Subj : Over-the-air TV
To   : All
From : Nightfox
Date : Thu Oct 28 2021 14:42:40

I've never felt like I watch enough TV to justify paying $60 per month or more for a premium TV subscription (and currently I do have Amazon Prime, though I use that much more for the 2-day shipping when ordering from Amazon, and I don't use their streaming service very often).  There are things I like to watch sometimes on over-the-air TV, such as local news and some game shows and sitcoms occasionally.

I think it's pretty cool that you can get digital TV for free over the air, if you're within range of the broadcast towers of course.  (Even if it does have commercials, it's not something you have to pay money for.)

In the past few years, I'd heard about streaming TV tuners which pick up TV stations over the air and stream them over your local network with an app for smart TVs & mobile devices.  I've only recently bought one though, and I think it's actually fairly cool.

First I had tried a Tablo DVR streaming tuner:
https://www.tablotv.com
I think the Tablo has a fairly easy to use interface.  You can plug in a hard drive via its integrated SATA port or use an external USB hard drive if you want to DVR anything.  Also, it supports ethernet and wifi for connectivity to your local network.  It has 4 built-in TV tuners, so you can stream or record up to 4 channels at the same time.

I ended up returning the Tablo and bought a HDHomerun Flex 4K:
https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-flex-4k/
This does the same thing (and also has 4 TV tuners) but it has a couple advantages: 2 of its TV tuners support the newer ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, which supports 4K and can provide better reception.
One downside to the HDHomerun is that it only has an ethernet port for network connectivity (it doesn't have wifi).  Also, I think the HDHomerun smart app for TVs & mobile devices isn't quite as polished as Tablo's.  But on the plus side, the HDHomerun can be discovered on your network and used as a TV tuner for things like Plex (media server software).  Plex can be used to stream over-the-air TV and can also be used as a DVR (with a Plex Pass subscription).  I run Plex media server on a PC at home, and I think Plex provides a fairly nice user interface.  TV shows recorded in Plex will automatically show up in Plex's "TV Shows". (If you record a movie broadcast over the air, I'm not sure if Plex will put it under "Movies", as I haven't tried that yet.)

I think another benefit of using a streaming TV tuner is that you can put your TV antenna and tuner in one room and not have to have a TV antenna for each TV you have; you can stream the TV channels to your TVs.

Nightfox

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