by ·Comments Off on Sling complement candidate #2: DVR+

DVRPlusContinuing my survey of contenders to provide an over-the-air complement to Sling TV’s streaming pay-TV channels, next up is Channel Master’s DVR+. Unlike Simple.TV and Tablo, DVR+ won’t stream TV to your tablet or office, but it provides an easy way to watch and record OTA shows. And one of its best features is what isn’t there; despite robust, up-to-date guide data, there are no monthly fees with the DVR+.

(Apparently that lack of outbound streaming can be fixed with a Slingbox 500, recommended by Channel Master as a complement to the DVR+. That Slingbox 500 receiver had recently been renamed to Sling TV, but it’s unrelated to the Sling TV service that Dish announced last week at the International CES. I’ve read that the 500 will soon revert to its original name. How’s that for confusing?)

The most interesting changes in the DVR+ will be a huge expansion in the number of internet channels it will display in addition to OTA TV. You can catch a glimpse of what that might look like in my photo above, and you can find a more thorough rundown of the possible extra channels at Zatz Not Funny. That guide expansion is due to roll out in early 2015 as a software update for all existing DVR+ receivers.

When I reviewed the DVR+ last year, I focused on its even standing vs. a Windows Media Center PC. Since then, the DVR+ keeps improving while Windows Media Center, which was never as simple to use, stands still. If you’re a cord-cutter looking for an easy solution with no monthly fees, the DVR+ might be your best choice.

by ·Comments Off on Sling complement candidate #1: Tablo
Tablo's projected Roku app interface

Tablo’s projected Roku app interface

As I wrote last time, Sling TV looks like it could be the low-cost streaming solution for some viewers, particularly with the (temporary?) demise of NimbleTV. But Sling only works if the viewer also has a set of local over-the-air broadcast channels to complement it. I saw several candidates for that job at the International CES, and the first was Tablo, an OTA tuner, DVR, and streamer.

Before I start, I should mention Tablo’s main competitor, Simple.TV. It was just last year that Simple.TV used CES to announce the launch of its first two-tuner receiver. This year, Simple.TV had no official presence at CES. When I asked before the show, a rep told me that some Simple.TV folks would attend, but that there wouldn’t be any opportunity for meetings. While I was at the show, I heard rumors from two other companies that Simple.TV is exiting the hardware business to focus on its software. My single-tuner Simple.TV still works solidly, albeit slowly, and the company continues to release maintenance updates. Simple.TV is still around, but it’s not giving me a lot of reasons to recommend it.

At CES, I met with Tablo CEO Grant Hall, and he was excited about the improvements that are in the Tablo pipeline. Hall was showing off the innards of his next receiver version – the Tablo METRO, which includes a couple of OTA antennas built into the box. (You can see a photo at the Tablo blog.) I can’t imagine folks who don’t want a rooftop antenna, just like I can’t imagine folks who don’t think the Three Stooges were funny, but I guess they’re out there, and this receiver could give them everything they need without an external antenna. That’s if it works as advertised; we’ll see when the METRO comes out in a month or two.

The other update on the horizon is to Tablo’s Roku channel. The current version looks like a lot of other Roku channels – manageable but nothing like a modern program listing grid. As you can see in my photo above, the new Roku channel will look exactly like a modern program listing grid. Shoehorning this kind of functionality onto the Roku platform will be quite an achievement if it works. Hall was basically showing a mock up, but he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t think his team could pull it off.

When I reviewed the Tablo, I thought it was already a little better than Simple.TV. If these improvements pan out, I might have to consider buying a Tablo receiver and shelving my Simple.TV. Then again, maybe one of the other two major Sling complement candidates will work better. More about them next time.

 

by ·Comments Off on Sling TV looks like a game-changer

Dish Sling TV booth at the 2015 International CESI’m almost recovered from another year of the International CES, and I have sooo much to tell you about. Sling TV from Dish Network won Engadget’s Best in Show award, so let’s start there. Richard Lawler of Engadget marvels at Sling’s interface, but it’s pretty close to DishWorld, which I’ve been trying out for over a year now.

When Sling launches later this year (it’s in invitation-only beta now), it will include ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, ABC Family, and CNN, all streaming for $20 per month. Also promised are add-in bundles such as “Kids Extra” (Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV, and Duck TV) and “News & Info Extra” (HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY, and Bloomberg TV) for $5/month each, plus an unspecified “Sports Extra” package.

One huge difference between DishWorld and Sling is the length of its replay feature. In lieu of a DVR, a DishWorld subscriber can watch any show on any channel from the past seven days. On Sling, for most channels, that will be limited to three days. Some channels, such as ESPN, will have no replay feature; it’ll be live only.

In the right combination with local over-the-air TV service, Sling could satisfy what some viewers need at a price that’s a lot less than traditional pay TV. But what OTA receiver would provide the best complement to Sling? Over the next few posts, I’ll talk about a few of the candidates that I saw at CES.

by ·Comments Off on NimbleTV pulling the plug
hand holding electrical plug for TV set

© Depositphotos.com / Naypong

Just got back from the International CES in Las Vegas, where Dish Network unveiled Sling TV, an online-only set of pay-TV channels for $20/month. (I’ll write more about Sling TV later, meanwhile you can read more here.) I just knew something like this was coming, and I wondered what it would mean for my old friend NimbleTV, which sells online-only sets of pay-TV channels that it somehow receives from Dish. Yesterday, the other shoe dropped.

My NimbleTV “concierge” sent me a subscriber-only email announcing that beginning Monday, January 12, I will “not be able to access (my) account or recordings.” The email never mentions Dish or Sling, but claims that “we’ve decided to pause the NimbleTV service as it stands today so we can concentrate on developing something even better and more amazing than before.”

It’s been over a year since Dish blocked NimbleTV’s access for a few weeks before NimbleTV restored its service with new parameters. Since then, a Dish representative once characterized NimbleTV as “illegal,” but it has managed to continue operating without further interruption. Yesterday’s email signals the end of all that, unless and until NimbleTV relaunches its “new and improved service later this year.”

My uninformed guess about their relationship had been that Dish wasn’t excited about NimbleTV’s existence, but was willing to accept full-price monthly fees from its subscribers. (A full-blown fight or any serious complaining would have only led to the Streisand Effect of publicizing such a rogue.) That benign neglect ended the minute that Sling TV began offering a similar service. Sling TV is still in invitation-only beta, so the cutoff doesn’t have to be as abrupt as last time, but that reluctant partnership has to end, at least according to my unsubstantiated theory.

I don’t expect NimbleTV to return as anything like it was unless, as reported, the FCC reclassifies “multichannel video programming distributor” to include internet-only services. Absent that intervention, I don’t think that any streaming service will ever be able to do anything that content creators don’t want it to do, at least not for long. NimbleTV bent over backwards to ensure that creators were paid for what they provided, but it’s still drifting toward the failed experiment graveyard with ivi.tv, Aereo, and FilmOn’s US over-the-air channels. It was great while it lasted, but for now, it’s over.

by ·Comments Off on For a really cheap DVR, there's HomeWorX

If you’re looking for a really, really inexpensive DVR, and you don’t have a Windows 7 PC laying around, you could get a HomeWorX converter box/DVR. In fact, if your viewing life revolves around an old analog NTSC TV set, the HomeWorX might be a good fit. (Although it won’t explain how you’ve been watching TV for the last couple of years.) Otherwise, you could do a lot better. Let me explain.

I stumbled on the HomeWorX when somebody online had it on sale for an even cheaper price than its usual sub-$50. Hey, it says it includes a “PVR”, which got me wondering right there. Over a decade ago, TiVo asserted that “PVR”, or personal video recorder, was one of its trademarks; since then most companies talk about DVRs or digital video recorders. So I bought one of these to review it, because someone has to review the (taking a breath) “Mediasonic HW-150PVR HomeWorx ATSC Digital TV Converter Box with Media Player and Recording PVR Function/HDMI Out.”

As its official title says, this beastie’s main job is to be a digital converter box, allowing you to watch today’s ATSC signals on your old analog TV. It includes a DVR, which works as Samuel Johnson once put it, “like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Like most over-the-air DVRs I’ve discussed in previous posts, the HomeWorX requires an external USB hard drive to record anything. Unlike most other DVRs, the HomeWorX never uses the internet; it pulls its program titles and descriptions directly from the broadcasters’ digital feeds. This is great because it means that there are never any subscription fees, but it’s bad because it puts the viewer at the mercy of the quality and length of each broadcaster’s over-the-air information.

I’m a little ashamed to pick on the manual. I’m grateful to have any paper manual these days, but the HomeWorX’s defaults to the old developer-centric method of just detailing what each menu option does rather than explaining answers to what will be frequent “How do I?” questions. As is often the case, those multilingual-English option descriptions don’t help much. One begins: “PVR: Depends on user’s choose, there are some functions like remove/edit/delete and so on.” Take me through some common tasks, please.

I found two more flaws that knock it out of contention for me. First, after brilliantly grabbing show titles from the airwaves and showing them to the user to assist in scheduling recordings, the HomeWorX discards that information when it makes that recording. When the user digs into the menus to find that file, the file name is “(Station name) (date / time)” instead of “(Show name) (date / time)”. For example, three movies recorded the same day on the local This affiliate would be distinguishable only by the time of day they were recorded even though the receiver knew their titles.

The second flaw is easier to explain: The HomeWorX digital tuner just wasn’t as sensitive as most. I know that OTA reception varies over time, but using the same input antenna, my Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-955Q USB TV Tuner handled my weak channels much better, and any of my digital TVs easily outperformed the HomeWorX. So I’ve boxed it up and put it on the shelf.

To sum it up, if you’ve got an old portable analog TV, the HomeWorX will put something on its screen again with a pokey little DVR bonus. But if you’re getting ready to cut the cord, you’ll want a better OTA DVR.