Klueless
Very Senior Member
I'm old. I like television and I loved the "Whole House DVR" that came with Direct TV. I could record from anywhere and I could watch from anywhere. If the phone rang I could hit "pause", even on live TV.
Life was good but prices crept up until I had my "eureka" momment, "Holy Crap, I'm paying $200/mo. for TV, Telephone and Internet!"
Spectrum was promoting a package deal for less than $100 so I called Direct TV to cancel a few times. They didn't seem to care so I called Spectrum. The day after installation Direct TV calls with a great pricing deal if I'll come back. I'm tempted but Spectrum had just installed everything in good faith and I'm not going to renege on our deal.
Picked up a 128 GB USB 3 Flash Drive (for a dollar) and plugged it into my Asus Router so I now have File and Media Share. I can now view family pics and videos from my laptop (Windows). I can view them from our Chromebooks (had to find a file extension widget) and I can view them from my Rokus (Roku comes with a media player).
So my next step is to capture TV streams, save them on my Asus router and play them back later. Tivo sounds great but it's crazy expensive. Tablo sounded interesting but I don't want to do the antennae thing. I want to capture them right from Spectrum/cable. I thought I could get them off of my Spectrum DVR (motorola DCX 3400) but it looks like Ethernet, USB, etc. ports have been disabled.
Internet searches pull up confusing and conflicting suggestions of compute sticks, raspberries, tuners and cable cards, which, even if successful, are starting to look like $500 and more. I just started reading about something called HDHomerun but my head is starting to spin ...
Surely someone has a simple stupid cheap whole house DVR?
Life was good but prices crept up until I had my "eureka" momment, "Holy Crap, I'm paying $200/mo. for TV, Telephone and Internet!"
Spectrum was promoting a package deal for less than $100 so I called Direct TV to cancel a few times. They didn't seem to care so I called Spectrum. The day after installation Direct TV calls with a great pricing deal if I'll come back. I'm tempted but Spectrum had just installed everything in good faith and I'm not going to renege on our deal.
- Telephone is telephone. Worked well before and works equally well now. When prices start to rise next year might swap it out for VoIP, maybe "Basic Talk" for $10/mo.
- Internet. Wow! Went from 6 Mbps to 60! Speed tests show 70 and last week I started getting 120! First time I ever got more than what I paid for. Kept their modem ("free"). Passed on their router ("$5/mo.") and bought an Asus RT-AC1900P ($99.99) instead.
- TV. All five TVs are working fine. Only one DVR. Grandson won the coin toss. For an extra $20 a month I can add more DVRs. It would have been tempting but they would all operate independently, e.g., I couldn't start watching a show in the living room and finish it in the bedroom, so I passed and use "on demand" a lot more.
Picked up a 128 GB USB 3 Flash Drive (for a dollar) and plugged it into my Asus Router so I now have File and Media Share. I can now view family pics and videos from my laptop (Windows). I can view them from our Chromebooks (had to find a file extension widget) and I can view them from my Rokus (Roku comes with a media player).
So my next step is to capture TV streams, save them on my Asus router and play them back later. Tivo sounds great but it's crazy expensive. Tablo sounded interesting but I don't want to do the antennae thing. I want to capture them right from Spectrum/cable. I thought I could get them off of my Spectrum DVR (motorola DCX 3400) but it looks like Ethernet, USB, etc. ports have been disabled.
Internet searches pull up confusing and conflicting suggestions of compute sticks, raspberries, tuners and cable cards, which, even if successful, are starting to look like $500 and more. I just started reading about something called HDHomerun but my head is starting to spin ...
Surely someone has a simple stupid cheap whole house DVR?
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