We need a magic button to make TV not suck even though we have a thousand channels to choose from.
Most good content now is behind pay apps. Besides sports and The weather channel I don't use live tv.
I recently pushed my "make TV better" button and low and behold I got better tv ! ! !
Here's what I did:
- Switched from Nvidia Shield Pro to Apple TV 4K
- Installed Channels DVR as well as my other streaming apps
- Apple dock: Channels DVR, Apple TV app, Netflix + 2 more
- Changed Settings so "Up Next" shows on 'Top Shelf'
- "Live TV" - use Channels DVR & all "Up Next" display on 'Top Shelf'
- Streaming TV - use Apple TV app & all "Up Next" display on 'Top Shelf'
Note: Apple TV app sees what shows you are actually watching (except on Netflix) and adds them to its "Up Next" list. For Netflix shows, you have to search for them on Apple TV app and click on "Add to Up Next".
That's it - the BEST - not just better - TV EVER
PS: and use the Apple TV as your TV discovery tool, even if its on 'Live TV' (BTW: AT&T TV is a back door here - but that's TMI)
You're missing the point, @BarryJames. You can add all the whiz-bang tech you want, but TV content these days still bites the big one.
Don't quite understand "these days". Does that imply that in the past, TV content did NOT bite the big one? Or are you implying that forever, TV content has always bitten the big one?
Or is this really a compliant that there is nothing new on during the summer TV season, primarily due to Covid-19???
BTW: I assume that being active users of Channels DVR, that our community at least finds sufficient 'Live TV' content that's good enough.
(as with most folks, our TV watching time is now 65% streaming and 35% 'Live TV' aka Channels DVR)
I'm afraid I can't help you with that one.
I literally did all those things. It’s pretty nice but doesn’t improve the content.
I want my magic button.
Back in “my day” we only had only four channels but had no trouble finding stuff to watch. My theory: The financial industry survived the Y2K bug but the media industry did not. That’s why they never advanced into the 21st century. 01/01/2000, the day big media bit the big one.
Even as late as 2017 or so, we still found plenty (FSVO "plenty") to watch on OTA TV. We were using a Channel Master DVR+ at the time. That has two tuners, and we'd sometimes find ourselves with more we wanted to record than we had tuners. That was one of the reasons for the SD HDHR CQ and networked DVR. Ironically, about the time I finally got all that where I wanted it, the number of things we found to be worth watching started declining.
Now it's down to the point that most of what we're recording are reruns of older content. And how many times can you re-watch something before it gets stale?
This is why the thing with Synology DSM 7 and whatever happens with ATSC 3.0 don't get me all wound up. I'm not certain how much it's going to matter, before long.
We may disagree on when it happened but the media has indeed pooped the bed.
I want my magic button.
lol ya’ll are grumpy. The majority opinion is that TV series content has never been better than it is right now. It’s just not on the major broadcast networks
Bah! I want my magic button.
I ripped all the Downton Abbey series from DVD (which was an absolute pain in the ass BTW) so I can entertain my lovely bride when there’s absolutely nothing on. It is getting pretty old though.
The Up next feature for the Apple TV app is great. I’m not sure why people don’t take advantage of it. I works with a lot more apps than many may realize. Almost all the major TV everywhere apps. It even works with live sports and notifies you on the TV when your favorite teams games are starting. And the best part is with the Apple ecosystem it all syncs with you IPhone. It’s an awesome feature.
DVD Ripping is a pain-in-the-ass (have ripped over 50 myself). What I found to be the easiest was to use the Vudu app on my PC with a DVR/Blu-ray drive. Then I inserted a DVD/Blu-ray and if it matched on Vudu, I could buy it for a $2.50 - if I did 10, the price dropped down to $1.25 each. I did 100 DVDs this way. Finally you can use "Movies Anywhere" so that most of those movies will show up in other services such as Amazon Prime Video and Apple's iTunes.
I use MakeMKV. It works really well and is fast. The problem with Downton is that the episodes rip in some random order. You have to search around and find the correct file to rip so everything works out. MKV files are a lot larger but you get full original quality and subtitles etc. Of course you should only do this with media you own and not borrowed or rented.
Btw, please vote for this feature. We need to get moving on this!
I use DVD Decrypter & don't have those issues. For Blu-rays, I use PavTube BD Magic. (and I rip for use in Windows Media Center which I run on the same PC I run Channels DVR server)
I’m a Linux guy — at least in the server side.
Btw, please vote.