I like how Channels does all that Guide stuff for me and it all just works with many sources including HDHR Quatro OTA, TVE, HDHR Prime w/ Xfinity cablecard, Locast, Pluto
3 Likes
I do find it annoying that Plex and Emby have life time license option.
Hell, stupidly overpriced tivo dvrs have a lifetime option.
I like pay once and never have to worry about buying it again,
i have a Emby lifetime license. I wasn't too happy, at the time, many years ago, even then to have to pay, for a software solution to replace one that i had been using for FREE for years, and loved, Windows Media Center...but Microsoft killed it off and even could not get it load data go finish setup on an old win 7 anymore.
I have bought software that is a one time cost, however, they then have the restriction of that that payment is only for that version of the software. Any new versions, you have to pay again. I hate that, but they do offer the "subscription" thing most often, where u always get updates. Heck even MS Office is now fully subscription based.
O, and what about ALL those streaming platforms, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.
LOLZ! Someone who refuses to pay a monthly cost, whelp, they can never use those services.
I do find this bickering about this topic amusing though. I had put in my thoughts on the topic in the past, quite enough.
Channels saves me about $2K a year that of not having to pay those bastard cable company that is Comcast that i have had for 30yrs,....the cost they keep hiking up and up each year, 2001, i paid $40 a month for the same channel package, 2017 $140, 2018 $160, 2019 $180..and that was always after i call in and complain and the put me on short promotion, for plain basic digital cable with no comcast DVR.
yea so i have to pay $80 a year for Channels DVR, and $20 per month for Philo, and i use my folks Xfiinty sub account, and get all the channels i had before, with no contract or locked up cable box.
Curious... are you inferring that Schedules Direct annual sub sales are shady? Seemed legit and used it on WMC and Emby for several years.
Absolutely not!
However, if you ever read their terms of service, you'd know that their service is only licensed to provide guide data for use in open source non-commercial applications. (An argument could be made that using their service to feed guide data to WMC is a breach of their TOS; however, perhaps using EPG123 or other open software to directly access their service mitigates this. There are other providers of Gracenote data who specifically do so for use with commercial applications, such as Perc Data.)
As an example of this, Schedules Direct recently announced they are blocking Emby's access because they now offer a commercial product:
Schedules Direct is licensed by Gracenote to provide data to only non-commercial (hobbyist) applications. Two years ago, Emby decided to go commercial with the release of Emby Premier, so using our data with Emby is a violation of our terms.
I suppose a person could use SageTV with the Schedules Direct $25/year fee. It takes some setup, but it works well, and has customization option beyond anything else currently available.
Ultimately, it's probably the choice of the user, but it's still great to have the opportunity to talk about the various options, and even respect the opinion of others at the same time.
I have to agree with you SageTV is the most advanced Pure DVR even though it is the oldest.
And...Emby announced a move away from and dropping support for S.D long time before it stopped working, at least 2yrs before, recall read a thread post on it in their forms.. and a while ago now, replaced it with their own built in guide service. That, i find much better and reliable. it is free with the program, so no paying a third party on top.
Exactly. It was supposed to happen 2 years ago, but apparently the Emby developers can't be bothered to follow through on actually removing SD support from their app, threatening SD's license with Gracenote.
The point is that EPG data from Gracenote (which is the best) isn't free, so anyone offering it "lifetime" for free is not really planning on surviving to provide it for lifetime, OR, they expect the hardware they sold you with lifetime to die at some point. I think that "was" part of the Tivo model since they only did it with hardware. But then they got acquired by Rovi and switched from Gracenote to Rovi for EPG and suddenly everyone understood why Gracenote has a cost. And Tivo has had one foot in the DVR grave for a long time now.
So what is an ongoing cost that would warrant a subscription...
- EPG data from Gracenote, which no one really knows how much Channels pays for that as a commercial entity
- Support of changes to the channel lines ups and general support for all the source providers - every cable company, streaming live TV company, TVE channels, OTA, M3U, etc. Daily there are people that have some issues related to a channel on the forum here that need some attention.
- Support for the many platforms that Channels DVR and streaming boxes run on. Those all keep changing, so support is needed to resolve things or incorporate new features such as PIP.
- Active development of new features. They could go the "versions" route and not release new features into previously sold versions without paying for an upgrade. But that would have more support cost to maintain multiple versions of the product and support multiple versions.
To me, the price is a good value for what I'm getting. I'm paying so much less right now than I was before I delved into OTA and Channels.
1 Like
To me, the price is a good value for what I'm getting. I'm paying so much less right now than I was before I delved into OTA and Channels.
Ding ding ding - we have a winner. The ability to combine and record my OTA And TVE, especially provider-independent (I could switch back to cable or YTTV or Sling or Fubo to my heart's content, and nobody in house would know the difference) EASILY makes this a great value, too.
Can you explain this further? I do care about legalities. Schedules Direct has a license to distribute the data, and I pay SD a yearly fee to access the data. Where are legalities in question?
I too just dumped Comcast, but you math on savings is questionable. You did not include the cost of Internet service. And, if you still have Internet service from Comcast, plan on your rates doubling after 12 months. Also, you had been paying to license the program content and now you are not. My Comcast bill was $173/month. My ACTUAL savings is about $50/month to duplicate what I had.
@TV_Ken No. Only had TV service. Never had Internet from comcast and never said i did, so your wrong. I have a local ISP for that. Before them, was Century link DSL. You had much better speeds and prices at the time. Infact, the account was made long long before Comcast even offered internet service in my area. Those were the cost of the Comcast cable tv bills. Don't believe me, my mother keeps them all for the past 20yrs in boxes, she is a horder. Comcast internet still can't even offer more than three megs upload in my area. Where most other highest peas have much higher speeds I have US internet fiber that has gigabit up and down, for $50 month. I use a lot of upload bandwidth for the file sharing and other things that I do like YouTube.
And if u think paying comcast pays the netowrks....ya right, comcast pockets all that money.
And i am paying for rights to watch the channels, since i pay for Philo and 90% of my content comes from them, I have ota, witch you don't pay for, and the Comcast TVE my Grandparents, who can ONLY get Comcast cable where they live and pay for, they pay for. Comcast openly welcomes family use of thier streaming services. It has been confirmed and told to others as well. Sub account used for tve streamin, or via xfinity app. all are legit and leagal.
math. since you seem unable to comprehend. Comcast bill $180 a month for Digital Prefered package (the only one with the specfic channels i want like Nat Geo Wild, Discovery Family, the one I have had and had changed named many times over the years) $180 x12months = $2,160.
I was with AT&T Uverse and I'm not saving $2K, but am saving more than $50/month. They were about to increase the TV portion of my bill to $140/month (no premium channels). I am now paying for Channels + Philo for a total live TV costs (also get OTA and Pluto), of less than $30/month including tax. That's a savings of $110/month. That said, I could have jumped to Spectrum for a year and gotten a lower price for a while. Either way, I was sick of the dance, and nothing will be cheaper than $30/month. If I switch services for whatever reason in the future, the user experience for my family remains constant, as does my library of recordings. That has a lot of value to me because my wife doesn't do well with change in the TV experience, and she really likes Channels DVR. She hated YouTubeTV when we had that.
And the real clincher was that when we dropped UVerse TV, AT&T coincidentally lowered the price of their fiber internet plans so at the same time so I switched from 300mbps capped, to 1,000mbps uncapped with free HBO Max for $1/month less @ $59.
As I posted previously, SD's license to Gracenote's data specified that it can only be used with free and open applications; using commercial applications to access SD is forbidden. While there is nothing technically stopping you from using a commercial offering to get data via SD's servers, it's against their terms of use.
My savings is much smaller than yours because I wanted to keep access to almost all the channels I had been watching when I had Comcast. My Fubo bill is $73/month. I know this is a lot of money, and I could have less channels for less money, but there is so little on TV worth watching, I feel I need a big pool to choose from. Most people are willing to do with less, but that has to be factored into the equation if you are accurately calculating savings..
I must have missed something. As I read the license:
- Personal use only.
- No distribution to others.
- Can't use a commercial application to directly access the data. (totally unnecessary if you download it using XMLTV.
- Can't pass the information on to a commercial app.
I use their data under the "Non-distributed, Personal Research" provision.
I comply with all of these rules. I must have missed the part where someone suggested using SD to feed a commercial app.
Schedules Direct does not provide XMLTV. You must use some application to grab the data using SD's APIs, and then that application will generate the XMLTV. Most people seem to use:
- Programs from the XMLTV project, such as
tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite - EPG123
That is what I was referring to as XMLTV. I currently use "tv_grab_zz_sdjson", but I am in the process of writing my own program to directly download the SD data.
But this discussion was about the justification for a subscription for Channels DVR, and that is a commercial application that would not get the EPG data for free.