[HN Gopher] My Cord-Cutting Adventure (2020)
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My Cord-Cutting Adventure (2020)
Author : wizardforhire
Score : 80 points
Date : 2025-06-09 02:07 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (brander.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (brander.ca)
| mikestew wrote:
| Needs a (2020), and that's just when it was last updated. Because
| the whole way down the page I was wondering, "what decade was
| this written?"
|
| I was also wondering why it should be an "adventure". Yeah, back
| when we cut the cord some fifteen years ago, things were a bit
| rough. Mac Mini with a tuner dongle, and a bunch of hacks. Now
| it's just _turn on AppleTV that outputs to unconnected TV_ ,
| sorted. (Or sail the high seas if my money is inexplicably no
| good.)
| dangus wrote:
| Yeah, I think if the article was written today it would just be
| an exercise in spinning up the typical Usenet piracy stack with
| Plex or Jellyfin.
|
| What I do think was true back then and is even more true today
| is that this kind of effort just isn't worth it. Antenna
| channels absolutely suck except for the increasingly rare
| sports events that haven't been moved to pay TV. And that sucky
| experience gets even worse if you don't live in a large metro
| area close to the broadcast antennas.
|
| Television isn't even enjoyable enough to go through all this
| effort. I'd rather just not watch TV at all. And honestly, I
| think a significant number of former TV customers may have made
| that exact choice - not just cutting the cord but finding other
| activities entirely. Gaming comes to mind, which I immensely
| prefer over basically any television show.
|
| Another little note, I think a lot of cable and streaming
| providers have done a good job resolving the issue of streaming
| bitrate being inferior to antenna bitrate. My local OTA market
| has a grand total of one 4K demo channel and everything else is
| broadcasting at a bitrate that appears inferior to modern
| streaming platforms.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > What I do think was true back then and is even more true
| today is that this kind of effort just isn't worth it.
| Antenna channels absolutely suck except for the increasingly
| rare sports events that haven't been moved to pay TV.
|
| I don't watch much, but at the cost, I get enough value out
| of watching basically just olympic and election coverage.
| seethishat wrote:
| Yes, There are only so many re-runs of Walker Texas Ranger.
| I've seen them all dozens of times on OTA TV ;)
|
| I agree with you about gaming, Twitch and YouTube as being
| replacements for mindless/relaxing viewing.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Funny, I was thinking that pay TV just sucks these days.
| Maybe we're both right though.
| _factor wrote:
| For reference, I just pointed my antenna in the attic towards
| the nearest metropolis, picked up 108 channels, sent them to an
| HDHomeRun box that sends them to Plex which handles the guide
| data and DVR to an SMB share.
|
| It took a couple hours in the evening, most of which was just
| fiddling with the antenna mount and scanning the channels. It's
| a lot easier than it used to be. Granted I planned and ran
| ethernet to the attic years earlier, but it's not rocket
| science.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How does ethernet to the attic help with this?
| tylerflick wrote:
| The versions of HDHomeRun that support 4K only have
| ethernet for networking. This has been a limiting factor
| for me in terms of reception.
| fragmede wrote:
| Nothing a $40 wifi-Ethernet module couldn't patch up.
| opello wrote:
| The coax and the network have to meet somewhere and for
| this person (maybe no existing coax runs in the house or to
| the attic?) it was easier to have them meet in the attic
| instead of say in a utility room or closet.
|
| I think the only concern might be subjecting the HDHomeRun
| to attic temperatures in the summer.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that is where I am confused. Surely, attic
| temperatures are not ideal for the HDHomeRun device.
| _factor wrote:
| I was concerned by this and humidity also, two summers in
| (one extra hot) and no issues yet. It even handles the
| MPEG2 transcoding locally for good measure.
| colechristensen wrote:
| In a signal limited environment somewhat far from the
| local metropolis the coax run from the attic to wherever
| can make the difference between channel and no channel,
| fixed most simply by bringing the box to the attic. There
| are alternatives that sometimes work.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I ended up running coax to my network cabinet and put the
| HDHR there, because my attic gets significantly hotter
| than the maximum rated operating temperature of the HDHR.
|
| I'm also long-term concerned about how Plex as a company
| is moving away from its server product and towards FAST
| (free, ad-supported TV), a feature I almost never use.
| I'd love to see Jellyfin get some equivalent features.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah I am definitely not a fan of the new Plex app either
| enobrev wrote:
| I did the same. Digital antenna in the attic with a coax
| to my cabinet in the basement. Been working great for
| years, although I don't use it for much beyond watching
| the bears play live.
|
| I'm also quite displeased with plex's new direction.
| Would love to see some real competition.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Mac Mini(s) connected to my TVs since 2007 ... prior to finding
| a Mac Mini I connected PCs to TVs to enjoy all things ;-) on
| the Internet from a couch or place where you sleep. I do have a
| one Roku TV as it's a shared TV.
|
| Finding eDonkey2000 (2002) and then later BitTorrent prompted
| me to connect computers to TVs. Nowadays I very, very rarely
| watch pirated webstreams (totally legal) just YouTube almost
| always; rarely use my HBO Max or Disney subscriptions. Got them
| again recently only because they offered a $2.99 deal. Will
| cancel them once they go to full price!
|
| The studios need to put everything on YouTube it will continue
| to take share away from them! Im so use to watching 10 to 15
| minutes clips cause of YouTube that i have hard time watching
| long format content unless it's in a social setting and Im old-
| ish lol
| jonpurdy wrote:
| Yes, since I got my first TV (in 2013) I've had Mac Minis
| connected via HDMI, and the Minis also being the file server
| and BitTorrent downloading machine. Prior to that, downloaded
| to my MacBook or watched on YouTube.
|
| There was never a cord for me to cut (and I refused to pay
| for cable when in uni since I downloaded everything anyway).
|
| Now just have the Mini in the closet and serving files via
| SMB to an AppleTV connected to the TV HDMI.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, reads like my adventures in ... 2005 or so?
| badc0ffee wrote:
| My Shaw DVR actually kept working after I ended my TV
| subscription. It was purchased, though, not rented (still tied to
| Shaw only though!)
|
| The thing that made me cancel wasn't the DVR hardware or software
| sucking - it was actually decent, especially after I upgraded the
| hard drive to a 2 TB WD Purple. What killed it for me was the
| schedule not matching the recordings. I'd miss 5 minutes on
| either end of an episode, or for one show I'd be one episode off.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Personally I like Channels DVR which is a single go binary that
| can run anywhere and they have excellent client apps for every
| platform. There's even an API and a Home Assistant integration.
| https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| From other comments here, it sounds like it is subscription
| based.
| threemux wrote:
| HDHomerun is so great, easily one of the best, most reliable
| pieces of tech I own. I agree though cord cutting has become kind
| of hard for the layman.
|
| Since they also expose streams as http in addition to DLNA, I've
| used a Tailscale subnet router and VLC to stream live TV from my
| house while away. It works decently over shockingly poor
| connections too.
| petepete wrote:
| I love my HDHR. I use it with Channels and everything works
| flawlessly. If Channels' DVR was pay once rather than a
| subscription I'd buy it immediately.
| ghushn3 wrote:
| I wonder, and I'm sure it's probably trivial, did this person dox
| their home address by listing the distances to multiple known
| broadcasting points?
|
| Edit: Oh, and a photo out the window of their home. This is
| almost certainly trivial. Not that anyone should.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| https://brander.ca/
| jbm wrote:
| I was so curious about this that I actually took a look at the
| site he mentioned (tvfool) and tried to see what channels were
| available in Calgary where I live.
|
| The three 3 oligarchies (Rogers x 2, Bell/BCE, Corus), CBC and a
| religious network. CBC doesn't even broadcast the NHL finals [1].
|
| At this point, what's the point? Renting Blurays at the library
| is much less annoying (even when they skip at pivotal scenes).
|
| [1] Incidentally, the actual broadcaster for the playoffs,
| Sportsnet, is a morally compromised network that specialises in
| showing gambling ads to children. Shame, but unsurprising given
| Canada's business "culture".
| swader999 wrote:
| Agree, subscribed for the playoffs, first time watching since
| 2004. Quite shocked to be paying $26 a month to watch one Keanu
| Reeves commercial five hundred times and thousands of online
| gambling adds. My kids have grown up add free until now at
| least.
| jbm wrote:
| I do recall advertisements being repeated ad nauseum up until
| I was a college student (after which I stopped watching TV
| for the most part). I don't know if it is something about the
| Canadian media landscape or what.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWleK1dvRF0
|
| This specific advertisement used to play over TSN 10-12 times
| per hour, to the point where it became a pre-internet video
| meme for me and my friends.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I'm pretty sure CBC does broadcast the NHL finals?
|
| The gambling ads in sports are deplorable, but pretty much
| ubiquitous in any non-amateur sport broadcast in the country
| now.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| TV and then YouTube and then TikTok have drained my creativity.
| Fully.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Nah, you did. They just gladly facilitated your tendency to
| procrastinate. At any moment you can decide to not use them. I
| know it's hard, struggling with it myself. But don't act
| defeated, you aren't a victim. You're free in your actions.
| Besides, the feeling it once gave will never be reached again,
| it's like chasing a high.
| don-code wrote:
| My "stack" for watching TV consists of:
|
| * A Hauppage WinTV HVR-950 tuner, connected to a Kubernetes
| cluster in the basement.
|
| * NextPVR, scheduled on the appropriate node in the cluster (yes,
| it's non-redundant, even though I have three nodes). This handles
| DVR scheduling, and transcoding should I want to watch TV off-
| network.
|
| * Kodi Media Center, running on a PC in the living room, and a
| Raspberry Pi 3A in the kitchen. Both pass through the full MPEG-2
| stream. I additionally have an XSPF playlist link on my laptop
| and phone that open VLC to the transcoding-capable playback URLs
| for NextPVR.
|
| * FreeNAS with a _significant_ amount of buffer available (at
| least for my one-hour-daily recording schedule), backing the DVR
| capability over NFS.
|
| I'd argue this setup is actually _better_ than what I'd be able
| to do with a simple VCR/DVR. It's like having a robotic tape
| library, but without the physical space required.
| swader999 wrote:
| Is OTA better quality than streaming services? Several years
| ago when I looked into this OTA was there highest quality,
| especially close to a big city.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Not sure, but I've noticed that especially sports are way
| better on cable, compared to streaming. It doesn't seem like
| streaming can keep up in sports like soccer or hockey.
|
| Even Tour de France just looks better on cable. It might just
| be me, but in terms of specs I should have the better TV
| between me and my dad, but the details just gets lost somehow
| in many sports. Only difference I can think of is cable vs.
| streaming.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Initial roll-out of OTA digital was amazing. I remember
| watching Tori Amos on PBS ("Austin City Limits"?) and I was
| almost crying for how beautiful it looked.
|
| Fast forward and OTA started instead using their bandwidth to
| instead run 4 or 5 lower-bitrate channels. Bummer.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| You're making an even stronger case for poverty level
| minimalism than I think I ever could. The freedom you lose by
| having to maintain all of that... No thanks.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh the suffering of... running one program in the basement
| with the usb thing, and running a different program to view
| everything?
|
| If it caused _any_ difficulty at all to use different viewing
| programs on their different boxes, it would be trivial to cut
| down to one. If using NAS network storage caused problems, it
| would be trivial to remove it. And they 're running
| kubernetes entirely for fun, making it the opposite of "have
| to maintain".
|
| The part that actually makes this system tick is quite low
| maintenance.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| To your point though, a simple box you plug in that "just
| works" would be nice for the rest of us. (Yeah, not an Apple
| TV though and nothing with a subscription.) Perhaps someone
| has already done something like that on GitHub.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| I've been very happy with Kaffeine, installed on my regular
| desktop PC, for recording shows.
|
| https://apps.kde.org/kaffeine/
| BeetleB wrote:
| Does Plex TV Guide not work in Canada?
|
| It's a simple solution, if you have a decent enough computer. Buy
| a TV tuner card (I have one with 4 channels). Plug the antenna in
| it, and buy a lifetime (or monthly) Plex subscription, and you're
| done. You can easily watch on your TV. You can watch local
| channels even while you're away from home.
|
| It. Just. Works.[1]
|
| I just don't know if they support EPG.
|
| Never understood why people use Kodi.
|
| [1] Well, it did before they decided to revamp the Android app.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Never understood why people use Kodi.
|
| Free, self hosted, and I don't want to watch TV, I want to
| watch tv shows, in the format and language of my choice and the
| subtitles of my choice.
| BeetleB wrote:
| All doable with Plex (even their free tier).
|
| This submission, however, was about getting broadcast TV.
| komali2 wrote:
| Plex can be self hosted against your domain and allow 4k on
| the free tier? This is news to me!
| wombat-man wrote:
| I'm probably not going to do a write up like this guy, but I'll
| probably start pulling together my Plex box soon. I don't care
| about live TV too much, but some shows, sports and news stuff
| it is better to see live.
|
| Kodi was ok, but kind of clunky on my chromecast. I used VLC
| for a long time to play off a network drive but it's kind of
| buggy and a little annoying to control.
| arh68 wrote:
| > _one clear, sharp picture. Better than cable. Here 's the
| reason. OTA broadcasts must meet a legally defined broadcast
| quality: they're all at the top quality that HD can provide_
|
| I wonder about this part. I think it's probably still true for
| the "main" station, like full 1080i for 9-1, but the "extra"
| stations like -2, -3 ... -6 are usually noticeably compressed.
|
| From my limited understanding, all the extras are sharing the
| same bandwidth, and more channels = more ads, so it's more like
| 1080i + 5x 480i. Some channels will look 1080i on both -1 and -2,
| then maybe 720i on -3.
|
| I don't live near an ATSC 3.0 station, but it would be cool to
| get 4K/2160p. Soon ... (naturally, I'm curious)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ATSC_3.0_television_st...
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I'm going to give you guys the keys to the kingdom. If you do a
| reddit search for "plex server sale" you will find dudes that
| share membership to their curated Plex server.
|
| I pay $20 for a server with nothing but 4K remuxes (zero-quality
| loss from 4k blurays). 5 streams, no transcoding allowed, so you
| need an nvidia shield because after testing a bunch of devices
| those are the only ones that play _everything_ without
| transcoding, even DTS and Dolby Vision.
| kelseydh wrote:
| Distance to the Plex source can be an issue. My friend in
| Canada shared his Plex server with me living in Western
| Australia, and Plex struggles immensely to stream his server to
| me on the other side of the world.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Even at a distance it should be okay, sounds more like a
| peering/bandwidth issue between your ISP and his
| wombat-man wrote:
| I'm not doing this, but my friends and I link our Plex boxes so
| we can see sports in different regions. If you can get enough
| of them going you should be able to see every NFL game. Too bad
| baseball is mostly on cable.
| drmpeg wrote:
| It should be noted that TVFool hasn't been updated since 2017. It
| will give incorrect results for stations that changed frequency
| after the 600 MHz auction in 2016-2017.
|
| Use RabbitEars instead.
|
| https://www.rabbitears.info/
| bdcravens wrote:
| I ended up going all streaming, but a few years ago we tried a
| roof top antenna and a Fire TV Recast for DVR. Worked well
| enough, with the usual caveats about using a closed solution.
| thom wrote:
| TiVo was one of the most delightful products I ever owned. It had
| near-perfect UX, including the audio effects: to this day my wife
| and I still talk about "be-bipping" through video when we want to
| fast-forward. Now I can watch any episode of Star Trek I like,
| anytime I like, and yet somehow coming home to a TiVo with some
| freshly recorded episodes was vastly more satisfying. The first
| algorithmic feed I actually loved.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| I can wholeheartedly recommend an HDHR and Channels DVR
| (https://getchannels.com/dvr-server/), I've found it to be parent
| proof. Run a Docker container on a low powered PC somewhere and
| then install the apps on Apple TV or Chromecast. Job done,
| provides a Sky Q like experience for like PS5 a month?
| x187463 wrote:
| This sounds like a lot of effort to keep watching commercials.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Besides PBS being the channel I was most likely to record (in
| the day), part of the beauty of recording OTA was of course you
| could skip or fast-forward past the commercials. There were
| also plenty of attempts to auto-strip, auto-skip commercials by
| looking for blanking screens, etc.
|
| Never minds "cutting the cord" generally meant getting rid of
| your cable service/bill. Wild that cable came with commercials
| and you paid for that ... privilege? (And, again, if you are
| mostly there for PBS and it is being broadcast digitally over-
| the-air, why are you giving money to Comcast?)
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I travel with an HD antenna (the plastic square that attaches to
| a window). I arrive to the airBnB, I connect my antenna program
| the Roku crap TV to real Live TV. I was saddened when I find out
| the French Open sold-out to cable TNT for the next 10 years. I
| rather watched Fraiser re-runs that any cable TV.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Speaking of cord-cutting. My mom used scissors to cut the _power_
| cord to our TV that I was watching when I was... nine years old,
| I think?, and I was shocked that nothing happened other than
| cutting power to the TV. I still am shocked that there was no
| short-circuit.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Probably (depending to some extent how old you are) that's just
| not very much power, so you're not going to get exciting movie
| style arcing for example. Even if the scissors connect live and
| ground, at those powers the result is the circuit gets dropped
| which doesn't _look_ like anything much. And if they don 't do
| that yeah, no more power to the TV and it's all over.
|
| The electrical supply for a whole house can make pretty sparks,
| you don't want to be near that as it could definitely kill you.
|
| The electrical supply for a whole _street_ can tear a
| noticeable crater in the street, which is why after my street
| lost power last year actual street repair people turned up to
| fill the hole and lay more asphalt as well as the electricity
| network people.
| GeorgeDewar wrote:
| Was it on 120V in the US or a 240V country? In my 240V country
| that would normally make a terrific spark and a bang.
|
| Do you remember if it blew a fuse or tripped a breaker?
| cryptonector wrote:
| 240V. I don't remember anything about a fuse/breaker
| blowing/tripping.
| Narciss wrote:
| Anyone else look at stuff that's <2021 and goes: "ha, this is
| pre-AI"
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(page generated 2025-06-12 23:02 UTC)