Agreed. TVE is a last option when all the other tuners are busy. It’s okay to watch the news. About anything else is pretty bad. Once Spectrum drops Cablecard, I’m pretty much done. No way to get decent quality signals into my channels environment. I don’t see any other options emerging either. At some points the media whores will be a pay per episode, single watch with many commercials sales model. Cord cutting destroyed TV for people who just want to watch something without dealing with multiple services, disjointed guide data and miserable, highly controlled DVR abilities. They will Eliminate commercial skipping, trick play anything the consumer enjoys all while the quality of programming continues to circle the drain. Amazing watching this American entertainment being completely dismantled in the name of squeezing more dollars out of the already overwhelmed consumer.
But it’s so limited. We are going back to 1972. Sure it’s free and the quality is good but who the heck even watched the major networks any more? There isn’t a single ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS show I would put on unless I’m planning a nap.it’s free and it’s worth every penny but not a single extra.
The title of this thread is a bit misleading. We are experiencing the death of cable TV as we knew it (through a coaxial cable), but Channels DVR is alive and kickin' like never before. Once we went to TVE, I got myself setup with a good attic antenna and grab the major networks from about 25 miles away with an HDHomerun and Channels DVR. We watch a LOT of the major networks, from news to NFL football, to PBS, and there are a whole bunch [older] of crime shows on the sub-channels if you're in to that kind of thing.
I just figured that anyone still interested in linear television would still appreciate the local affiliates, but there are many different Channels DVR user scenarios and I'm grateful that the developers pursue various solutions.
Spectrum is not dropping cable-cards. They have a new High Split Converter that replaces the Tuning Adapter.
https://www.tivocommunity.com/threads/spectrum-and-cable-card.588503/
The first letters were just to get you to overreact and voluntarily dump your cable-card(s).
Thanks for the clarification. If that’s true then, first I guess I’m a little relieved that I might have time to find a replacement and second, that’s such an abhorrent business practice that I will absolutely dump this POS company as soon and humanly possible. What a bunch of absolute scumbags they would be to do that to their customers. I wonder where they get these people? Can you imagine working for hackles like that? Man, I’d rather starve
I know it really sucks for those previously using TV Everywhere for NBC channels now being DRM’d and unavailable - and we absolutely sympathize, but the fact that TV Everywhere went dark before the CableCard did is the definition of irony from this thread.
XFINITY is still supporting them no indication when they won't.
Not really. I see you think you’re on a victory lap of sorts, but we tried to tell you
Verizon FIOS is also supporting them via TVE. I don't get what they are doing as one can use an antenna.
I agree with that statement, however, since they are now using DRM in my area on the ATSC 3.0 channels, once the ATSC 1.0 goes off air, we won't be able to do that either. I know, it's still a long way out from that happening, but eventually it will happen, no one knows when for sure.
Missed this, sorry, would’ve replied sooner but been too busy watching NBC and sports, etc.
That completely depends on who your provider is. My area is covered by a regional ISP that has a grandfathered monopoly, they recently moved all cable to IPTV and no longer support CableCards. I believe all NCTC members are doing the same if they haven't already. Many of the larger providers are also phasing out CableCard adding DRM to many of the channels... Just because the lights are still on in some markets doesn't mean CableCard hasn't "gone dark" in many areas while slowly dying out.
Cool story. If anything, the quick adoption of DRM on ATSC3 channels make the original commentary about concerns being overblown even more moot.
I’m just as lucky as you - I have working cablecards and a robust OTA solution. But I’m one bad DRM switch or failed hardware but from searching for alternatives.
Putting it on the roof will likely work. I can't get anything out of the attic. I'm 25 miles from New York City and about 65 miles from Philadelphia. Putting the antenna on the roof with a preamp to boost the signal from the antenna to the HDHOMERun gets me all the Philadelphia channels (except a vhf channel 6). I also get all the New York channels off the backend.
I'm using the DB8 Bowtie antenna (which doesn't support vhf without an add on (which I have). The price for all this was worth it. I had been paying hundreds of dollars a year to NFL Sunday Ticket to directv. But once I did this (several years ago), I get a mini Sunday ticket (All the games out of NY and Philly) for free (canceling Sunday ticket paid for the antenna and creamp in the first year)
i'm so jealous that you live close enough by two big tv markets to get double the football games haha. I live here in just outside of LA and I dont bother watching NFL games anymore as a 49ers fan I get nothing but Rams, Chargers, Cowboys and Chiefs games it seems.
I wanted to get Sunday NFL ticket on youtube now but the price is way to expensive. oh well.
HSC rollout seems to have stalled, if not outright dead.
I meant to revisit this thread anyway, given the mostly bad news on TVE and DRM on ATSC3 recently. Now the above.
In this day and age, why have my options in getting live tv started to shrink? It’s madness.
I'm with you on this, but I think the next generation(s) of young people coming up are proving the demand for live television is plummeting. Most of my younger extended family members are only interested in linear television when there is a live football game - and that's pretty much it.
I have to say that I love Channels and I love my CableCARD, and I'm on Comcast. The two working together let me use my cable subscription exactly how I want to use it... which is however I want. I ditched my Insight Communications/Comcast DVR for a CableCARD back in 2009 and never looked back, starting on Windows Media Center, and completed my migration to Channels on multiple Apple TVs in 2018 because Windows Media Center was a dead platform.
Channels with my CableCARD has allowed me to watch my local TV regardless of where I am, which was something WMC could never do. If I want to watch my local NFL, college, or NBA team while I'm out of market/state, I can. If I don't want to watch commercials on my recordings, I don't have to. My wife works for a local school district and a couple of years back, her school's band performed in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Thanks to Channels and CableCARD, I was able to record the band's performance and burn it to a disc for the band director. And when my job out of state for 7.5 months, I took an Apple TV and a tabletop TV with me and still had my full cable subscription and DVR while gone. No restrictions, no extra fees to watch stuff "out of market". It was perfect.
While I know that technology progresses, sometimes I wish they would leave well enough alone. I know that TV Everywhere is there, but it's quirky and does not offer me local channels, or my local sports teams, and unless I build a VPN server for my home, the Comcast Stream app won't work out of market for me. Streaming might be killing off traditional cable, but for me, cable still offers everything I want. I don't need multiple subscriptions for multiple services in order to build what I currently pay for with just one subscription... to Comcast. And honestly, for any other streaming apps that I have, most of them let me login using my Comcast subscription and use them for free that way.
What I would love to see is my ability to login to my Comcast subscription thru Channels and pull their streams from their stream app into Channels, not TV Everywhere, and be able to keep my setup the way it is now, where I can access things anywhere an Internet connection is. But, if enjoying cable via Channels is truly coming to an end, then I'll get an OTA setup for my local channels, and be stuck with the Comcast Stream app on my Apple TV for everything else.
Says a lot seeing you've been using Channels for 5 years and this is your first post.
Couldn't agree more about Xfinity/Comcast.
Have a cable card in my HDHR Prime I use with Channels and use TVE for a couple channels my Xfinity sub only has in SD through my Prime.
Once I started using Channels DVR, I quit looking at DVR's and other DVR software.
My Lifetime TiVo units are just collecting dust and my Lifetime Plex sub hasn't been used for years (although it's a great media library).
On the flip side I've been using channels for a few months now since I moved out of an Xfinity area, but using TiVo before was a much more reliable experience than channels. And that's simply because of TVE and all the crap that we have to do now with HDMI or Chrome encoders, it's not a TiVo versus Channels thing. I can't even get ABC at all through channels because it's not available, for example, and then NBC went away and I've been having to tweak encoders ever since. Fox has been flaky on occasion too.
I miss my Tivo and Minis setup simply because it just worked w/cablecard, and yeah the out of home experience was nowhere near as good but it did work, mostly.