I cancelled my original go big plan in january because of the lack of dvr and cbs local channels.

Since they've added them again, and there seems to be fewer service issues, I decided to see if they could reactivate my account with the discount. I was surprised, but they were able to do it.

OTA DVR

I got this one from Walmart a few years ago. PITA to use, but it does work.



RCA DVR



In fact, I am not actively recording anything OTA, mostly use DTVN and Apps.

Ag12thman said:

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Thanks for the heads up on that. I will have to go back and see if I can find that chapter.

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Some options...

https://www.tablotv.com/products/
Tablo devices are OTA DVRs that record locally and stream to pretty much all the major smart devices. The Dual Lite + a USB hard drive is a pretty good combo. Fairly easy to setup and use.

https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/
HDHomeRun devices are pretty similar, but you have to have a third-party app (Channels or InstaTV) for AppleTV use. These devices do integrate directly with Plex, so if you have Plex and a PlexPass, this becomes a VERY powerful option. SiliconDust also offers the DVR Service, which would save the recordings to your computer or a NAS. Very nice solution, but a bit more cumbersome to setup.

https://www.airtv.net/local-channels-dvr/
An integrated solution if you go with SlingTV. No direct personal experience with these though.

https://www.tivo.com/shop/ota-detail
TiVo RoamIO + TiVo Stream (Not sure if the TiVo Stream is compatible with the RoamIO VOX)
Most cable like setup. Plugs directly into the TV. It's a TiVo and now the purchase price includes the lifetime service, so no $15/month anymore.

https://www.channelmaster.com/Antenna_DVR_s/336.htm
ChannelMaster offers a new Stream+ device, but it's not well reviewed. It's basically their name on a third-party device that does the heavy lifting. It plugs directly into your TV and is the smart device, but can't access Netflix or Prime Video and is a device destined for the rubbish bin in about six months when it'll probably stop being supported.

https://www.techhive.com/article/3221804/streaming-hardware/mediasonic-homeworx-hw180stb-review-dirt-cheap-dvr-for-broadcast-tv.html
Super cheap option. Can get recordings out easily is the ONLY reason to buy.

Thanks for mentioning this RCA DVR! I will check it out along with the ones mentioned below.

Wow - thanks very much for that detailed list of options! I am going to check them all out. I already have DirecTV Now (for now), but it seems to freeze a lot and/or "buffer" a lot. It could be my wireless connection, but I think it's more on DirecTV Now's side. I'm not sure I am going to stay with it or not at this point. Anyway, I am unsure what Plex is. What exactly is that? Also, which of these have you used and/or do you use currently?

Thanks again!

Ag12thman said:

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Wow - thanks very much for that detailed list of options! I am going to check them all out. I already have DirecTV Now (for now), but it seems to freeze a lot and/or "buffer" a lot. It could be my wireless connection, but I think it's more on DirecTV Now's side. I'm not sure I am going to stay with it or not at this point. Anyway, I am unsure what Plex is. What exactly is that? Also, which of these have you used and/or do you use currently?

Thanks again!

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I have used the SiliconDust and Tablo devices.I've used TiVos before, but not in the context of OTA; I had it provided from Suddenlink for cable service.

Plex is a media management system. It takes all of your movies, TV shows, music, etc and manages it in a very nice and controlled manner. Whether you rip the DVDs/BluRays, download, or record from OTA, it will get the background metadata and artwork to turn the batch of files into a well presented media system.

http://www.plex.tv

PlexPass is a subscription (ongoing or one-time subscription) that allows you access to the newest features and certain other items ahead of time and generally supports the developers, since Plex and the apps are typically free.

Plex is a server/client application. The Plex server holds the data about your media and serves it out to the clients. These clients are your Rokus, AppleTVs, phones, tablets, etc. The server can also in some cases stream the media outside your home and the clients, with PlexPass, can download from your server for offline viewing.

It's an incredible system, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a lot of media files and needs a good way to manage them. It isn't the easiest to setup, but it fairly straightforward following the basic setup directions.

Ag12thman said:

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Wow - thanks very much for that detailed list of options! I am going to check them all out. I already have DirecTV Now (for now), but it seems to freeze a lot and/or "buffer" a lot. It could be my wireless connection, but I think it's more on DirecTV Now's side. I'm not sure I am going to stay with it or not at this point. Anyway, I am unsure what Plex is. What exactly is that? Also, which of these have you used and/or do you use currently?

Thanks again!

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Fwiw my feed used to buffer and freeze constantly until I did a complete overhaul of my wifi network. Now it works flawlessly.

Wow, so it's really only $120 for lifetime usage? That seems cheap to me. Maybe I'm misinformed, though. That sounds like what we might need since we aren't able to really digitally record anything right now - except the 20 hours I can record through DirecTV Now. We can't record anything OTA at all, obviously. This sounds like it could be a solution for putting all of our media in one place affordably. Sounds really good. I may come across some other questions and I will post them if I do, but thanks so much for the great info!

WoMD said:

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Ag12thman said:

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Wow - thanks very much for that detailed list of options! I am going to check them all out. I already have DirecTV Now (for now), but it seems to freeze a lot and/or "buffer" a lot. It could be my wireless connection, but I think it's more on DirecTV Now's side. I'm not sure I am going to stay with it or not at this point. Anyway, I am unsure what Plex is. What exactly is that? Also, which of these have you used and/or do you use currently?

Thanks again!

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Fwiw my feed used to buffer and freeze constantly until I did a complete overhaul of my wifi network. Now it works flawlessly.

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What did you overhaul, specifically? Maybe my router is the problem. It's about 5 or 6 years old, I would guess - possible a little older. I know it's a Net Gear something. Other than that, the rest of my network is supplied and was installed by the Wirless Internet provider who has a tower a mile or so from my house.

Ag12thman said:

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Wow, so it's really only $120 for lifetime usage? That seems cheap to me. Maybe I'm misinformed, though. That sounds like what we might need since we aren't able to really digitally record anything right now - except the 20 hours I can record through DirecTV Now. We can't record anything OTA at all, obviously. This sounds like it could be a solution for putting all of our media in one place affordably. Sounds really good. I may come across some other questions and I will post them if I do, but thanks so much for the great info!

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Well, the basic use is free, so $120 lifetime is still a good deal for the extra features. Hell, just the DVR and offline sync was worth it for me.

To record, you'd need to setup a Plex server. For basic use, this can be any computer, but it's best to be a spare/always on machine, or more ideally a NAS that supports Plex. Personally, I run mine on two Netgear NAS devices (filled one up!). If you do go with a NAS, make sure it's got a bit of oomph behind it; look for the model number + "Plex" on Google and see others who've tried to to verify it has decent performance. My first one on that was an RN212 and it performed decently. It stuttered a bit with Live TV though. I've got it on a commercial grade version now though.

I also have the most basic SiliconDust tuner, the Connect. Works a treat.

Ag12thman said:

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WoMD said:

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Ag12thman said:

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Wow - thanks very much for that detailed list of options! I am going to check them all out. I already have DirecTV Now (for now), but it seems to freeze a lot and/or "buffer" a lot. It could be my wireless connection, but I think it's more on DirecTV Now's side. I'm not sure I am going to stay with it or not at this point. Anyway, I am unsure what Plex is. What exactly is that? Also, which of these have you used and/or do you use currently?

Thanks again!

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Fwiw my feed used to buffer and freeze constantly until I did a complete overhaul of my wifi network. Now it works flawlessly.

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What did you overhaul, specifically? Maybe my router is the problem. It's about 5 or 6 years old, I would guess - possible a little older. I know it's a Net Gear something. Other than that, the rest of my network is supplied and was installed by the Wirless Internet provider who has a tower a mile or so from my house.

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I would buy all your own stuff if I were you. Start from scratch, and go based on needs. This includes the devices running DTV Now (not necessarily applicable). I run a last gen Apple TV and last gen Firestick at opposite ends of my flat. I hated the Firestick initially since it was always having issues, but it was falsely blamed. After I fixed the wireless connections it hasn't had any problems at all. It took awhile, but eventually it forgave me for my constant cussing and threats to throw it out the window. We have a good relationship now.

The biggest change was creating a 5Ghz network. The default 2.4Ghz network would bog down at certain times of the day. I did speed tests regularly and it would swing by a factor of 100mbps throughout the day (100+ down to <1 at times, mostly after 6pm). When DTVN went out i knew it would be less than 2mbps before even running the test. Since then it is consistently over 100mbps in speed testing with no drops below 60mbps. This is also assuming that the device you are using to run Directv Now has a 5Ghz antenna (everything i have but my older PS4 does). Since 5Ghz covers a smaller region I had to switch out my wireless router with an Eero mesh system. Since then every device in my flat has been rock solid with no drops in coverage at the ends (a huge problem i had since i have a long place). I didn't change my modem or internet provider.

Wow - sounds like I have a little more research to do before I jump off into this. Right now I'm just running a Roku Ultimate streaming device with DirecTV Now. It's lagging a lot, especially a lot at night it seems. Last night I had good internet speed, so I'm not sure what's causing the lag (buffering). This Plex set-up sounds like it could definitely solve my OTA DVR-ing problem so that maybe I will be able to record most of the SEC games come the end of August. I need to look over the Plex website more, for sure, as I was unaware that such a product existed. I have no NAS right now either.

Speed very well may be my problem. I'm running a Roku Ultimate right now to stream DirecTV Now. I'd very much be a beginner at what you are describing, so I definitely need to do some research before I purchase the wrong things. Before this Roku, I had regular, old Dish Network (via satellite dish).

I really appreciate all the help and advice!

Do other streaming apps run ok on your roku? Netflix? I downloaded a speed test app on the Apple TV to get a more accurate reading, not sure if roku has that option.

It's funny, I was a beginner when I started having these problems (arguably still am in most things). But I was determined to make the stupid thing work. So slowly I problem solved the hell out of it to find a solution that made everything run the way it's supposed to. And now everything works beautifully compared to a year ago, not just for DTV now. I wouldn't call my knowledge base advanced in any way, so just learn a bit and you'll get it down in no time.

Yes - My wife runs Amazon Prime videos and they generally do fine on it. There are times (not often at all) when it buffers as well. We check the internet connection and it's usually okay in the 6 to 7 mbps range. DirecTV Now buffers or runs slow much more frequently than Prime.

Ag12thman said:

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Yes - My wife runs Amazon Prime videos and they generally do fine on it. There are times (not often at all) when it buffers as well. We check the internet connection and it's usually okay in the 6 to 7 mbps range. DirecTV Now buffers or runs slow much more frequently than Prime.

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It's entirely possible that the DTV Now app is a resource hog and isn't as efficient about the speed you do have compared to Prime. 6-7 is on the low end of what i'd like for this type of situation, so speed is likely a primary factor. Any way to increase that from your provider?

Ag12thman said:

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Wow - sounds like I have a little more research to do before I jump off into this. Right now I'm just running a Roku Ultimate streaming device with DirecTV Now. It's lagging a lot, especially a lot at night it seems. Last night I had good internet speed, so I'm not sure what's causing the lag (buffering). This Plex set-up sounds like it could definitely solve my OTA DVR-ing problem so that maybe I will be able to record most of the SEC games come the end of August. I need to look over the Plex website more, for sure, as I was unaware that such a product existed. I have no NAS right now either.

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You may want to consider a Tablo device initially. It works in broadly the same way, but is for the OTA items only. If you're not going to rip your own DVDs/BluRays or download shows and movies from *other* sources, then the benefit of Plex isn't as high and has a larger learning curve.

https://www.tablotv.com/products/tablo-dual-lite-ota-dvr/

Tablo devices are more all-in-one; the Tablo plus any old USB hard drive are your entire system, and they do have Roku apps. I have a Roku Ultra in addition to my AppleTVs as well, so that's always been important.

https://www.tablotv.com/apps-compatible-devices/

And if/when you ever do want to go full Plex, the Tablo recordings can be dumped into Plex, though it's a more manual process.

WoMD said:

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Ag12thman said:

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Yes - My wife runs Amazon Prime videos and they generally do fine on it. There are times (not often at all) when it buffers as well. We check the internet connection and it's usually okay in the 6 to 7 mbps range. DirecTV Now buffers or runs slow much more frequently than Prime.

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It's entirely possible that the DTV Now app is a resource hog and isn't as efficient about the speed you do have compared to Prime. 6-7 is on the low end of what i'd like for this type of situation, so speed is likely a primary factor. Any way to increase that from your provider?

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Yes, it is possible, I believe, but I think I would have to get a business-level subscription as I already have their top residential option (Ultimate Residential, I believe it's called). Maybe this really is my problem, though. The provider says what I pay for *should be* enough to run DirecTV Now with no hiccups, but of course they would say that.

nwspmp said:

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Ag12thman said:

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Wow - sounds like I have a little more research to do before I jump off into this. Right now I'm just running a Roku Ultimate streaming device with DirecTV Now. It's lagging a lot, especially a lot at night it seems. Last night I had good internet speed, so I'm not sure what's causing the lag (buffering). This Plex set-up sounds like it could definitely solve my OTA DVR-ing problem so that maybe I will be able to record most of the SEC games come the end of August. I need to look over the Plex website more, for sure, as I was unaware that such a product existed. I have no NAS right now either.

---

You may want to consider a Tablo device initially. It works in broadly the same way, but is for the OTA items only. If you're not going to rip your own DVDs/BluRays or download shows and movies from *other* sources, then the benefit of Plex isn't as high and has a larger learning curve.

https://www.tablotv.com/products/tablo-dual-lite-ota-dvr/

Tablo devices are more all-in-one; the Tablo plus any old USB hard drive are your entire system, and they do have Roku apps. I have a Roku Ultra in addition to my AppleTVs as well, so that's always been important.

https://www.tablotv.com/apps-compatible-devices/

And if/when you ever do want to go full Plex, the Tablo recordings can be dumped into Plex, though it's a more manual process.

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Yeah, you are probably right. I may need to go more this route since I am not going to do much of any ripping at this point. We have access to Prime Video and my wife loves a lot of the shows on it and then we get our regular TV via DirecTV Now (as I mentioned previously). I'm going to save this thread to refer to later in case I feel like might want to go with Plex in the future, though. Have you ever tried Tablo products? Just curious on if they are reliable.

I received an e-mail that they are increasing my price by $5/month.

Here is lifetime $30 when using your own storage or computer to store upon.

https://www.playon.tv/offers/upgrade/

I use Playon"s Cloud service for shows I want to keep - like Aggie FB games - at $0.25/recording and it remains in the cloud until I delete it, I can play it from the cloud or I can download to the Ipad and stream to the TV.

For crap like my wife's hgtv shows that will be deleted after she watches it, then we use the DTVN dvr.

I have not seen this posted here as of yet, but my new Samsung 4k TV now has the DTVN app where I do not even have to go to the Apple Box to watch TV....In fact I am a new customer to DTVN and I have not even busted the promo 4kAB from DTVN out of its box yet as we have an old Apple Box we have used forever.

Going to try it through the 4kAB and see if guide and channel info and scroll are better or different.

I wish they could figure out a way to display game information on the guide. It's going to be a problem during football season when every game says, "college football".

texag06ish said:

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I wish they could figure out a way to display game information on the guide. It's going to be a problem during football season when every game says, "college football".

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As you highlight it on the guide, it usually displays who's playing.

Guide can be filtered to sports too

NFL Network just added.

Got that email

When I saw the email I realized I hadn't watched it in almost 2 years so guess I didn't miss it.

That's how I usually do it. The picture preview isn't 100%.

Has anyone had an issue with local channels disappearing from the guide with Fire TV?

A buddy of mine has 1 firestick and 2 Toshiba fire editions TVs, and today all of his locals disappeared from his guide. Everything still works fine on his phone and on a laptop, it's just the fire sticks going crazy. If you google it, there are other people having the same problem, and it seems to be the IP address from the ISP causing the issue, but no one seems to know how to fix it...

boy09 said:

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Has anyone had an issue with local channels disappearing from the guide with Fire TV?

A buddy of mine has 1 firestick and 2 Toshiba fire editions TVs, and today all of his locals disappeared from his guide. Everything still works fine on his phone and on a laptop, it's just the fire sticks going crazy. If you google it, there are other people having the same problem, and it seems to be the IP address from the ISP causing the issue, but no one seems to know how to fix it...

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If you go back a page or two, you will see where I was having issues with my locals for a couple of weeks. For some reason, my IP address is in Kansas City.

So one morning, my Austin locals quit working. My FireTV device first and then my two FireSticks a couple of days later. My tablet was fine. The Austin locals just disappeared from my favorites list and when I selected 'all channels', I was now showing the locals for KC.

So, what I did was to log onto my DirectTV Now account and made an 'update' to my billing address and saved it. I basically just retyped my street address. I then did a hard reset to the device - unplugged the power to it for about 10 minutes and then started it back up.

That seemed to resolve the issues for my locals. Although my IP address is apparently still in Kansas City. I get political commercials for the Kansas senate race when I watch the ESPN app.

Hope that helps.
Chris '91

Thanks. I figured it might have been discussed, but didn't want to hunt through 30 pages of this thread.

I've tried DirecTV Now for 2 months now and just cannot stick with it for football season. It's just not working well on my rural wireless internet service subscription it seems. Wireless internet is about all I can do out in the country, too. I'm basically handcuffed to going with wireless as nothing else is really available that isn't less mbps. We are okay (usually) streaming DirecTV Now to one TV, but it has major issues when we try to stream to two TVs or when one of us is using our phones (for example, watching videos on TexAgs). We get "network connection issues" or the show we are watching is frozen and by the time we get it back, we miss most of what we were watching. (We average about 10 mbps, but a lot of times it runs in the 6 to 8 range, to be specific. I think we pay for 14, but after they have came to service our equipment a couple of times it always dropped back to less.)

It looks like I'm going to have to go back to old-school DirecTV or Dish Network, unfortunately. If any of you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

I am guessing you are using ESPN on Direct TV Now? Have you used the ESPN app itself to watch games instead of the DirectTVNow app? We have found that we use the ESPN app without problem instead of DTN when games are on.

The DirecTV Now app is crappy, at least on the AppleTV. I always try to use the channel's app when possible. Many let you watch live, ie. ESPN.