Today I received the attached email from Verizon FIOS about obsoleting CableCards and moving to IP TV. I am not happy about this, especially if it disrupts my ability to continue using Channels as my main viewer and dvr for my Apple TVs.
Will Channels / Channels DVR still work in the future when I am forced by Verizon to use their IP TV service? I tried searching for forum, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer.
If you then have anyway to extract or find out the IP tv URLs and such, and they are not DRM. I do not see why they would not work with Channels. Most likely though, they are locked down to what ever box they provide. You would then have to use some sort of external means to capture them.
There are other projects here that may allow for access to lost channles, like ADBtuner and other things. but need different setup.
Glad i moved a way from CableCard and CATV long time ago. Saw them ending those things long ago. Why would they ever want to have happy customers by continuing to allow the use of such things.
You are not "forced" to use Verizon IP TV. You can get just raw Internet service from Verizon (or anyone else), and then use one or more of the many options under ChannelsDVR. However, most of the options are NOT Plug-n-Play, they require more software or hardware, and time to figure out how to install/configure them.
It all depends on what channels/networks you need. The easiest setup I have seen is DirectTV Stream using the TVE (TV Everywhere) interface in ChannelsDVR. This gets me 92 channels. These include all I care about except SyFy, Freeform, Hallmark, and Nat Geo. To get these, I either have to use the DirectTV App (not connected to ChannelsDVR), or use complex methods to get them into ChannelsDVR. Each service has different sets of channels that work (or not) with TVE, and TVE will go away at some point, just like your cable card.
Nothing about the future is guaranteed, but I believe that people will continue to come up with new and innovative ways to get things into Channels.
When will Verizon officially pull the plug officially on cable cards? There must be thousands of them being used currently across the country
I use this cable card, CNN is not encrypted
I record the output via Plex to my PC
I just want to know when day officially disconnect and then I will totally disconnect the cable TV part of my Verizon package
They haven't announced dates publicly and are sending out these discontinuation messages months apart depending on the location.
Thank you for that information Do you think there's any chance that they may just grandfather on those people who still have them ?
My guess is not
If I still had access to cablecard, I would run it until the last cease and desist letter showed up from the provider, or even further yet, until it just stopped working. The most maintenance free system I ever had was 2 HDHR Prime's and 2 cablecards (6 total tuners) with SageTV that ran for about 8 years on Charter cable, where the only copy-once (DRM) channels were the premiums that I didn't subscribe to at the time.
I really miss those days.
Agreed. Before I moved to Florida and had to change providers I had a Tivo with Mini extenders and cable card on Comcast. That was just the best ever.
Channels has been a very good replacement, but in the 3 years I've had it we've seen how it requires more and more handholding to get what you used to have before. When I'm gone the wife will have to use our provider's crappy DVR features because there's no way she will be able to keep channels running. And the stupid part is that they used TiVo's code on their Android TV STBs but didn't implement all of the good features like a working to do list, wishlists etc. You can't even see what's scheduled to record and cancel anything you don't want lol.
As far as I'm concerned they are doing you a favor. I was a FIOS TV user with a cablecard in in my HDHomeRun Prime.
This is what I did:
For first run shows and movies I subscribe to a number of streaming services. Now I get 4K TV rather than 720 or 1080 for these services. That is when it's new material.
I kept FISO for Internet. There lowest speed of 300 Mb is more than enough for most homes. If you have a router that has QOS, turn it on as it guarantees no issues though 300 Mb works for many people without QOS.
I'm saving about $100 a month and much happier
One last thing that's easy to do is install two Channels DVR Add ons:
SLM lets me put my streaming shows in my TV folders on Channels DVR. It's a great way to organize.
FastChannels acts like a TV Tuner for many IP TV Services. I've got over 2000 channels!
Sorry, but they're not doing you a favor with ease of use in most cases. Ease of use with cable card dominates, especially when you can't reliably tune OTA channels.
Not to mention that cable card enabled a ton of channels that you can't get otherwise without hacks.
We're in the world of I can get what I want with a ton of hacks, which most folks will say F* it and just give up.
Comca$t announced, several months ago, that they were ending the availability of cable cards for new customers. I immediately filed a complaint with the FCC because they are allowing this. I then contacted my Senators and Congressman to complain about the FCC. All I got was a response from Comca$t that would continue to support current cable card customers for the near future. For now I am good with my TiVo. Probably get a letter soon like the OP got!
I can only speak for my experience with FIOS and now Antenna. Verizon failed to keep up with providing local channels. They provide about 12 here in NYC while my Antenna picks up 90 and most tune in quite well. For this one gets to pay big bucks to have them hide the reality from most consumers that are unaware of the improvements in the local broadcast arena.
When it comes to ease of use this has different meanings to different people. With the add ons for Channels DVR I have all my streaming, broadcast channels and recordings in one place with a great interface. I love this and find things faster that the stupid Guide the cable providers give us. Yes it did take a little time to set things up and that's true of using a cable card as well as with a cable card one must disable the channels that are in a language you don't speak or you wind up recording movies in languages you can't understand and missing the broadcast in the channel you do. Once everything is set up ease of use is simple. Could it be you are confusing ease of use with learning curve?
The SageTV cablecard system I had with Charter ran for 6 to 12 months at a time (at my parent's house) with virtually no user intervention. If you're someone who likes to constantly fiddle with your DVR, then you are absolutely in the right place.
Charter fought the local TV station fees just as hard as any other service, but in the end, what could they do? They were being held hostage by the local TV stations. They didn't bury it in the bill though, they broke it out separately and were very up front with the "local channel access fee." Of course today services like YoutubeTV have all the local channels and they are also paying that fee, but burying it in the bill.
For years we bitched and moaned about having to pay for all those cable channels that we never watched, and begged for TV al a carte, and boy did we get it. Fragmentation and user intervention up the wazoo. Look, I get that most of you have only been doing this for 1 to 8 years, but those of us that have been doing home brew DVR for over 2 decades know what a clean, easy DVR looks like, and this ain't it.
That said, based on what services are available to the consumer today, this could be as good as it gets, until some of these community developers pull together and make something better, from the ground up. I do appreciate what we have today, but I keep getting closer to just ditching television all together if it gets to be any more of a pain in the ass.
Sure it's easy to use after it's all set up, but that's not an easy task for regular folks nowadays. And it doesn't change the main point that I was trying to make which is not about ease of use, it's about keeping all your stuff running with the constant DRM implementations, TVE channels going away, having to use hacks like HDMI encoders, prismcast etc etc etc. None of these are as easy and reliable as a cable card setup. There's just no way. And no, OTA is not a replacement.
The point here is that stuff slowly breaks down and needs hacks or replacements on channels, we're all here because we can figure this stuff out but the regular folks aren't going to bother. I regularly have to implement different things because channels break. CNN is just the latest example, before that it was the ESPN family etc etc.
I think you are focused on the problems with the harder to implement things rather than simple things like streaming. There are two easy to use and set up add on programs for streaming, SLM and FastChannels. Nothing to by as your existing channels server can run them.
And for totally regular forks, there not setting up Channels so TVE don't matter.
You want your channels, I want my channels. My channels are not easy to implement and maintain compared to any plug and play cable card set up like TiVo's.
It doesn't really matter how easy you think it is, I'm telling you that that's not always the case.
What matters are shows, movies and events. There are many easy ways to get most. Using a wrench to hammer is the hard way to get the task done.
I have nothing more to say on this topic
Good because there's plenty of channels that you could never get unless you are willing to do the work. And then maintain them as they constantly break.
I'll give you a perfect example, the CW channel. I have a custom set of scripts and HDMI encoders to control my providers STBs so that I can get this channel and watch NASCAR. Not just this channel but others as well. There's no other way to get this content with my provider because I have no way to authenticate to get them on the web or via apps (CBS and ABC are two others). But I'm not going to pay extra to get it via YouTube TV or whatever when I could figure out a way to use the tools that people have created here to get that content via my provider.
I understand that you don't give a crap about any of that stuff, but I'm telling you that there's a lot of that content out there that you do have to do some work to get.
CW is my channel 11.1. all it takes is an antenna and a HDHome run tuner to get into channels. Compare the cost of cable and all the programming on it that you must pay for to see what you want v select streaming. I'm paying less now and getting more. And yes streaming has programs in not interested in and paying for. The important thing is I see what I want and pay less.
Forget it man, you want what you want and I want what I want. You can treat everything as a nail with the same hammer but you're wrong, and channels is nowhere near as easy to use as the old cable card setups.
Tl;dr your easy use case is not everyone's use case.
