Moving, best path forward for OTA lave and recordings

[ceandra]

I am a long-time NextPVR user and once a contributor to NextPVR. We had it simple, a single TV with a Windows computer running NextPVR, and an HD Homerun Prime for Cablecard. I have been vary happy for many years. (I can and should do a new donation, as NextPVR has been flawless for us for years)

We are now transferring to a different state, where OTA channels are available by antenna. I have been looking at many options, but keep coming back to NextPVR as the best, known, solution. The Roku app threads appear to be a bit dated since the Roku cancellation, but it appears things may still be active?

Our new house has 3 Roku TV's (One a TCL Roku TV, brand new, and two older TV's with Roku 4K boxes) and one Vizio smart TV (Vizio apps). All Roku devices are new this year.

I am not as concerned about the Vizio. 

My desire is to be able to see live TV and recorded TV, with commercial skipping, on all of the Roku TV's and maybe the Vizio. I will probably get a Homerun box that is antenna capable, though my go with an internal card from Hauppauge. Either way, I will operate with a single multi-tuner device on a central NextPVR server.

So, what is the best way to stream NextPVR to the TV's? 
1. Is the Roku app still active, and in that case can I get on the trial when the time comes?
2. Alternatives seem to be the Tivo 4k or the ONN streaming box, both Android boxes. Are those a better option? Not integrated to Roku, so another remote, power, etc. If this is the way to go, I assume there are other threads I can find on the forum.

At this point we are not yet in the house, so no need to get on trial yet. I simply want to chart a path forward as we prep for a move.

The first question is the overall approach, whether Roku, Android, or some other solution.

I apologize if this i clear in the forums. Everything I looked at so far in relation to Roku is dated.

I appreciate the effort you are putting in on this, and any insight/direction you can provide.

Thanks
Chuck 

[mvallevand]

First I will speak from the development perspective and hopefully others can speak on usability. Not having forum posts doesn't necessarily mean something is good or bad since if it works you don't need support. The beautify of the UI client is once the code is solid, it can work for years. I wrote a client for the NMT device and it worked for a decade with no support or upgrades, some might still be in use. Certainly neither client gets as much use as I would expect compared to NextPVR, I guess some people still like the idea of buying an HTPC even if it is often less capable.

And yes both clients are in active support and development although I am pretty limited in how far I can take the Roku client because of the limitations of what the Roku API can provide. Pretty much the only development left is eventual support for audio only transcoding should sub ever add that. This would help devices without AC-3 support. Because I am using deprecated API calls there is the possibility that it can stop working too. Roku devices are weaker in mpeg-ts support and for recordings with comskip you would to use mp4 remuxing with potential audio transcoding and with those it is very sweet client.

The Android API gives me a lot of control and I can get right into the player to make fixes for playback. Examples are fixes for UK broadcast and North America closed captioning coming in the next release. After that I am not sure what I will do, maybe a Up Next icon to continue playing directly from the home screen if sub provides an API. Another benefit is being able to leverage ffmpeg to support more audio formats.

The ONN and Tivo 4K recommendations were given because of easy access in the US at a low price. Any modern Android box or Android TV will likely be suitable. Certainly the Shield is better for those with the resources and the media requirements for it, but for NextPVR use it might be overkill. There are probably better devices for AC-4 audio for ATSC 3.0 and for the emerging AV1 video standard.

For me, what makes the UI client so good is a number pad on the remote. The Roku did give me an easy way to fake it but it still is not the same as dedicated numeric keys. If you don't use the number pad now it probably is not as important for you as it is for me.

Of course these approaches are based on the NextPVR UI. You do have full access to NextPVR via the Kodi application too and it runs on many platforms but not Roku. Sub makes some nice clients for Apple and Android but they don't look like NextPVR. Currently I use a box that dual boots Android and CoreElec for Kodi, but that mainly is because of an issue with in-progress recordings in all clients.

My recommendation is don't buy anything and see how the Roku TV works for you, if you like maybe pickup an Android device for the Vizio and see for yourself, the UI is the same you just need to learn a new remote.

Martin

[ceandra]

Thanks! I will have to buy an OTA receiver, probably the HD Homerun, since the Prime worked well for me for years. But, that should get us going and give me options to try on Roku.

Any reason I should not go for the Flex 4k with 3.0 ATSC? A bit more expensive, but probably more future-proof?

Thanks
Chuck

[BrettB]

Thanks! I will have to buy an OTA receiver, probably the HD Homerun, since the Prime worked well for me for years. But, that should get us going and give me options to try on Roku.

Any reason I should not go for the Flex 4k with 3.0 ATSC? A bit more expensive, but probably more future-proof?

I would say that the HDHRs are a very good option for use with NextPVR. The Flex 4K is still on the expensive side.

One other alternative that a few of us have gotten is a Tablo tuner. They have a 2 tuner and a 4 tuner model. One really nice thing about the Tablo is that it will hardware re-encode the .ts stream into a compressed H.264 stream before sending it to NextPVR. This helps to save on disk space (and network bandwidth, but that is fairly negligible/unnecessary). You can get refurb units directly from Tablo (2 tuner is $70 and 4 tuner is $130).

[BrettB]

I would say that Martin did a great job with his assessment of the client situation.

When he was able to develop the Roku UI client, it was great. And I ended up getting a couple new TVs shortly after that, so got ones with Roku built-in so that I didn't need any extra devices to access NextPVR. Unfortunately, Roku has added some limitations/hoops to get the client installed. And, as Martin said, the API he uses is considered deprecated by Roku so could stop working at any time.

After the Android TV UI client was created, the TiVo Stream 4K became my primary client of choice. Partly because of the low cost ($30), partly because of the flexibility/feature set Martin has been able to get with it, and especially because of the remote (with the number buttons). I've got a few of them and use them extensively.

[ceandra]

Thanks for the input.

I will look at the HDHR quatro at $155 as well. Not sure the 4k with the atsc 3.0 is necessary. At $154 (amazon) the quatro is probably a good bet vs the Tablo refurb, though I will give that a fair look as well.

Thanks
Chuck

[mvallevand]

I think that is a reasonable choice. Most PVR software supports the Quattro. ATSC 3.0 right now basically just rebroadcast the ATSC 1.0 channels, with an audio format AC-4 that most devices cannot decode (uidroid and the Roku Ultra 2021/2022 can) and there is talk that all ATSC 3.0 will be DRM'd. Also I don't think sub has made any optimization to for this device it is some unusually rules, ATSC 3.0 (on 2 tuners), ATSC 1.0 (on 4 tuners)

When buying a Quad you might need to check your city's propagation signal for line of sight, sometimes you need to have two antenna orientations.

That being said I have a Tablo Dual and reception wise it is superior to my two HDHR devices and varios Hauppauge tuners. It is also compatible with the NextPVR web player without transcoding which was the main reason I bought it in the first place.

Martin

[VCR58]

I use a Tablo Dual and HDHR Flex 4K for OTA reception. I'm located about 30-40 miles from the transmitter towers. Probably the best tuner is the Tablo Dual previously mentioned. There is one channel at the upper UHF band that the expensive HDHR Flex4K struggles with in my location. Good strong signal but still get pixalation at times. The Tablo Dual tuner has no issues with this station (FYI, the Tablo Quad is not as good). So, I use the Tablo Dual for the problem channel and the HDHR for the others. The Tablo Dual is HD only so if you have 4K channels available you will need the HDHR Flex4K. There are no 4K channels in my area and won't be for a few years but I also wanted a tuner that was future proof.

Kodi was my main client for NextPVR on a Windows PC. I never really used the NextPVR clients starting out, but I really like Martin's Android client (uidroid) and was using it exclusively with my current setup (NextPVR server on Debian 11, TCL Roku TV, NVidia Shield). Like Martin I was having issues with resume/skiping in-progress recordings so I'm back to Kodi Nexus (nightly builds) mostly now.

[ceandra]

Thanks again for the feedback.

VCR58, while the Tablo quad is "not as good" as the dual, is it at least as good as the HDHR quatro?

I had just assumed HDHR would be best bet, but I will definitely consider the Tablo.

We generally record first, and rarely would need more than two recording streams simultaneously. However, I sometimes watch live tv in the garage. In the old house this was on a separate cable box, but in new this would take one of my tuners. I suppose I could get a Tablo dual, and if I start getting conflicts, get a second one. A bit more complex than a quad, but if the quad is really an issue, that is an option.

I have not tried an antenna yet, but FCC site indicates I should have a strong signal on all the basic channels.

Chuck

[VCR58]

For TV reception the Tablo Quad is probably as good as the HDHR Quatro.