[mythtv-users] Any cord-cutters using MythTV?

[Mark Wedel]

On 06/13/2018 12:14 PM, DryHeat122 wrote:
> Thanks for all the responses.  The "forced commercials" on some of these 
> services is mainly what I'm trying to avoid, since there's no need to time shift 
> with on-demand services. But I should have known they would put measures in 
> place to force me to watch commercials on content I'm already paying for, just 
> like the blasted cable companies.
> 
> The HDPVR option might work (that's what I'm using now with my cable box) but I 
> don't know how one would handle the schedules info and selection of something to 
> record.

  At least with slingtv, I have yet to run into any forced commercials.  The PVR 
solution they provide allows you to fast forward through the commercials, and I 
have yet to find any channel where I can not do it.

  There is the occasional oddity where it will not let me pause live 
programming, but will let me schedule/record on that same channel.

  The fast forwarding is not as nice as mythtvs - it is not true fast forwarding 
- rather, it jumps 5-10 seconds ahead, freezes the frame for a few seconds, 
jumps ahead again, freezes, etc.  But with a little practice, one can pretty 
effectively skip just the commercials.

  In terms of my original setup, it was a bit convoluted, and thus not something 
I really recommend.  It involved a roku 3 with an HDMI to component converter 
that was attached to a HDPVR.  I wrote a script to send the roku keypresses to 
activate slingtv roku app, and then send the right keypresses to activate the 
given channel.  By setting up a favorites list in the roku, I would now that '20 
right keypresses would get to channel X'.  The script I wrote would translate 
the channels into the keypresses, so that was manual setup to know where the 
locations where.

  I already had schedules direct for OTA, so I just added another lineup, taking 
dish network as the provider (just because I was familiar with the channel 
numbers).  Thus, for example, in the guide 142 might appear as ESPN, and the 
script would know that when I select 142, how many keypresses would be necessary 
to select that channel in the slingtv app.

  (have I talked you out of this yet?)  Note that with this entire process, 
changing channels was pretty slow, because if the requests to the roku were sent 
too quickly, it would miss some.  Everytime I switched channels, it would have 
to repeat that process (return roku to home screen, sleep for a few seconds for 
it to get there, activate slingtv app, wait a few seconds for that to load, send 
anywhere from 5 to 30 keypresses to activated the right channel).

  In addition to all of this, another script was needed to have the roku stop 
streaming when done with the recording (mythtv would normally just disable the 
HDPVR, but the roku would still happily stream data in that case).  In my case, 
I just returned it to the home screen.

  So when I could record with slingtv and remove all this work, despite slingtvs 
  recording rules and fast forwarding not as good, I was happy to give up all 
that complication.

  In addition to all of this, this only worked with the older (by manufacture 
date) roku I had - slingtv gave me a brand new roku 2 for signing up with the 
service, but probably because of HDCP on the output, it just did not work.  So 
this may not even be easily possible now.