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2017-05-05, 22:39
(This post was last modified: 2017-05-05, 22:56 by desibuoy.)
Hi,
I don't mind paying for it of course but I'm looking for something that shows me new and old shows. I don't want Netflix because it doesn't have everything on it. Currently paying for Amazon Prime and that's the same too but hey I love my one day free deliveries xD
By the way I'm in the UK. But I don't necessarily mean only UK Shows, I'm looking for Both - Downtown Abbey, Sherlock, Big Bang theory, Lost, How I met your mother, Broadwalk Empire, Fargo, Fresh Prince, South Park Simpsons, etc etc.
Thanks
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nickr
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Why not install a pvr backend?
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nickr
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Pretty sure all pvr is legal. It is just recording what is freely available from antenna or satellite.
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kluc55
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I think the idea of using a PVR backend (such as mythtv or tvheadend) is that eventually most things turn up on tv. So you set up the PVR to record things you might want to watch one day and with a big enough disk drive you have "on demand" from your own personal library.
For example you can set record to "Big Bang Theory" and you'd pick up the new series and the repeats so eventually have equivalent of a complete box set that you could watch when you want. Just never bother deleting the episodes when you watch them.
Or with mythtv's tvwish it will automatically record top rated movies, or you can set it to record highest rated episodes of certain tv series. You'd be surprised how many good films get shown on some obscure channel.
But you can only record the free channels so it's not a good alternative for some shows that are only shown on encrypted tv. For those, you are normally forced to use the proper box or jump through hoops.
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kluc55
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Yes they make it difficult to ensure they can show you ads and track what you watch.
You might not need a huge drive. Since there are few HD channels, you're looking at just over 1GB/hour for SD. So 1TB is approx 1000GB or 1000 hours of SD tv or 41 complete days of 24 hours recording. So a 4TB external USB drive gives you just under 1/2 year of watching tv non-stop. You could reduce this file size if you wanted if you have reasonably new machine by transcoding, that is converting the recordings from old tv standard to newer, smaller formats so they take up less space.
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nickr
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Depends which market you are in. I think I'm the UK most of Freeview and Free sat are HD.
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kluc55
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For HD, divide the figures by pi (figures always sound better if they're not rounded off). So a 4TB drive will give a couple of months of continuous tv.
An alternative could be to look in to one of those Android boxes. Kodi on Android can launch any app from its menu. So if there is an Amazon streaming app then you can launch it for those shows you want to watch, or launch an official iplayer app etc. I don't use these boxes so check in the forum first or try it out on your phone.
A final alternative is to purchase used discs of shows you want and convert them on to your hard drive. That way you own the discs and never have ads or stuttering. Nowadays the process is fairly simple, search the forum for HandBrake.
For example Lost S1-S4 is £2 each and S5/S6 are £5 and £7, so total of £20. The 23 discs of Fresh Prince is £28. I don't know if that's good value or not or how it compares to the costs you pay for streaming but FP at 148 episodes x 30 mins gives you 6 months of continuous tv.
