Kodi Community Forum

OTA ATSC from an antenna using HDHomerun and a good atsc antenna. A little up front cost but no recurring costs.

The OP needs to clear things up. Is he planning on using Satellite or an Antenna.

Satellite TV uses signals relayed from space radio stations. (Monthly fee as a service provider is needed)
Antenna (OTA/Broadcast) uses signals transmitted by radio raves to the TV receiver from an earth based transmitter. (Usually has no monthly fee)

Also a bit confused about why he is canceling TV when he mentions Internet caps. He later states unlimited Internet which doubles the confusion (what happened to the Internet caps).

(2016-01-07, 21:01)katsup Wrote: [ -> ]Satellite TV uses signals relayed from space radio stations. (Monthly fee as a service provider is needed)

In the US maybe. In Europe there is plenty of satellite that doesn't require a monthly fee (particularly in the UK and Germany)

(2016-01-07, 21:53)noggin Wrote: [ -> ]In the US maybe. In Europe there is plenty of satellite that doesn't require a monthly fee (particularly in the UK and Germany)

He mentioned Comcast so I think he is in the US. However, I don't know for sure if Comcast serves Europe.

Thanks for all the replies. I did indeed mean an antenna, not satellite, from local broadcast towers. We've checked in our area for channels and we've already decided it's worth it to get the extra channels for free.

We are NOT firm on the requirement to record those channels though, and it sounds like it's going to be a lot of hassle, so that might be something for the future.

Unlimited internet is a 30$ EXTRA package from Comcast. The internet in total will be $65 a month for good speeds (75 Mbs down, 10 up)

We currently have an Apple TV 3 which can do Netflix, but not Amazon, which is kindof annoying.

The PowerLine adapters sound like such an awesome solution! Are they very reliable and fast enough to stream HD movies?

I have several 1TB HDs lying around, including one in the current slow-ish PC I'm using for Kodi. Even with 7-8 GB/hour recordings that's like 120 hours of recordings, which is pretty good to me. I just worry that they might not be fast enough to write the recordings from the antenna if we do decide to do that.

Windows sounds like the best alternative to a Shield so far.

What's a ~$200 computer with a good GPU and CPU and good performance? It doesn't need a HD, as I said I have several, just a place for a 3.5' SATA.

Also, this is cheaper than the AV1200: http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010K...ords=AV500

It's just not as fast, it appears. Our internet connection is only 110 Mbps at max, so I don't think we'd ever need the 1200, although we do live near a city with Gigabit internet that might come to us eventually.

Which do you recommend? Is this one as good?

The bigger online content providers read : Netflix, hulu, Amazon, crackle etc will not be an issue. With your Internet speeds. Look into mcebuddy again. It can remux, remove commercials and reduce video size. Third mention of potentially increasing your budget. Consider the advice from people who have been through this and are trying to give you the advice you asked for.

(2016-01-07, 22:09)bry- Wrote: [ -> ]The bigger online content providers read : Netflix, hulu, Amazon, crackle etc will not be an issue. With your Internet speeds. Look into mcebuddy again. It can remux, remove commercials and reduce video size. Third mention of potentially increasing your budget. Consider the advice from people who have been through this and are trying to give you the advice you asked for.

That's the very reason I'm here.. did I make it sound like I wasn't considering your advice? The replies here have given me a lot of valuable information.

All I need now is to figure out whether to do buy a Shield or Windows box of some sort, and what box to get. I can figure the rest out from there, using the current media center PC for MythBuntu or whatever else.

I would reuse your old machine with Windows. Get a proper antenna, hdhomerun. On the windows machine install emby for use as the kodi backend.

Put the $200 towards and nvidia sheild since that can do everything you ask except for Amazon prime. Take $35 or whatever and get a ftv stick for prime.

(2016-01-07, 22:05)ajthemacboy Wrote: [ -> ]Also, this is cheaper than the AV1200: http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010K...ords=AV500

It's just not as fast, it appears. Our internet connection is only 110 Mbps at max, so I don't think we'd ever need the 1200, although we do live near a city with Gigabit internet that might come to us eventually.

Which do you recommend? Is this one as good?

Not wanting to get too technical about Powerline adapters. There is huge marketing hype about speeds, which are typically quoted for units next to each other in a laboratory environment - not the real world.

What matters is the speed you get via the ethernet connection which will be much lower especially as AV500 units generally only have 100Mbit/s ethernet, compared to AV1200 which are gigabit ethernet. In my experience they are reliable The unit you mention is fine, I use a lot of TP-Link products.

In my experience AV500 is good enough for several SD streams and one HD stream. If you plan to expand at some point in the future to multiple HD streams you will probably be better off with AV1200. If you use something like a network connected HDHomerun unit for recording OTA this could take up bandwidth, depending where in your home it is connected.

I would reuse your old pc for mythtv and buy a hdhomerun and an nvidia shield for reasons bry~ said.

(2016-01-07, 22:54)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]I would reuse your old pc for mythtv and buy a hdhomerun and an nvidia shield for reasons bry~ said.

+1 - However the HDHomerun DVR does sound very good too... I was paying $25/year for Schedules Direct data with Mythtv, so $25/year for HDHomerun's solution is a wash as far as cost... plus it's possibly a little easier to configure.

Does anyone have hands on experience with it? I unfortunately have a HDHR3-DT that is not supported.

ajthemacboy - Don't worry about the HDD speeds, they are plenty fast for recording. A couple of years back I was recording on a 160Gb 5400 RPM drive with no trouble.

@sdsnyr94 i have experience with it. Have been in the beta for some time now - even beta'd the sw before kodi announcement. very pleased with hthis in conjuction with mcebuddy.

If you can forgo the need to actually record the TV I would go with a good antenna (that should set you back about $80-100 by the time you mount it), $80 for the basic HDHomerun (you don't need the upgrading model since the clients I will suggest have native MPEG2 playback) and then a Nexus Player. This will set you back a little more than the $200 total, but it includes the antenna and mounting in the budget.
You wont be able to record live TV (though you can repurpose the PC for that for free using WMC if its a W7 equipped box, or the HD DVR solution if/when its released), 24FPS playback wont be great for Netflix movies and local content through Kodi, but you will get a single box that will do Kodi, Netflix and Live TV (from the HDHomerun) all slickly integrated into the Nexus UI.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think Nexus Player can stream from Amazon Prime.

I'd personally start with a Fire TV stick for these streaming apps and use your current Kodi box to setup your TV solution. Once you have everything working, consider replacing the Kodi box with something that may fit your requirements better since you'll have a better idea of how things work.

Keeping these two devices separate should also help keep your family happy if one device is down.