Cord cutting & WAF

[Brad303 0]

Hi guys,

 

I'm trying to cut my satellite cord and need to make it as seamless as possible for the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor).

 

Here's the hardware I currently have available for the project:

• Dedicated media PC
  • 2 AverMedia PCI-e ATSC tuners
  • Windows 7 MCE
  • Currently acting as my Emby server & primary Emby client
• Roku 4 (haven't had time to set it up yet)
• nVidia Shield (ditto)
• Chromecast (1st gen)
• HDHomerun HDHR3-US
• 1 projector, 1 standard HD TV, 1 Sony Android HD TV
• Comcast 150mbps Internet (and apparently some unblocked channels)

I currently use Emby almost exclusively for watching downloaded TV & movies. I watch a bit of TV, but the wife watches a fair amount of both network and cable channels (HGTV, Food, etc).

 

From what I've been able to tell so far, using the Roku as the primary STB is the way to go since I can get the Roku "cable" channels and run Emby from it.

 

What's the best way to watch & record OTA TV? It would appear that the Live TV options available directly on the Roku are limited, which leads me to using one of the Live TV plugins in Emby. The advantage of that solution is that I would be able to watch Live TV on any Android device/display, not just the one what the Roku is connected to.

 

So given the fact that I have a WMC machine with 2 tuners, and a HDHomeRun 3 (on the way), what's the best solution overall for ease of use? I'm fine with a multi-stage setup, as long as it's mostly reliable.

 

Is the WMC + ServerWMC + Emby any more or less reliable than Emby + HDHR? Does the former use the WMC EPG, or would I have to subscribe to a guide in both cases?

 

What other things can I expect with this cord-cutting endeavor? Can I expect it to be as easy to use for the wife as a Dish DVR? Can I expect superior or inferior picture quality? Are recordings reliable? What frustrations is my low-patience wife likely to encounter?

 

I plan on documenting everything as I haven't yet seen an all-in-one guide/wiki for doing this. (I'm open to links, though.)

 

Thanks.

[legallink 187]

We did this switch about two or so years ago and are slowly making some tweaks, so here is my 2 cents, and your wife could very well react differently then mine.

 

First off the most important thing in my house for WAF is ease of use. We started with an htpc Windows WMC client attached to the main tv, and while it worked and was the prettiest, it did not equal ease of use. We had a harmony remote control that we used, and while it was programmed fine, it was not nearly as fast and responsive as our old cable remote, so if you are going down that road, get one of the expensive rf remotes.

 

Second thing, she didn't really like the wait time of a Windows machine coming out of sleep or hibernation. She just wanted it on.

 

TV was acceptable, but not as good as directly through the cable stb.

 

Then we went for the Roku. On the whole, this was a big step up from the Windows machine for movies and media, but a big step backwards for live tv. It just isn't a pretty/Informative enough interface for live tv on a regular basis. We had success with favoriting the channels we watch most, but using the guide was a bit painful. The server still recorded all of our shows that we wanted on the Windows/serverwmc combo, and that worked/works well but the file sizes are just gigantic at somewhere between 2gb and 7gb an episode.

 

The remote on the Roku was good, loved the private listening, and the loved the number of channels for media it provided. The machine I think is just a bit underpowered. Maybe the Roku 4K will start changing that, but I think the OS is what the OS is.

 

We have recently moved to the Apple TV and are waiting the tvos app. Even with having to AirPlay from our devices, WAF is higher. She just wants something that works and is nice to look at.

 

I have heard great things about live tv from the nvidia shield and the fire tv. I haven't tried them yet, but the screen shots look great.

 

As a caveat, we still use Windows server/serverwmc in the background and we have mixed success. The timing of when a show stops and starts isn't great, and so we have a solid five to ten minutes added to the front and back of every show. I haven't tried Emby with schedules direct, but that would be the next logical step, however we use Hulu and Netflix, so the amount of shows we need are limited, and then we record most from the serverwmc setup. It works, just not as nicely.

[DannyN 1]

Been working on my setup last few weeks. Ditched the Roku and got Firetv because of the Emby app. From what I read, Roku is closed and difficult to write code to, so that's why there's a Firetv app. Using Schedules Direct on Emby, renders a normal TV Grid, which can be seen on Firetv, but not Roku. Biggest reason for me dumping Roku

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kmarq13 5]

Using ServerWMC to a FireTV currently. I am using Kodi as my front end and have it directly working with ServerWMC for liveTV/PVR functions. Then I'm running the Emby for Kodi addon that syncs all of my TV and Movie library with the Emby server. That way I can manage multiple TVs from the central Emby repository and they all share watch state etc. 

 

It took a little work to get a Kodi skin tweaked just right, but WAF is now very high. I highly recommend the Titan skin if you go this route.