Fuck Time Warner. Gave them their cable modem and got my own. Marvelous.

Now...I need a decent inexpensive receiver with an m-card slot because I will be damned if I'm going to rent their box. And I don't do pay per view.

Suggestions?

3/16/2014 7:06:01 PM

Quote :

"good cheap cablecard"

Does not exist

3/16/2014 7:14:55 PM

Let me rephrase: the best relatively affordable solution.

3/16/2014 7:49:53 PM

buy a tivo with lifetime service on craigslist. I managed to get 3 for $230

3/16/2014 8:33:18 PM

HDHomeRun Prime

3/16/2014 9:09:19 PM

So wait what's the idea here? You don't wanna give TWC $10/month or whatever and want to buy a DVR?

3/17/2014 12:05:36 AM

If Uverse was available in my neighborhood, I'd tell Time Warner to get some salt and pepper and eat my ass.

3/17/2014 12:22:28 AM

I figured that was the case when I posted.

Just trying to figure out what this cablecard stuff was all about.

3/17/2014 1:05:42 AM

Because a twc HD DVR box is $23/mo, and a cable card is about $2.50/mo. If I remember correctly.

You lose ppv and on demand, I believe. But you could set up a htpc with 4 tuners and pretty much record whatever you want.

I've weighed my options here. I'm close to building an htpc... I figure I could get what I want for a grand. But I've only got one box, so... It would be roughly 4 years to break even. I think my plan will be to wait and see if Google fiber moves forward with Raleigh. If they do, and the roll out time is <4 years, I'll probably suck it up. If they drop Raleigh, I'll go for it.

3/17/2014 10:15:13 AM

A switched digital video adapter should allow you to use ppv and on-demand.

Or, you can just cut the cord...

3/17/2014 3:24:20 PM

Did that for a year. Combine that with living in a townhome with very limited options for installing antennas (especially dealing with HOA) and somewhat sketchy reception, and I find myself returning to nurse upon the hideous TWC teat.

3/17/2014 3:32:50 PM

^^good to know.

3/17/2014 6:56:55 PM

SiliconDust HDHomerun Prime + Mini-itx AMD machine with 4gb of ram is all you need.

I run 1 windows box in my house on Windows 7 to use Windows Media Center with the HDHomerun prime. I run ServerWMC on it to push cable to my XBMC devices.

You could built it today for about 400 bucks total, including the tuner. Dual core AMD processor, no fancy anything. Then, I used xbox 360's (now available for 100-140 bucks), and Ouya's (85 bucks) which work great.

Lot more freedom than Tivo (and in most cases a lot faster)

3/18/2014 2:58:55 AM

Hard wire networked though?

What about this set up, noen... HD homerun prime, Intel NUC i5, 802.11ac, running windows, next pvr w/xbmc front end... Storage either on board or over iscsi?

[Edited on March 18, 2014 at 11:26 AM. Reason : .]

3/18/2014 11:20:29 AM

^I'd use ServerWMC rather than NextPVR. I futzed with a bunch of different PVR plugins and ServerWMC is hands down the most reliable, fastest and easiest to setup/maintain. It also allows you to use Xbox 360's as TV clients (which you can setup to auto-start in media center btw).

Just setup Windows Media Center for TV (install SiliconDust drivers/software, go through its config, then go through WMC setup/config for LiveTV), then install ServerWMC server.

The ONLY hiccup for ServerWMC is making sure your RecordedTV folder is shared on the network.

Add the plugin in XBMC (its in the official repo now, and supported in Gotham already), and everything just magically works. All your guide data works, tuning works, recording works.

Also, I would HIGHLY recommend using wired ethernet. Cablecard needs a very high bandwidth, low latency connection and I continually had issues with it over wifi. It's fine if that's the only box in the house, but if you are using other XBMC clients or Xbox 360 clients, you'll very quickly start running into bandwidth issues.

3/18/2014 3:20:52 PM

Thanks.

3/18/2014 4:22:37 PM

I second the "buy a tivo" suggestion. I love that damn thing

3/19/2014 2:01:31 AM

I have an HDhomerun PRIME for sale if interested.

3/19/2014 1:39:22 PM

HD homerun prime, $100. http://slickdeals.net/share/android_app/fp/116675

3/23/2014 4:48:48 PM