NBC, and its regional sports networks, are no longer available in Channels via TV Everywhere providers.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://getchannels.com/2023/04/11/nbc-tve/
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://getchannels.com/2023/04/11/nbc-tve/
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Will there be any solution to this?
If more companies start doing this then channels dvr for TV everywhere won't be worth it anymore.
Obviously, a huge letdown. The main reason I got Channels was to watch those channels like MSNBC and CNBC. And between NBC and CBS, I watch them 90+ percent of the time.
That said, I did get a HD Homerun for cable card recently. So I should be good, but I can't get anyone at Verizon to help me get the darn thing activated. I'm looking for suggestions on how to approach it. I hung up on the Verizon guy because he was unable to understand that I don't have a screen on my HD Homerun. He kept asking me "what's on the screen"?
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You’ll have to use the web admin that the HDhomerun provides to get the information they’re asking for you to get off the screen. Just ignore them when they ask what’s on the screen, and ask them which details they’re looking for. You can get it all in the web admin.
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Its a shame comcast did this it just leads to more piracy. Their nbc streams has stupid drm now making it incompatible with certain setups and on top of that their app was broken when the march update happened. There are two ways to go about this:
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Illegal iptv services and connect them thru channelsdvr
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Cut the cord altogether and only use peacock for nbc content.
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I think forcing you to Peacock is part of the reason they did this. Peacock is the turd of streaming services and I can't imagine they have very many paying subs relative to other streaming providers.
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Agree has nothing to do with Channels DVR TVE is an outdated way of viewing Streaming Shows.... The Networks want you to use their apps.... I would not be surprised if Discovery is next to DRM TVE or drop authorization through TVE.
My theory with having only peacock is the following:
Currently cable gives nbc more money their stations are more than $5/sub in your cable bill. The nbc sports rsns are a separate matter they are planning to have an addon for it via peacock according to the news. In the current state of things having both cable and peacock gives nbc the max amount of money. My plan unless you do need the nbc sports rsns down the road would be to drop cable in favor of peacock. Peacock at $10/month for adfree is technically worth the money compared to having them on cable because of the value vs price. There are better subscriptions for less than $10/month though. If comcast somehow doubles this price to match cable you bet most will leave. Its not a good look for comcast regardless.
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Well this is bad for Channels ESPECIALLY for those of us where OTA is not possible. The main reason we use Channels is to grab the Major Networks and record,,, let me repeat "record". Having the networks without the ability to DVR is like having a car with no wheels. Or paying through the nose or paying extra for the Networks is not an option either.
If DRM eventually gets applied to all TVE then I believe this is a death sentence for Channels.
That might be the case for cord cutters, but don't you at least have to have a cable subscription to make use of significant amounts of TVE? I used Channels for at least 18 months before I even added TVE as a source, and I've only been using Frndly.tv since November - because I could get nearly everything just using our HDHomeRun Quattro (4 OTA tuners) and HDHomeRun Prime (3 cable tuners).
I am seriously trying to axe cable, but I don't know a better way to ensure I can access the sporting events I don't want to miss. There are numerous options for almost everything else I''m interested in, but if I cancel cable I would lose ALL Comcast's TVE channels - regardless of DRM - wouldn't I?
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Blockquote
Dirk_Manderin
I think forcing you to Peacock is part of the reason they did this. Peacock is the turd of streaming services and I can't imagine they have very many paying subs relative to other streaming providers.
Have you used Peacock? The user experience with Peacock is significantly better than almost every other major service. The quality of content might not be all there (yet) but they have the bones of a well-structured, future-proof streaming service. The only streaming service(s) I'd definitively say is less susceptible to a massive downturn is the Disney+ package. Peacock's pricing is 25-35% lower than major competition ($9.99/mo ad-free), they only show non-paying users 5 minutes of ads per hour compared to Hulu (9 min) and cable TV (11 min). They're one of the few services that update the subscriber numbers on a regular basis to FlixPatrol (most recently 22 million as of 03/2023) and this is actually a lowball because they use Comcast's Xfinity platform as the basis, because Comcast users get the second-tier of service in their package. A more reasonable approx. that takes into consideration cord-cutters has estimated their subs at ~30 million.
Peacock has a looooong way to drop to be considered bottom of the barrel. My cord-cutting entails stripping streaming services too because it's just gotten insane the last few years. I still have Disney+ because of my phone provider and Amazon Prime because it's annual subscription but I'm letting them go this year most likely as well.
While this has everything to do with protecting IP, it has nothing to do with whether or not you think Peacock is crappy. In the real world, if you're a publically-traded company and you aren't willing to show shareholders you can go to bat for your IP and their investment capital, just kiss that company good bye why don't ya? There is literally no way they can poo-poo this, because piracy has always been and always be a major thorn in the side of content providers. It costs all these companies billions, if not trillions, in revenue annually."
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We'll have to agree to disagree then. I don't care enough about Peacock to argue with you about it.
Check out this potential solution:
It's very, very, very early, but this could end up being the way to work around all of this.
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NBC is available via TVE (and on my HD Homerun OTA) here in the LA area. CNBC and the NBC Sports channels aren't. PBS is missing too but I get that OTA. [I share a Youtube TV subscription with family who lives on the east coast for TVE access. You get locked out of Youtube TV if you access it from outside your local area after 3 months.] I also RECORD programming and skip ads from Pluto TV using the settings you'll find in these community postings. So, I'm loving Channels. No other system that I know of has such varied capabilities!
However, I agree that programming is getting way too fragmented. Guess you have to choose what's important to you and go from there.
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That's interesting, I lost TVE access to NBC and I'm in the LA area too. Are you sure it's not just failing over to your OTA feed? Thankfully I do get NBC via OTA as well, so at least there's that. I am tinkering with this new experiment to bring in other NBCU channels, feels like a promising project so far:
Agreed!
Agreed on this too. Content is king but also, the medium is the message. And overall interface is important to me.
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If you want streaming PBS in Channels, you can do this:
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FYI, I've lost NBC on TVE. But the easy fix is my HD Homerun and an antenna. I can actually see the antennas on top of Mount Wilson from where I live near LA, so I'm good.
I toyed with Docker a while back and found that after installing it on my Raspberry Pi, I was unable to get Anything to work and instructions i found (for let's say Pluto TV) just were not clear enough for this techie but newbie. Found non docker custom channel setup for pluto and it works great!