My mother in law is paying 120 bucks a month for literally just 3 channels that she watches. 30 bucks of this is just for renting the stupid cable boxes.I'd love to get her off of this and using channels. The problem is she's used to just punching in numbers to get to a channel. I don't think she will be able to navigate using the d-pad.
Have any of you all done anything for older folks that are stuck in their ways?
I got a few FLIRC and some DIRECTV remotes from amazon and setup those, It controls TV off and ON and the soundbar. Plus sturdy and large buttons.
Can you elaborate some more on the setup? Are you using like an Android TV box with it? Can you change the channel with the number buttons? Are you able to automatically launch the channels app and make it play right away?
I want her to to be able to just hit the power button and have it play any channel. Preferably the last channel it was on. And from then she can just hit the channel numbers and watch whatever she wants.
I setup FireTV 4K for them ... I setup all buttons ... numbers work everything works it sends keystrokes to the channels DVR and FireTV. One-time setup.
I used this guide and FLIRC setup to setup buttons to send keystrokes...
Channels Support - Keyboard (getchannels.com)
Now we're getting somewhere! Are you able to make it auto-launch Channels app? And what happens when you turn off the TV?
I really haven't tried to auto launch Channels DVR ... They also use the directv remote to manipulate FireTV menu and Streaming services ... they had a hard time with the small remotes. I also setup the guide buttons etc ...
One good thing about the FLIRC you can use any IR remotes. I chose DirecTV because they are cheap and durable.
Amazon.com: 4 Pack - DIRECTV IR / RF Universal Remote Control (RC66RX) : Electronics
And you can control TV's soundbars etc ... with a little googling the remote manuals.
Thanks man. I might have to give that a try and see if she can handle it.
Can you just hook an antenna to the TV and use its tuner to watch OTA networks for free?
Yeah but the problem is she watches a couple cable channels.
My wife had the same issue, where's my 42 for Food Channel etc. She watches about 10 channels.
It is now not a problem at all.
Problem is the Channel numbers within Channels DVR are 4 digit, not so easy to use or remember.
In the streaming world Channel numbers are mostly gone.
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With Channels DVR you can set it up to always launch on a certain channel like Food Network, whatever.
But first you have to launch the Channels app from your box's Home screen, make it your First app on the Home screen... unless you can find a App Auto Launch, I think Amazon has mostly outlawed that and I don't see one for Android TV in Google Play.
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Then you can set up Favorites within the Channels Client streaming box and ONLY show the 3 or 10 or whatever number of favorites she has. (Plus you can always also select ALL instead of Favorites)
You can arrange the Favorites in whatever order suits her, most Favorite to least Favorite etc.
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IF you get an Onn UHD (Android TV) streaming box $20 at Walmart the remote has a Next/Prev Channel rocker switch, that one "rolls" the channels, when you get to the bottom channel it rolls to the top channel and vice-versa.
If she only has a small number of Favs it is very easy to just rock and roll... Next channel / Prev Channel.
The Channels Guide does not roll the channels, but that Onn box will.
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She will have to get used to seeing the Channel "logos" and not channel numbers in the Guide (which my wife never uses, just rocks and rolls with the Onn remote).
Some logos are hard to see and make out due to color schemes.
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Also note, she will have to remember to press the Home button when finished watching, to end the stream.
Otherwise the stream will never stop,
This could cause exceeding your monthly data cap unless she has Unlimited.
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Cable Boxes:
One last thing, by getting 2 Onn boxes at $20 I was able to get rid of two of my cable provider boxes, $6/mo each per month (Yikes), easily pays for Channels DVR.
Not to mention the whole home DVR.
Thanks for the Onn box recommendation. I was going to go the FireTV route but this is even cheaper. Also I never really liked Amazon's ecosystem. I prefer the Google experience.
Plus the Onn Android TV Home screen can be made mostly clutter free,
and have Channels DVR as the only App on the Home screen favorites, makes it easier on her.
Logitech isn't making these remotes anymore but I have two Harmony 650's I love because they are so senior-friendly. I got them for $35 each back in the day but they're still working great, even with Channels DVR.
Here's a post where I explained:
Thanks everyone for your input. This is such an awesome community.
Two last thing with the Onn:
1.
Even tho it seems you have set up the TV control during setup it has done only the Volume.
Make you go to Settings > Set up remote buttons
and set up Volume, Power, Change Input
for your TV. I use IR not CEC.
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2.
The issue:
The Onn 4K box has an internal Android UI volume that may be set at less than 100% when you first set it up, causing people to wonder why their TV sounds half as loud as it should be when playing content from the Onn 4K box.
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The solution:
Go to Settings > Set up remote buttons.
Go to Volume Control (under Remote buttons) and make sure it is set to auto instead of controlling your TV or other device.
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Press the volume rocker on the remote control and raise the volume to 100% as shown on the onscreen volume display appearing on your screen as you raise the volume.
Your Onn 4K box has an internal volume control that may be set at less than 100% by default, and now you have 100% volume.
Your Onn 4K box should now sound as loud as your other devices!
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Make sure to set Volume Control back from Auto to your TV or other device so your volume rocker controls that device again.
I went down this path with my Mom a few years ago and wrote a blog post about it.
The cable package she was coming from was very basic, less than a 100 channels and no bells and whistles. No DVR, no on screen guide, nothing like that at all. She had reached a point she couldn't have learned how to operate something much different. The Channels app itself even was too confusing because that was my first round with trying this with her. Our internet then was slower and the odd moment of buffering would cause it to fall behind and she had no clue how to proceed if channels asked her if she really wanted to change channels because what she was watching was behind real time.
For her the ideal combo turned out to be channels using their m3u as the input in the Tivimate app. Then Flirc with a regular remote control. In her case she didn't care as much about channel numbers. She mainly wanted to go up and down but I still printed her a list of what was on each channel number. Tivimate has settings to start the app up when the device powers on and will go back to the last channel playing. Apparently doesn't work on all devices but worked on the Tivo Stream 4k.
This is the remote I used with Flirc.
Two reasons I selected it - one it could learn IR Codes because I could not get Flirc to control the volume no matter what. So I just taught it the TV's actual IR for volume. The second reason was that volume and channel up/down buttons are actually labeled - without that she couldn't remember which button did what.
In the end, she liked this set up better than her old cable because there were more channels she enjoyed and the picture was better than our ancient cable system here. So it was win/win for her. Paid less and enjoyed it more.
Still I had to occasionally fix things for her. Like if she randomly got tossed to the home screen on Android (how I don't know because her remote had no button that would take her out of the app - must have crashed). So just food for thought if it's not someone near enough by you can take time out to get things working again. She could have just powered it off and on but she would panic when something unexpected happened. So that's a YMMV sort of deal.
Thanks for this. I never thought of using a front end for Channels DVR.
That looks like a great remote for Seniors ... Limited buttons though ... That is why after looking at it I still prefer the Directv remotes with the FLIRC.
It really does matter where “you” are coming from. Mom had never used a remote with that many buttons. No cable box for the level of cable she had. But otherwise I like that the direct tv remote has clearly labeled buttons.
Well since someone mentioned TiviMate I feel compelled to throw my 2 cents in again !!
If you are a sports fan and have Channels DVR then TiviMate is a must.
$25 for lifetime gets 5 licenses, install on up to 5 devices.
The paid version also gets... MULTI-SCREEN. Yee-Haa!
Using the m3u and the xmltv (for Guide), both from Channels,
you can watch 1,2,3,4 or more games on the same screen.
Depends on the horsepower of your streaming device.
I find that with FireStick 4K I can go up to 4 simultaneous games then it fails.
2 or 3 is best.
Not sure on the Onn, never tried yet, I suspect it may overheat if you push it too hard.
BTW always let the Onn dangle or prop up on something, don't lay it flat, it needs to expel heat.
