Moving form Cable card to to OTA question

Unless something great is hiding out there, no U.S. box will allow you to record streaming content. People have gone a roundabout route with external devices on their PC. As for cord cutting, how's your internet? Do you have caps? I use a Roku 3. I stream Amazon sometimes. My cap for 40/4 internet is 600GB. I never come close.

 

Correct

Depending on the programs you intend to watch, PS Vue is a much better cable TV replacement than Hulu, but is much more expensive. You need to look at your current list of One Passes and see how much is actually available OTA and on Hulu. If it isn't very much, then PS Vue or Sling TV makes more sense.

 

You don't need to record streaming content. You just stream the content on demand. The purpose of the tivo is to make broadcasts content behave like streaming content in that you can watch it on demand.

Re: OnePass, you can set up a OnePass to include streaming episodes in the OnePass. You don't record them but they will show up there. I don't personally use this feature.

 

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Just to be clear, you have a basic Roamio, and NOT a Roamio Plus or Pro. Correct?

 

Which model Roamio do you have... ?

• basic Roamio (4 tuners)
• Roamio Plus (6 tuners, 1 TB stock HDD)
• Roamio Pro (6 tuners, 3 TB stock HDD)

(These are the Roamio models that have a CableCARD slot -- but only the basic, 4-tuner Roamio can tune via CableCARD or OTA antenna.)

 

If your new antenna allows you to pick up your local stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, The CW, etc.), that may make Hulu less appealing to you. Whether or not Hulu is worth the $8 (or $12 without ads) is up to you. Here are the categories of content available through Hulu:

• current-season shows from ABC, NBC and Fox -- These shows are made available on Hulu the day after they air. At least the last five episodes will always be available but in many cases, every episode back to the start of the season and even past seasons are available. However, if you can pick up ABC, NBC and Fox well with an OTA antenna and record those shows to your TiVo, then you don't really need Hulu for those shows anyhow.
  
• certain (but not all) past-season shows from various cable channels like FX, Comedy Central, TNT, MTV, etc. -- Entire seasons of these shows are made available on Hulu anywhere from a few months to a year after they originally air on cable. (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video also do this same kind of thing. Each of them has cut deals to carry different shows.)
  
• Hulu Original Series -- These are shows that Hulu makes for itself and they are available exclusively on Hulu. Examples include Casual, The Path, 11.22.63, and The Mindy Project. Just like HBO has its own original series, like Game of Thrones, and Showtime has its own original series, like Homeland, now Hulu does too. One new episode of these shows becomes available each week on the same day of the week. There's about one new Hulu Original Series that debuts every month.
  
• movies, uncut and commercial-free -- Just like HBO and Showtime air Hollywood movies that were at playing at the theater about a year ago, so does Hulu. They carry films from Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM. They also carry a number of older films, plus a group of arthouse/indie films called The Criterion Collection.

Just like with Netflix, you CANNOT record any shows off of Hulu. You simply open the Hulu app, find what you want to watch and stream it. OR you can set up a OnePass in the TiVo menu system for those shows. Make sure to set the OnePass to include streaming. Then those shows should show up in the "My Shows" list on your TiVo, right alongside anything you record from your OTA antenna, and you can use the listings there to jump straight to those shows in Hulu.

 

Great details.

One caveat is that there's usually an additional delay in an episode appearing within a OnePass show listing. (Not great if you're expecting to use the OnePass listing for next day viewing.)

 

Yes, you must have an account for whatever streaming services you use. You should remove from your provider list any streaming services you don't subscribe to. Otherwise it just clutters up your lists with things you can't watch. Just click one of the streaming episodes and see what happens.

Hulu makes more sense for folks without OTA or a DVR of any sort.

You should be all set for OTA. If you're not ready to switch over just yet, plug the antenna directly into your TV and do a channel scan. That will be exactly what you will be able to get on Tivo.

 

If it's important to you to watch current-season episodes of cable series like The Last Ship (TNT) or Deadliest Catch (Discovery), then you have a couple options to do that without continuing to subscribe to cable TV.

With many basic cable shows, you could purchase entire current season from either Vudu or Amazon Video. But that can get expensive. Season 3 of The Last Ship costs $25 in HD from Vudu. I think you can purchase the full season at any time after it starts and then each new episode is available for you to watch in the app right after it airs on TNT.

You other option would be to subscribe to the PlayStation Vue live TV service. It streams over the internet and gives you over 50 different popular cable channels. You can record shows and save them for up to four weeks. Pricing for it starts at $30 a month. Unfortunately, there is not a PlayStation Vue app available on TiVo, so you would need a different streaming box like a Roku or an Amazon Fire TV to access that service.

 

A couple of years back I moved from cabletv to OTA using a Roamio Basic. Indoor Antennas did Not work acceptably. Expensive Indoor did Not work any better than Inexpensive. I ended up using the largest outdoor antenna that could fit in my apartment hallway.

Consider waiting until the fall television season starts before getting rid of cabletv. Currently most nights I am Not recording anything, there is just not much on OTA during late summer.

I have been using one month of Amazon Prime to catch up on Orphan Black but have cancelled it in favor of Netflix. It is easy enough to subscribe and unsubscribe online and they are certainly cheap enough, so its not really something to worry about.

 

While I'm not using using a Roamio I switched to OTA several years ago. I invested in outdoor antennas using a flat coax wire as frequently used by satellite installs to get through a window, add a pole for my balcony. Yes I said antennas because in Dallas ABC is still broadcast in the high VHF band.

 

If you want to record Hulu and/or Netflix offerings, you can do this with PlayOn (playon.tv). You install Playon on your computer and the recording is stored on the PC's hard drive. I use the PlayOn app on my Roku to watch shows from my PC on my TV.

 

You can also use the PlayOn channel within Plex on your TiVo.

 

Have you tried Playstation Vue?

 

Vue is only $10/month more than SlingTV and offers a LOT more channels. Seems cheaper than paying for SlingTV and then having to pay for those other shows you want to buy. You can just pay for Vue and then record all the shows you want to watch, plus OnDemand and network app logins to boot.

http://www.cnet.com/news/playstation-vue-vs-sling-tv-streaming-live-tv-compared/