in terms of pricing), but generally predictable. In this brave new world of streaming shell games the consumer gets the pleasure of both paying more and unpredictability - both in terms of content availability and the ability of a given service to stream something on demand.
¹I had the distinct displeasure of administering a part of cable TV delivery for a couple years and I do not miss that fustercluck - contract renewal brinksmanship, enigmatic directives on delivery to subscribers, complexity for complexity’s sake packaging, the firehose of garbage channels relative to what little is actually watched². I wish the content owners an exciting life now that they’ve all gone to roll their own streaming networks and made the experience even worse than old-school cable.
²We had hard data on viewership and providers of these oddball channels that could go hours, days at a time of zero viewership would demand astronomical sums upon renewal, presumably to supplement their near-subterranean ad rates … because of said awful viewership. An easy business case even if it meant short-notice teardowns on our part.
If youre willing to sail the high seas - Make a NAS from an old computer with unraid and run plex on it with some other downloading toys. I have my HD homerun integrated in to my plex instance as well for live TV. Never played with the DVR function but if i remember right, it has that option as well.
6-700 bucks will get you a 20TB system, with 500 of that being the hard drives. Give your self some room for expansion. Considering the price of streaming these days, the system will pay for it self in a few years tops.
We also cut the cable about 15 years ago. We’ve tried all of the streaming television services. We liked YouTube TV the best: live local channels, DVR (not all content can be fast forwarded), and a ton of channels. Yes, it’s way pricey, but it’s possible to “pause” service if you’re going to be out of town or when football and basketball seasons are over. So, a savings there. We chose the Roku route.
I’ll tell you what though, we recently started YouTube Premium. No ads on YouTube. At all. A ton of content. And it includes YouTube Music. We think it’s better than Amazon Music, and I think Alexa is fine with it too.
We ditched Amazon Prime a few years back. We don’t miss it. We still get free shipping for orders over $35 and for 24 hours after you’ve placed an order (in case you forgot some little thing). They say you have to wait a lot longer to get your stuff, but most of the time we get a happy email saying our order is coming in earlier than expected. Okay, so sometime we have to use the “Save for later” function, but waiting isn’t a terrible thing.
It’s probably worth trying a free trial as part of your research.
P.S. You might also look at Hulu with Live TV (no ads). That’s rather new. We haven’t tried it.
I cut the cord Years ago. There are many options out there for your TV shows depending on what you want. I have one subscription service, Frndly TV runs $89 a year and covers most of our viewing choices, Pluto TV is Free and have many older shows. Your antenna will pick up many OTA channels depending on where you are most of the Transmitters are in the Cedar Hill Area south of Dallas.
