I have a vacation home in a rural area with terrible antenna signal, so using HDHomeRun is not an option. Can I get these channels using TVEverywhere? If not, then what are my options? Thanks in advance.
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Gotta have a provider sub like YTTV. Good thing is you only have to sub for months you need.
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YoutubeTV is too expensive, as is Hulu Live. If I used them, I wouldn't need Channels. The home is AirBNB'd so I need it all the time.
Do you have a Channels DVR at your primary residence? And, does the vacation home have decent Internet? If so, you could add a Custom Channels source to the vacation home that would use your primary residence as a source.
You could have a very basic DVR setup in the vacation home, that would record locally, but use your primary residence as a gateway to content.
So when someone wanted to watch, say ABC, at the vacation home, it would be streamed live from a HDHomeRun at my personal home? That's interesting. However, I have 60Mb down and 6mb up at home. I fear that anything over one stream might saturate my upload speed. And I want this solution to support more than one stream and I actually have more than one AirBNB
Through the M3U you'd use at the vacation home you can limit the bandwidth used by the stream. But a 6Mbps upload would be very limiting -- two 3Mbps streams is about all that would be reasonable for HD content.
You need a way better home internet connection to support what you want.
But geez man, if you're renting it out it's just the cost of doing business.
I hear you, upgrading upload bandwidth is absolutely on the radar. But even though I have rental income, the cost is a significant factor. Hulu is $97/mo x 3 properties so that's almost $3600/year just for Hulu Live!!! That's not counting Hulu at my primary home, or the internet connections at each place. The thing is, people don't often want to watch CBS or whatever. They mostly watch Netflix. Until there's a football game on or whatever then the freak out. It's been a surprising challenge to get a couple of networks at any kind of reasonable price. I'm going to try the Fubo-TV Docker container and buy just one Fubo subscription.
Here’s what I’d do and probably the most cost effective.
- You have upgrade your home internet upload speed.
- Add a hdhr tuner at your home if you don’t have one. Possibly add another even if you do.
- Install an additional server at your house running another instance of CDVR. Enable Tailscale on this server.
- Install Tailscale on your client devices that are located at your 3 airb&b’s and attach back to your newly installed server. Use server side client settings to ban recordings, limit streams and sources ect.
This kind of setup will keep people out of your personal dvr while sharing ota stations from a hdhr on your network. All costs are one time upfront and free after that except the extra internet cost. In this setup if you want, you could even have a single instance of a tve provider (Hulu,YouTube,fubo,ect) that feeds all dvrs and clients. Instead of $97/mo x 3 it would be just $97/mo x 1.
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Perhaps I'm not your target market/demographic, but do AirBNB renters really expect the landlord to provide accounts for streaming services as well as DVRs?
My expectation is simply a TV (preferably hooked up to an OTA antenna) with an available HDMI input, and internet access with at least 300 down. I would not trust the provided streaming devices or accounts; if I want to stream content, I'll bring my own device.
Internet and services for your rental properties can easily be classified as a business expense for tax purposes; if you are not already doing so, you really ought to have words with your accountant.
Because most everyone has Netflix and/or Hulu or Prime, that's not the big deal, although I provide them with a Netflix login because it's cheap. The Big Deal is when Grandma can't get the local weather and Uncle Bob can't watch the playoffs. Then, All Hell Breaks Loose.
Yes, of course it's a business expense. But that doesn't make the cost go away, it just reduces my taxes a bit. So that $3600 is reduced by maybe 20% with the tax savings.
Why do I need two at my primary home? Wouldn't one suffice?
How does one install Tailscale on a client device? (We're talking about the Channels App on a FireTV stick, right?).
One would work if you don’t want your own. I assume you have your own dvr server already and would want some privacy on your recording. If your only use for channels is to serve up locals to the Airbnb then one server would be fine.
There is a Tailscale app in the google play store. I assume there is one for the fire tv. The fire tv will have Tailscale enabled at all times and you will connect the app to the server tailnet ip.
Actually if you are just running one server, use the regular remote access. No need for Tailscale. In either case you must have a better upload at your home to do any of this.
I wouldn't even expect or need anywhere near that in rentals I've been in given how well Channels and other services work on complete garbage internet:
Are there any ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX feeds in there?
@Timbo66 every airbnb I've stayed at required me to log into my own accounts. Maybe they had preinstalled some free news channels/apps, but for other services I had to log in.
For myself I'd want remote access to my Channels DVR, but for your guests I suggest you just get a Roku, put it in Guest Mode, and leave it at that. It deletes all accounts and added apps at checkout.
Thank you but the question was how to get the national networks, and Roku guest mode does not help with that. People on vacation want to watch sports now and then, and you don't get that with most streaming subscriptions.
Understood @Timbo66. Just trying to make it easier for you. Your guests can install news/weather channels and sports channels on the Roku if they want them, and that's all I would expect as a guest myself.
Personally I might bring a pre-loaded Fire TV Stick already set up for remote access to my Channels DVR, but you really don't need to do all that work for airbnb tenants, and honestly some folks would require remote support from you to navigate Channels DVR or anything like it.