On the Demise of HDHomeRun Premium TV

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#21

Thanks! But that's not exactly how the setup works. We have a licence fee around US$200, that goes into funding the BBC and only the BBC. As a result the BBC doesn't run commericals, none at all.

Then we have the other channels, terrestrial broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4, and satellite/cable like Sky. They get no licence fee money, they are funded by commerical advertising and/or subscription.

There's a very clear seperation between licence fee and no commericals, and no licence fee and commericals. One doesn't subsidise the other.

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#22

OK... well don't know a lot about it, but when I'm there with the God Daughter I notice it's not nearly as annoying.

I see a watermark for ITV and such on your material, but I've never seen your guys use the lower third of the picture as their own personal playground! I swear there's another show going on down there at times and it's so annoying you can't get the jist of the actual program trying to run behind it.

Yes, they're very different.

lol

#23

Personally I have the 3 tuner with a cable card- its great. Lost the cost of renting those cable boxes for just $5/month for the cable card- and I can have a tv anywhere. Currently my main use is via Channels on ATV. .

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#24

After the demise of SD Premium, I reconnected with Suddenlink. Have Quattro and a Connect vetting the OTA channels (better HD) and one of my Primes for cable. My wife wanted a return to our TIVO box but now likes Channels best. Costs us @ $20 more total now.
Happy until Suddenlink goes up in price

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#25

Boy, what I'd give to have IPTV support in Channels.

I did try Xteve briefly (which emulates an HDHomeRun tuner, 'tuning' an IPTV source), but it's only a partial emulation of an HDHomeRun tuner, and Channels DVR wasn't convinced. Plex DVR is apparently easier to fool.

Yes, I'm sure the U.S. Cable companies will fight it tooth and nail if it ever appears as a large enough blip on their radar for them to feel threatened. Though it'd a 'whack-a-mole' effort, frankly. Neither U.S. Cable nor the U.S. judicial system move very fast.

And there's nothing they can do about offshore IPTV sources. Being an English ex-pat, I still need my UK TV fix :slight_smile:

#26

It worked very well for me until the glitches towards the end which was all because of the upstream provider. I will really miss it.

#27

I too really liked the Premium Channels and was sorry to see them go. I have signed up with Philo to get some of them back, although will miss the sports. I also use Pluto as well. It would be great if there was some way to get everything on one app like Channels and see a combined guide and DVR capability. I am here in the USA Midwest between three markets and have 2 Quatros and 1 Connect connected to multiple antennas for the ota channels.

#28

The "combined guide" is pretty important to me until I can find something else. I use Apple TV App "WatchAid" for a lot of what I watch On Demand. But for Live TV I need something like Channels that combines OTA and Streaming Service like Philo. At least a combined guide as a starting point similar to how my WatchAid works.

#29

Are there any legitimate / legal US IPTV services that I could implement in an emulator?

I have a fully working HDHomeRun emulator that works with channels that I made, with the anticipation of using my cable login to grab the playlists for live TV from the websites that offer live TV ( like TBS, USA, etc. ), which works but it's apparently too slow getting started on the stream for Channels to not give up on the stream.

I am using some awful scraping mechanism from a headless Chrome browser session because the Adobe authentication is complicated and I couldn't figure out how to automate it and this scraping takes too long. Works fine outside of Channels app, but that is why I was trying to build it in the first place.

If there was some IPTV service I could use instead and not have to scrape the playlist URLs, that would probably work, but I'm not really looking to use some sketchy service.

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#30

I think the only guys providing such a service are Omnivision One World Television - and if you look up 'Sketchy' in the dictionary you'll see a picture of their CEO.

I'll eat those words if he wins this epic court battle against the Icons of 'Big Cable' (two chances: Slim/None) and at that point we should see any number of 'Services' crop up (if history is any indication of future events - it won't be pretty, falling squarely under the aforementioned 'Sketchy' descriptor).

Of course, if OOWT is given the green light, so they're not having to operate under the cover of darkness, leaping from foxhole to foxhole, the service they provide could improve.

I'd have to see it to believe it.

:wink:

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#31

Virtual Channels are in the latest Pre-Release (experimental) update.

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#32