Question on Live Channels, AndroidTV, and HDHomerun Prime

by iammanlyman

Hi... About a year ago, I'd decided to 'uncut' the cord. But, there was no way I was going back to paying Fios for a large house full of cable boxes in every room - we'd hit 7. It was absurd.

Using Nexus Players, Shields, a HD HomeRun Prime, and a single cable card, our cable bill went from over $350 a month to $99 - including the M-card and 75/75 internet and the HD Ultimate package (good deal, Verizon reps were nuts before Frontier bought them). All our cable channels in each room when needed, low price, and all was good in the world.

I have four Shields - so quite an investment in hardware.

Last week, in the DFW area, Frontier Fios (bought from Verizon in 2015) set the 'CopyOnce' CCI bit on most of their cable channels. My world came crashing down around me. The shields got unplugged, and I had to go drop several hundred dollars in a Tivo Bolt and several Tivo Mini's - it's actually quite nice; still just a single M-Card.

Anyway, although I'm reasonably happy with a great menu, integrated DVR, and multi-room solution, the AndroidTV menuing is much better and I've become a sucker for AndroidTV.

Will this madness end? Why can Tivo get around the CopyOnce restriction with their devices, but AndroidTV / HDHomeRun can't?

I have an understanding of the technical aspects upstream, and even here in the house (I know WMC, for instance seems to be the only software device that defeats this). What I'm curious about is why Tivo, and not HDHomeRun / AndroidTV?

LiveChannels was wonderful for us.... this has been a bummer.

Elguapo361

I had a similar setup as you here in DFW. The day the CopyOnce flags hit, I called Frontier and turned off my TV services.

I'm still on a 2 month trial of Sling TV and is working out nicely on my ShieldTV and MiBox.

I'm working through KODI on both boxes, and simply replaced the Live TV shortcut with one pointing to Sling. The wife and kids seem to have adjusted well, and I'm saving quite a bit off my bill.

I plan to put up an antenna and Homerun Connect to suppliment more of the local channels not picked up by Sling.

Draiko

It's all about licensing costs and content piracy concerns.

The broadcasters and tv networks want to control how and when you watch content. If you can DVR everything, you won't pay to watch content anywhere else or jump at the chance to see a rerun on tv complete with fresh commercials.

If people have direct access to DVR recordings, some could more easily reencode and upload the content online. At least that's what the entertainment industry thinks. We all know that there are many other ways to grab content.

TiVo was able to dish out the cash needed for Cablelabs certs and special content licensing deals.

Also, TiVo was actually bought by Rovi recently to help bolster both businesses. They were facing rising costs and problems with their business models given the less than promising future of the linear tv space.

Given the fact that more streaming services are popping up and their libraries are growing, DVR capabilities won't be around much longer. Why would anyone DVR anything if they can just stream it instead?

fleker2

HDHomeRun is getting DVR support and APIs were added to Android TVs Live Channels.

As another commenter said, licensing is definitely something that can be an issue. Another is storage. Most devices don't come with a lot of internal storage to justify storing hours of video, so it is low priority.

Streaming is definitely going to be the path forward when factoring in up-to-date ads and content providers better controlling the experience.

stak640

Tivo and Microsoft both paid the licencing costs and developed the software to make their solutions compatible with Copy Once (you have to do both and your solution has to comply with an approved copy protection standard of choosing, which then gets reviewed and verified).

Simple as that.

It's not built into Android TV itself, doubt it would ever be. Too much of a headache for Google to care about; especially as the world is moving onto streaming.

SiliconDust says they're working on it for their app on Android TV, but their software/Kickstarter is already over a year late from original stated completion date, and no sign of when it will actually ever be completed. Even then, with the way the Kickstarter/app and company has progressed/acted/behaved/communicated, many people on their own forums wonder if they ever actually will get Copy Protection, even when the software is 'completed'. Some people think they just don't wanna fess up and lose more customers for their DVR program than they already have.

aonysllo

Android TV lets you copy stuff that you can access from outside the device. Therefore the powers-that-be worry about piracy. as-if. Hence they require first the M-Card and then the Copy Once flag. Android TV runs on Linux, which is pretty open and it would be hard if not impossible to completely DRM the system... and hopefully it will stay that way.

Sgt-JimmyRustles

Playstation Vue might be what you need man.