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Detroit Q. Spider posted:We haven't...still got 50+ of the annoying buggers floating around. I think the office would be stormed by angry villagers with pitchforks and torches if they went away though.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 02:21 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 10:05 |
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Don Lapre posted:As long as they provide a free box they can kill analog cable. Comcast in my area killed analog two years ago or so. If you have the super basic cable you get two free boxes. The picture quality is awful for some reason but we barely use it anyway. The only reason we have the basic cable is because it's the same price to bundle internet + TV than it is to have just internet.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 02:27 |
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Joe Don Baker posted:Comcast in my area killed analog two years ago or so. If you have the super basic cable you get two free boxes. The picture quality is awful for some reason but we barely use it anyway. The only reason we have the basic cable is because it's the same price to bundle internet + TV than it is to have just internet.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 02:29 |
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Don Lapre posted:If you have a digital tuner run the cable directly to the tv since they still run clearqam in most or all places. Yeah I did that as recent as a month ago. It's like 2 regular channels, 5 PBS feeds, and 3 or 4 shopping channels. It's not worth the hassle. I just leave the box connected to TV. We've pretty much moved to season passes for the shows we watch. It's not too many shows to begin with.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 02:32 |
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I have the lowest comcast package you can get for cable tv since it only adds 10 bucks to my Internet plan. I get the major networks in HD and a bunch of random weird channels like THIS Baltimore plus that crazy Chicago super channel. Comcast gave me one their poo poo little boxes and it gave me 6 channels all in SD.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 03:35 |
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Parlett316 posted:I have the lowest comcast package you can get for cable tv since it only adds 10 bucks to my Internet plan. I get the major networks in HD and a bunch of random weird channels like THIS Baltimore plus that crazy Chicago super channel. What region are you in? I'd pay ten bucks for that.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 03:46 |
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Joe Don Baker posted:What region are you in? I'd pay ten bucks for that. Comcast offers a basic package in all of their markets i believe. It also gives you bundle pricing on your internet. Here it was like $15 and knocked $11 off my internet price so net cost to me was another $4/m.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 03:52 |
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Don Lapre posted:Comcast offers a basic package in all of their markets i believe. It also gives you bundle pricing on your internet. Here it was like $15 and knocked $11 off my internet price so net cost to me was another $4/m. I'll have to call and find out. I have that basic package, but they just gave me a DTA and all the basic channels are SD.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 04:11 |
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I cut cable a while ago. I'm on the second year of a Comcast 2 year contract for internet and basic TV, comes out to about $50 a month with modem rental and I get channels 2-20. It's pretty nice for also getting access to basic cable On Demand shows (digital cable channels are all still blocked on there). I have a Blu-Ray player that's wireless and streams Netflix and Vudu and Pandora and all those other goodies. Is there anything else I can benefit from by getting a third party box? I saw the new Boxee box has a tuner and DVR, which would be nice, but is it worth the hassle and the $100?
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 04:39 |
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I always thought the point of ClearQAM was that cable companies serve both a for-profit business (selling premium channels) and a public good to give people local affiliates where they can't get it over the air. That public good part is done because in exchange the local government gives the cable company a monopoly over the town. That's kind of what I heard when I questioned the cable monopoly to my small municipality (which can't pick up OTA signals from San Francisco), so I wouldn't necessarily expect it to disappear from your local headend immediately. Then again, for the past few decades things have been getting really strange in regards to companies charging cable for rights to the local affiliate stations. This is mostly in non-monopolized markets like New York, however.
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# ? Oct 17, 2012 10:00 |
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Joe Don Baker posted:I'll have to call and find out. I have that basic package, but they just gave me a DTA and all the basic channels are SD. If you use the box provided from Comcast it's a bunch of SD channels. If you just plug the coax into the back of your TV and scan you will find HD channels. Edit; Has anyone here had any experience with Free to Air (FTA)? Parlett316 fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 17, 2012 |
# ? Oct 17, 2012 12:55 |
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Craptacular! posted:I always thought the point of ClearQAM was that cable companies serve both a for-profit business (selling premium channels) and a public good to give people local affiliates where they can't get it over the air. Yes. QAM cablecasts just like OTA are in the public interest, and for the public good. Any effort to prune those is literally total bullshit oppression by monopolist oligarchs and should warrant extreme reprisal. Not being sarcastic.
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# ? Oct 20, 2012 10:53 |
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Smythe posted:Yes. QAM cablecasts just like OTA are in the public interest, and for the public good. Any effort to prune those is literally total bullshit oppression by monopolist oligarchs and should warrant extreme reprisal. Not being sarcastic. The issue for providers is that basic cable isn't free, but it effectively is if they use clearqam for it.
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# ? Oct 20, 2012 14:21 |
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Astro7x posted:But anyway, what brings me to the thread. I remember seeing a website at one point that broke down when almost any tv show aired on other streaming formats. Fanhatten does a decent jobs at telling you which service a show is on in general, butnthisnsite would say thing like "Hulu Plus 7 day after airing", "iTunes next day for $1.99", or "all past seasons only". I still can't find this drat website... the best I have found so far is Clicker.com, which you can search an existing episode and it will tell you where you can view it. It's a step in the right direction, but not very helpful for shows not currently on the air.
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# ? Oct 20, 2012 15:18 |
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Don Lapre posted:The issue for providers is that basic cable isn't free, but it effectively is if they use clearqam for it. It's kind of a language game. "Basic Cable" as an industry term used to include a suite of well-known cable networks that these days bloat your bill to $50. People don't expect ESPN to be unencrypted. However they expect their local community stations to be. Networks charge cable companies carriage fees and cable companies charge customers for those channels, but you shouldn't be expected to pay for local stations in your OTA market if your city is giving the cable co a bunch of rights, exclusivity, and sometimes below-market property to set up shop in your community. Most of our glorious Suburb Nation doesn't live close enough to our core cities to pick up anything OTA these days, so the cities give the cableco's a bunch of assistance to wire the city and in addition the cableco can sell ESPN, CNN, Disney, HBO etc. What we really need to do is get the FCC to regulate retransmission fees, which were added in 1992 and have been pursued aggressively by the media companies (particularly Murdoch) since. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Oct 20, 2012 |
# ? Oct 20, 2012 15:46 |
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Parlett316 posted:Has anyone here had any experience with Free to Air (FTA)? Yes, but last time I bothered it was a bunch of foreign programming and transient affiliates or random feeds. It is interesting but not really an alternative to CATV or an antenna.
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# ? Oct 20, 2012 20:16 |
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For you guys with Hulu Plus, does it replace a DVR? I mean, I can't see a point in building a DVR while Hulu Plus is available. I has all recent episodes from the major network series, right?
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# ? Nov 19, 2012 23:21 |
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skattered posted:For you guys with Hulu Plus, does it replace a DVR? I mean, I can't see a point in building a DVR while Hulu Plus is available. I has all recent episodes from the major network series, right? No, because you have to wait to watch your shows and cant pause live TV.
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# ? Nov 19, 2012 23:35 |
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skattered posted:For you guys with Hulu Plus, does it replace a DVR? I mean, I can't see a point in building a DVR while Hulu Plus is available. I has all recent episodes from the major network series, right? It's like a DVR in the sense that you can watch shows later (usually the next day) if you didn't catch them. It'll add those shows to your queue and keep them there for a while. However, it doesn't offer to pause live tv or let you catch up on the show if you come in late/try watching it the same night.
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# ? Nov 20, 2012 15:41 |
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Is there some relatively inexpensive (like sub-$100) device that will explicitly tell me the signal quality of what I'm getting so I can figure out the best placement for my DTV antenna? Some channels get spotty very easily and I want to find where in my living room is the least problematic, but my TV doesn't have a signal quality meter, it just either works or doesn't. Something that plugs into a laptop or what-have-you is fine.
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# ? Dec 26, 2012 15:23 |
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univbee posted:Is there some relatively inexpensive (like sub-$100) device that will explicitly tell me the signal quality of what I'm getting so I can figure out the best placement for my DTV antenna? Some channels get spotty very easily and I want to find where in my living room is the least problematic, but my TV doesn't have a signal quality meter, it just either works or doesn't. Something that plugs into a laptop or what-have-you is fine. The HDHomeRun Dual is a network dual-tuner HDTV receiver for $60 (on Amazon and Newegg) which includes basic diagnostic software that has signal strength and signal quality indicators. You can, of course, also use it to watch and record TV on any computer on your home network.
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# ? Dec 26, 2012 15:43 |
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Just for info, Roku added two new music channels in the last few weeks -- Spotify and Amazon Cloud Player.
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# ? Dec 26, 2012 19:10 |
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Just found this thread and looked into these flat antennas mentioned on the first page. I did a little research and wanted to point out that the Winegard Flatwave looks to be hands down better than the the more popular/oft-recommended Mohu Leaf. This site did a short review/comparison of the two, and the Winegard picked up more channels than the Leaf and was higher build quality. The three parts are each pretty short blurbs: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Plus the pattern of the antenna traces in this thing looks pretty cool. Just placed an order for one on amazon. Also, I have an older Roku model at home (not at home right now to check, but I think it's Roku XD?) It's one of this style case anyways: Is there any reason to upgrade to a Roku 2 XS? Is the interface much more responsive or anything? peepsalot fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Dec 27, 2012 |
# ? Dec 27, 2012 02:43 |
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peepsalot posted:Is there any reason to upgrade to a Roku 2 XS? Is the interface much more responsive or anything? And, after I posted my previous post, I found out that those two new channels are only available on newer models (so far, they say). Apparently there are about seven channels that are "2 or stick only". Wouldn't surprise me if that's normal from here on out, but that's just a guess.
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# ? Dec 27, 2012 03:23 |
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I used to work for a home theater company that sold Winegard and they are indeed a fine product. Usually pretty reasonably priced as well.
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# ? Dec 27, 2012 03:46 |
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Has anyone else using Plex had trouble with their Hulu channel? I can navigate fine, but I'm out of luck when I go to watch a show - it hangs on the loading screen after the progress bar hits a certain point. The Plex forums weren't much help and I imagine this is something that's changed on Hulu's end of things. Other than that I have absolutely no complaints about my Plex/Roku setup.
toomanyninjas fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jan 4, 2013 |
# ? Jan 4, 2013 23:53 |
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For four years I've had a Windows Media Center PC-DVR with an HD HomeRun getting local antenna signals. It's saved a lot of money over the years, but I was growing loving sick of the thing the other month. Finally, on a whim I just decided to buy a HomeRun Prime and sign up for cable again. I have three tuners for cable networks, and my old HomeRun acts as an extra two tuners that take priority for NBC/FOX/CBS/etc since my local carrier runs those unencrypted. I am finally loving my DVR again. Yes, I know, a story in the cutting cable thread that ends with signing back up for cable, but my cablecard only costs a couple dollars a month, $5 max. The majority of my bill is the actual content and not a receiver fee compounded with an HD Tuner fee and a DVR rental fee and so on. That's the part of cable that always pissed me off.
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# ? Jan 5, 2013 04:13 |
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While we were singing the praises of our no cable set-up to some friends the other day, my boyfriend admitted that there's one thing he misses: being able to watch the 24 hour news and finance channels. Are there any good ways to get a full stream of, say, CNBC, CNN, Newsworld, and CP24 without a computer being present? The "house" computer is my laptop--I generally take it to the office with me and my boyfriend and I work opposite schedules. We have an AppleTV, a 360, and Sony Smart TV in the house all the time. Oh, and we're in Canada, but we already use UnoDNS for our unblocking needs. I took a peek at the absolute lowest end packages from Bell and Rogers, and they start at $40 a month. gently caress Canadian telecom
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# ? Mar 3, 2013 23:17 |
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Did he really like to watch news and finance that much or did he just like having it on in the background? I cut the cable cord this month. I already had a PS3, so I bought Hulu Plus and that covers most newer shows. I'm also already an Amazon Instant Video subscriber because of my Amazon Prime, so there is a ton of free slightly older content through the AIV app on the PS3 there (Battlestar Galactica and Friday Night Lights are two big ones I'm looking forward to). I bought an Ooma Telo and that should pay for itself in about 9 months, to include porting over our old house phone number from Time Warner. Total monthly bill will go from about $140 to about $60, and that includes <$5/mo in fees for Ooma and buying a couple of kids TV shows a month through AIV that I don't get through Hulu Plus. Charlie Foxtrot fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Mar 5, 2013 |
# ? Mar 4, 2013 02:24 |
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Bamabalacha posted:While we were singing the praises of our no cable set-up to some friends the other day, my boyfriend admitted that there's one thing he misses: being able to watch the 24 hour news and finance channels. Are there any good ways to get a full stream of, say, CNBC, CNN, Newsworld, and CP24 without a computer being present? The "house" computer is my laptop--I generally take it to the office with me and my boyfriend and I work opposite schedules. http://www.aljazeera.com/ They have an online 24 hour stream (and they are also a million times better than any American news network) Finance TV live stream http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/ - edit Oh, you wanted it without a computer? I know the Roku has the Al Jazeera stream in one of their channels. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 4, 2013 |
# ? Mar 4, 2013 03:30 |
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Smythe posted:Boxee has suited my needs for the most part. Plays all sorts of hosed up file formats, has a pleasing (to me) form factor, and has a competent web browser. Suffer no delusions, this poo poo aint no computer, but it works decently enough. I watch a grip of and web content in the form of streaming twitch.tv and its ilk and it does that poo poo fine. Thank you. I just got into the game in the last month or so and I was trying to figure out wtf. I bought two WD plays because they seemed to fit my specs but I rma'ed em because they freeze, the interface is slow, the remote buttons are squishy, and they don't do amazon. Bought Roku XSes instead (which I thought mistakenly didn't do amazon.) Right now trying to figure out the antenna/dvr situation. There's an old tv antenna in my attic, coax connection. Seems stupid to not at least try it, so I am going to. The coax will just hang loose coming out of the attic down two floors to the tv, 30 feet or so for the test. Meantime I'm wondering about signal attenuation over that distance, and even if that's not an issue will I have to fish wire or could I somehow take advantage of the at-the-moment-unneeded cable runs to get the signal back downstairs; of course only if that works to my satisfaction. Then, I keep googling to see what dvrs there are and I'm finding a lot of nothing besides tivo and stuff that seems waaaaay spergy. I'm hoping to get both DC and Baltimore stations (increases the chances of catching a steelers game) (goddam NFL and cable companies for not agreeing on the exact distribution of the shitpot of money they could make for people that want the game out-of-market and don't want yet a third cable-style content-distribution company to pay for basic service plus optimum content 99% of which I don't loving want but that's a whole other thread or the basis of this thread at least.) Whoa, where was I. Anyway, I already switched the phone to ooma, so far no problems. Exactly as reliable as the internet, which is the same for Comcast/Xfinity/Whatever's triple play, and whose internet we are still going to pay for. Back to the new poo poo, I wish Hulu+'s interface didn't suck so much. As a developer it looks like someone in management thought if they could make the phone interface standard across the line, they'd save a ton of money. Try paying a better interface designer please. And if you're doing "agile" please stop you suck at it we hate you. Breathe. I bought a new router to support this effort, Asus RT-AC66U. My ancient Netgear was a trooper though. Fuckin HP printer doesn't speak the same WPS this thing does. I think I have to plug it in USB to get it to recognize its new master. Another PITA on my list. Printer is 14 feet from computer. It's wireless most of the goddamn time! I'm sure I'll have a whole bunch of dumb questions.
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# ? Mar 4, 2013 06:51 |
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Sporadic posted:http://www.aljazeera.com/ Are you hiding under our coffee table? We were just talking about Bloomberg and Al Jazeera this morning, I didn't know Al Jazeera had a channel on any of the set top boxes, thanks! (As an aside, my dad's best friend worked on launching the English version of Al Jazeera and is a fellow cable cutter; he too will be thrilled to find this out!) It's a little bit of missing news as the background noise (I used to always have CP24, the main Toronto news channel, on in the background in the morning and when I got home from work) and my boyfriend being a news junkie who likes to watch all the channels and then yell at the TV.
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# ? Mar 4, 2013 06:55 |
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We've have been cable free since moving to our new house and don't regret it a bit. We have two TVs that I initially had hooked up to their own individual antennas but the reception wasn't always the best. I ended up connecting our cable modem directly to the incoming cable line in the attic, setting up our better antenna up there, then connecting that powered antenna to the existing house cable infrastructure. Now each of our TVs just connects to their own coax connection in the wall and we get great reception on both without ever having to adjust the antenna again. As for online shows, we watch most of them through Hulu/Netflix on our Wii U (connected to one TV) and our laptop (connected to the other). We were really missing out on our Showtime shows (Homeland and Dexter) and didn't want to pirate them, so I ended up paying my parents to add it to their Comcast package for a couple months so we could log in online and watch it.
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# ? Mar 4, 2013 18:45 |
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pr0k posted:Back to the new poo poo, I wish Hulu+'s interface didn't suck so much. As a developer it looks like someone in management thought if they could make the phone interface standard across the line, they'd save a ton of money. Try paying a better interface designer please. And if you're doing "agile" please stop you suck at it we hate you. I really wish Amazon could get an app onto the AppleTV. It's the best smart box on the market bar none in terms of responsiveness and ease of use.
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# ? Mar 4, 2013 21:08 |
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Bamabalacha posted:We have an AppleTV, a 360, and Sony Smart TV in the house all the time. Oh, and we're in Canada, but we already use UnoDNS for our unblocking needs. If you want to save an extra $5/mth, check out http://tunlr.net/ I've used it for awhile and it's worked pretty good for a free service.
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# ? Mar 5, 2013 16:44 |
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Six year cable-cutting anniversary this month. Keep on keepin' on, brothers and sisters.
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# ? Apr 1, 2013 20:02 |
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mcsuede posted:Six year cable-cutting anniversary this month. Keep on keepin' on, brothers and sisters. It's been a year for me after I could finally cut the DirecTV my ex decided to lock us into. It's painful being a sports fan though.
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# ? Apr 1, 2013 21:34 |
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Any recommendations for stand alone ATSC Tuners? I've got a bit of an odd setup, Roku + Projector, so I don't have any ATSC tuner to get OTA. The crazy bit is I can't seem to find a tuner that has HDMI out without spending several hundred dollars, yet products like those cheap USB TV tuners are $30. Basically I want one of those $40 Converter boxes from a few years back, but not limited to 480p, any advice?
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# ? Apr 2, 2013 19:27 |
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People used to buy old voom sat receivers and use the atsc tuner.
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# ? Apr 2, 2013 19:42 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 10:05 |
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Don Lapre posted:People used to buy old voom sat receivers and use the atsc tuner. That's cool. I'd forgotten all about Voom (looks like I wasn't the only one either). Then I found this on the Voom Wiki page: quote:Voom set-top boxes have commanded prices upwards of $100 on websites such as eBay as people seek a less expensive way to receive digital off-air broadcasts. I hope this is outdated, although as I recall most ATSC adapters were well under $100 from the outset.
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# ? Apr 3, 2013 04:00 |