Cord Cutting, Cord Running

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 5:46 pm

Because I know that each and every one of you are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for the next update of my networking and television experience, I bring you this thread. Herein, we'll will explore the benefits and the pitfalls of Lister's New Deal.

As described in great and excruciating detail in an award winning thread prior, Rob Lister is cutting the cord to his Cable TV, and opting instead for a Big-Ass Antenna (hereafter known as BAA) and local channels only, along with more significant content from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and other sundry services as they may be sourced.

That means running new cable for the BAA on the outside and inside of the Lister Homestead.

If you're going to run cable, why run just one? That's what my Pappy always said, and if it's good enough for Pappy, it's good enough for me.

I'll be increasing intra and inter bandwidth, and that means running even more cable.

I have to wait until next week for the BAA arrival. I would have opted for quicker shipping but it could not be arranged. Budgets to consider, what-not.

But my new and improved TP-LInk AC1750 router will be here today. And so the mission begins.

Today I sent Kid³ on a Home Depot mission. That's what he gets for having the same day off as me. He has returned with bags of the necessary stuff. There are old-work junction boxes, cabling, connectors aplenty, poles, brackets, lag screws, wall plates, caulking, and an unauthorized vape-cigg and grape soda.

I'll keep the lot of you posted.

ed · Post by ed » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:21 pm

you're gonna shoot your eye out.

Tiosylanyl · Post by **Tiosylanyl** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:52 pm

Anyone want to place bets on how long it'll take him to end up in a full body cast?

ed · Post by ed » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:05 pm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/busi ... e-in-2015/

HBO will launch a stand-alone online service in 2015 that doesn’t require consumers to also have a cable or satellite subscription, chief executive Richard Plepler said Wednesday.

The plans will create a dramatic shift in the television industry that has long benefited from forcing ever-growing bundles of channels on consumers, who often only regularly view a fraction of the programs being offered.

HBO is one of the most valuable channels in cable and satellite packages, but the firm has long felt that its cable and satellite distribution partners haven’t given it a big enough cut of the cable industry’s highly profitable paid television subscriptions. New competition from Netflix and other digital entertainment platforms have put pressure on the cable model. But many consumers have been willing to stick with cable subscriptions to watch live sports on ESPN, for instance, and premium content on HBO.

“In 2015, we will be beyond the wall and launch a stand alone over-the-top service that will have the potential to produce hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenues,” Plepler said at parent company Time Warner’s Investor Day meeting in New York. “And international opportunities can be just as large, if not larger. We will use all means at our disposal to go after it.”

Bingo.

The Game of Thrones season four finale “The Children” has become the most pirated show in history, according to data from TorrentFreak.

Legally, according to official US ratings, 7.1 million people tuned in for the final episode. However in pirate world, a few hours after the episode appeared online, Demonii tracker reported that 254,114 people were sharing that one torrent at the same time – the highest ever.

Downloaders took interest in the HD torrent too, with 108,539 users downloading the 720p copy and 23,922 downloading the 1080p copy.

Within 12 hours, the season finale has been downloaded 1.5 millon times, which TorrentFreak says is “close to 2,000 terabytes transferred in half a day.” It also expects the download total to exceed 7.5 million in the coming weeks, which would make it the most downloaded episode of the year.

Maybe their business model is catching up with reality.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:27 pm

Update: we are cutting into drywall for Ethernet and cable boxes. No serious injuries as of yet.

http://static.dyp.im/fxumNvx2H2/9b81f04 ... f0b93b.JPG

Additional Update at no extra charge: Router arrived and its configuration is pending.

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:31 pm

ed wrote: Maybe their business model is catching up with reality.

I'd wait until their pricing is announced before everyone gets too excited.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:27 am

Router configuration is complete. By mistake, I left one of the other routers in the house turned on and weird things happened. I had to reset it and start from scratch. The UI for this is so much more intuitive than the [fucking] Cisco. I say Cisco but it was actually a Linksys and at the time, Cisco owned them. I think they were sold to Belkin recently.

I gotta tell you, as a review, I fucking love my router. I've yet to have to reboot it even once. It is consistent and very reliable.

TP Link 803.11AC model AC1750

ed · Post by ed » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:29 am

Grammatron wrote:
ed wrote: Maybe their business model is catching up with reality.
I'd wait until their pricing is announced before everyone gets too excited.

Dish TV <spit> wanted to charge me $100/mo with a two year commitment.

Now what in the world would HBO really charge that would make streaming them less attractive than Dish? <spit>

The only thing I would have watched recently was GOT season 4. 13 episode x $10 an episode = $130 thats jan + 1/2 of feb.

no brainer.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:57 pm

http://static.dyp.im/mXykOdlVur/17f11b7 ... 7937a1.JPG

Woot!

That's my BAA!

I don't know what's up with that 'signature required' bullshit. If they take it back because I can't answer the door in less than 10 seconds I'm going to be kicking some UPS ass. This is a neighborhood, not a residential area.

faggots.

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:02 pm

corplinx wrote:Mental Note:

Amazon Prime Instant Video is finally available for non-Kindle droid devices. You can tell they want it to succeed.

1. Uninstall "Amazon" or "Amazon for Tablets" from your device.
2. Sideload "Amazon App Store"
3. Install "Amazon" and the Instant Video app from the App Store (if you install the instant video app alone, it tells you to also install Amazon"

SEE HOW EASY IT IS?!?

Note: PBS Video is an Amazon App Store Exclusive.

Note: Prime Instant Video still doesn't support Chromecast, which is how I would use it.

You should be able to download Amazon Instant Video app from Amazon app as well as Amazon App Store app.

ed · Post by ed » Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:07 pm

Rob Lister wrote:Router configuration is complete. By mistake, I left one of the other routers in the house turned on and weird things happened. I had to reset it and start from scratch. The UI for this is so much more intuitive than the [fucking] Cisco. I say Cisco but it was actually a Linksys and at the time, Cisco owned them. I think they were sold to Belkin recently.

Anyway, it is a stunning improvement over Cisco. It was so impressive (10GB/s over 2.4) that I now realize that running an Ethernet line to the TV (5GHz capable) is not strictly necessary ... but I'm committed, so fuck it.

Oh, and Netflix started without the usual 5 minute delay. So That was the problem!

So, the old E2000 will replace the E1000 which gets a firmware swap to dd-WRT. Not because I know what I'm doing, but specifically because I don't.

After I have my fun I will use it only to broadcast SSIDs that insult my neighbors.

STFU Lori Hines
Irene you slut
Pauls wife cheats
Joey shut that dog up

Hilarity will quietly ensue.

I wass thinking of running cat5 but I wonder what I would get out of it.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:48 pm

ed wrote:I wass thinking of running cat5 but I wonder what I would get out of it.

wellzers, I'm transfering over wifi at 10MB/s with 2 walls and 1 floor between me and it (about 20 ft). That's 80Mbs. That's almost as fast as most common Ethernet cards/switches (100Mb/s). I suspect the 5GHz side of the router is capable of 150Mbs at that same distance/obstruction.

If I wasn't already committed with parts on hand and a willing youngster to do the heavy lifting, no way I'd run wire.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 6:04 pm

(Newser) – Yesterday, HBO announced it's launching a stand-alone Web streaming service. Today it's CBS making that call with CBS All Access, an on-demand service that offers streaming of current and past seasons of popular CBS shows, as well as classic shows, for $5.99 a month, TVLine.com reports.

LOL.

Well, given that it is free over the airwaves (with my soon to be delivered BAA), and that your content sucks big ed monkey balls, I think I'll pass.

Nice try though.

P fucking S

Let me just adendum that with this: You guys need to develop an a la cart clearing house. I'm not fucking paying 12 or 20 different providers $x dollars a month. And what part of a la cart don't you understand. You try your bundling business with me and I'll kick you out. And $6, really? You'd get a buck and not a cent more, assuming you got even that.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:29 pm

Antenna is up and the results are in: 36 muther fucking channels.

All the majors are accounted for. ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, FOX, ION, perfectly clear with no cut-outs (but we'll see what happens during stormy weather). A lot of channels are not on the TV Fool radar. Some of the channels listed there are actually something else. Others they list were not detected but were well within distance and power range. I'm getting channels out as far as -88 db and 60 miles away (2.1).

Roughly a third of the lesser channels are in 3:4 aspect, some in 420i. Weird. Another third are broadcasting 720i. Why?

So.

Not quite ready for the wife test.

I didn't even put it outside the house. It is mounted in the attic closet of my home office. Poked a hole in the exterior wall and ran a cable behind the siding to the den.

WHO'S THE FUCKING MAN!

Oh, and here's my TV Guide
http://tvlistings.aol.com/listings/va/v ... -air/23456

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 10:43 am

The Lister household goes dark/bright at midnight tonight.

I've passed out fliers to my wife and remaining kid.

http://static.dyp.im/LFMlUvUOO1/3d39514 ... b248d2.JPG

DrMatt · Post by **DrMatt** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 3:08 pm

After you've cut all those cords, be sure to donate them for the stem cells in them.

what?

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 3:09 pm

There is a new issue.

http://static.dyp.im/SN05mjNNuU/ef061ca ... 0f9fec.JPG

It seems the wall plate for the Ethernet/Antenna jack does not match the color of the existing wallplates.

I've been instructed to replace all the wallplates in the room with white ones. And either remove the pencil marks from my install or repaint the entire room. And vacuum up the dust where I was cutting into the drywall. Or else.

She left a note taped to the tv screen.

P.S. On delving right on in to it, I discover that it is not as simple as changing the wall plates. The exposed part of the sockets and switches are colored the same off-beige. So those have to be replaced as well.

DrMatt · Post by **DrMatt** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 4:04 pm

Boo hoo.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 4:14 pm

DrMatt wrote:Boo hoo.

I'll let her know you said that.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:33 pm

$82.50 and two hours work to replace all the plugs, switches and wallplates

[slaps palms] all done.

An unexpected expense.

I can live with it.

That's less than one month's bill for cable tv.

I took the liberty to add an amazon purchace for an RCA preamp. I don't need it as I get all the majors but I just wanna be as good as I can be. It is a very clever device. Has two parts to this solution. The preamp you attach directly to the antenna. No power necessary. At the tv end you attach another device that puts power on the coax up to the preamp to drive it, and then subtracts the power at the tv end. Very smart. I approve. I'll know next week if I can pick up China.

I took the liberty of buying a replacement for my cordless drill's battery pack. Just to get free shipping. Damn you Amazon.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 3:36 pm

I bet you all thought I was done with this thread. I bet you all thought you could ignore my further advances. Yes, you can, but at your own peril. You will follow in my footsteps someday soon. Best to learn the pitfalls.

The wife (whom I love so very so so) has reneged on our contract. She says it is not what she wanted, not what she demanded, not what she was promised, not, not, not, not, not. Something about pushing more buttons than promised. Something about having to decide when it should just 'be'. Something about my utter recent failure to please utterly. Something....

She want's Food TV when she turns on the TV. It was not there when she turned on the TV. Therefore, ergo, and so, yada, I will get the set-top box back (it never really left). I will tune it to Food TV or HGTV. It will be there when she turns on the telly.<--period <--period on the period Or she will find a husband that can, at the very least, provide that little scrap of sustenance....

1: "And by the way I make more money that you."
2: "Did you really need to bring that up?
1: "I will again, every day, until you give me what I want."

Can you guess the voice behind 1 and 2?

And so I hooked it all back up. Programmed the TV to default back to the set-top. And I ponder.

Next on the list is MythTV. Server/client setup. Once completed it will also host Plex. Raid 1 architecture. Linux (which kind of scares me). Project. Budget $600. I will find a way to use her money (since she makes so fucking much).

Tiosylanyl · Post by **Tiosylanyl** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:18 pm

I predict this will not end well.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:34 pm

Tiosylanyl wrote:I predict this will not end well.

We both said that, to each other, on our wedding day, more than 25 years ago. We were surprisingly mostly wrong.

1: You'll come around.
2: I've yet to come once.

Anyway, the whole MythTV thing is an Open Source project that can be done on a PC but all the girls in the know tell me don't bother: Linux is the way to go if you want it to work well.

Okay, fine. I can do that. But I gotta build a box. STrike that, two boxes. ONe to act as a server and another, near the tv, to act as a client. I can do it all on one box but the box would need to be powerful and big and connect to the TV through hdmi. Big and powerful means intermittantly noisy. So best to separate client and server. I donno. I'm climbing a steep curve here.

Tiosylanyl · Post by **Tiosylanyl** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 pm

My question is what happens when you spend all this money working on money saving alternatives, before she gives you the exact same response and you find yourself hooking up the set-top box again?

Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes before we see reports of a domestic dispute over Food TV resulting in strangling in Virginia on our set-top boxes?

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:03 pm

I will use marital judo.

http://www.havetheknowhow.com/

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 4:52 am

Hmmm… I see something like a marketable scenario for a television series: elderly geek with Rube Goldberg contraptions vs. food-channel addicted wife. :twisted:

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 2:17 pm

Witness wrote:Hmmm… I see something like a marketable scenario for a television series: elderly geek with Rube Goldberg contraptions vs. food-channel addicted wife. :twisted:

It's going to be a while before that goes into production.

After looking at the hardware requirements for MythTV it appears I need at least three Masters degrees just to understand the lingo. https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythTV-HOWT ... _and_Speed

For a worthy system, $600 is probably not enough unless I can find a way to make it work on my current server, which is windows, which the MythTV developers don't much regard, don't write for, and pretty much ignore. A Windows version exists but ...

MythTV runs and is officially supported on Windows but an official exe is not distributed, here is how to build a windows binary for yourself.

Using MinGW as the build platform, and MS Direct3D as the display layer.

And it continues for about a megabyte of detailed instructions, most of which using acronyms I don't know, tools I don't have, and a knowledge base I'm so far removed from it might as well be Linux.

So, add another Masters or two to the mix.

I"m almost at my 'fuck this' threshold.

ed · Post by ed » Sat Nov 08, 2014 2:41 pm

Sounds like a fuck this. I just used VUZE to see what was what and there were a bunch of hits for Mythtv.

ScreenShot246.jpg

My experience so far with cutting the cable has been good. I moved the powered antenna into a cottage that my kids are living in and they got 36 channels. Some spanish, some on the fringe but lots of stuff and about 1/2 HD. No need for cable there. Their performance was better than mine since I could get the antenna above the block walls in their place.

When I feel energized I'll get something in my attic with a splitter and make good use of the cables thoughtfully laid down by Dish TV <spit>.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Sun Nov 16, 2014 10:26 pm

<<<exasperation>>>

What a fucking adventure this has been. I still have the @#$% cable because ... well because. I just got the bill. I laid it on the coffee table in the den after first removing all other items from it. Laid bare on the table. Hopefully she'll see it and gasp in horror. Well, she'll see it, not bother looking at because that bill is my responsibility. She won't care a wit.

Linux. Rhymes with Cynics. That's the box I need. At first I figured I could just throw one together and a few tweaks here, half a hack there, I could be up and running with MythTV and Plex on one machine serving all three TV's.

No so much. Turns out Video is a very CPU intensive enterprise.

Bottom line is, I need a fairly powerful server to accommodate the eventual load. I need a CPU with a Passmark of greater than 6000 to accommodate the worst--but not unusual--case requirements. I didn't know what a fucking Passmark was last week.

Each in-progress recording or transcoding puts a heavy, heavy load on the CPU. Three clients works out to a minimum of 6000.

The upside to that is that it doesn't really need much else other than 2-4GB of RAM and a 256KB SSD and maybe an ethernet and usb2 port. Graphics don't much matter since nothing will make use of it. Even so, the minimum machine I can build seems to to be north of $800. And that is using sub-par other parts and it doesn't make sense to put an Intel Core i7 processor into a sub-standard motherboard. And truly, that only accommodates the server side. I'll need some other low-end appliance on each client side; figure $200 each. Also on the upside is that the OS won't cost anything (except the pain of having to learn enough about it to make this happen.

So, I'm going to dig out one of my old beaters and just pretend like it is the back-end server. I need something to practice on anyway.

It is a good project, and I'm learning a lot, but I'll close like I opened.

<<<exasperation>>>

DrMatt · Post by **DrMatt** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:30 pm

Discover local theater.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:32 pm

DrMatt wrote:Discover local theater.

Yea, well ...

http://static.dyp.im/MbLi4LJCIo/2284b4c ... 23c100.JPG

How 'bout a nice tall glass of Fuck That.

P. Fucking. S. The only thing I can find to work with is one old derelict computer I found in an attic closet. It is a Dell Dimension 5100 I garnered from a Brother In Law who was leaving town in a hurry (as they are wont to do). It won't boot. Won't even give me a POST. I suspect it is the power supply but it does turn on. I delved deep inside and disconnected everything except the motherboard and still couldn't even get a POST or any graphics so as to get to the BIOS. There's a green light on the motherboard but I have no fucking idea what that means.

fuck computers all to hell.

I blame Matt.

ed · Post by ed » Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:21 pm

Found the weak link.

Rain storm.

TV reception ain't worth a seedy coon skin (I am developing a southern patois)

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Fri Jan 09, 2015 6:30 pm

Two Words
Sling TV

Solves the issues nicely. I've 'applied' for an invite. Don't know if it is going to happen.

http://static.dyp.im/wDljzWIiQX/4ced457 ... 25f2d2.JPG

There are presumably deals for more on the table. Looks like $20 a month. Combine with Netflix at $8 a month and that is a sweet deal.

Here's the write up
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/09/slin ... _truncated
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... heres-why/

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Fri Jan 09, 2015 6:55 pm

Yup.

Of course, remember that HBO is also rolling out their streaming service too (whatever that will be).

So far, this is very, very nice idea.

ed · Post by ed » Fri Jan 09, 2015 11:47 pm

Rob Lister wrote:Two Words
Sling TV

Solves the issues nicely. I've 'applied' for an invite. Don't know if it is going to happen.

http://static.dyp.im/wDljzWIiQX/4ced457 ... 25f2d2.JPG

There are presumably deals for more on the table. Looks like $20 a month. Combine with Netflix at $8 a month and that is a sweet deal.

Here's the write up
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/09/slin ... _truncated
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... heres-why/

I'm there.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 3:29 am

A cord cutter for you:

http://www.nonags.com/funimg/bbunny.jpg

And afterwards you can always eat him.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:41 am

I gotta tell you, as a review, I fucking love my router. I've yet to have to reboot it even once. It is consistent and very reliable.

TP Link 803.11AC model AC1750

P.S. I've yet to receive an invite from Sling.

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:46 am

Rob Lister wrote:I gotta tell you, as a review, I fucking love my router. I've yet to have to reboot it even once. It is consistent and very reliable.

TP Link 803.11AC model AC1750

P.S. I've yet to receive an invite from Sling.

Thanks for a recommend.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:20 pm

ed wrote:
Rob Lister wrote:Two Words
Sling TV

Solves the issues nicely. I've 'applied' for an invite. Don't know if it is going to happen.

http://static.dyp.im/wDljzWIiQX/4ced457 ... 25f2d2.JPG

There are presumably deals for more on the table. Looks like $20 a month. Combine with Netflix at $8 a month and that is a sweet deal.

Here's the write up
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/09/slin ... _truncated
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... heres-why/
I'm there.

This is the first review of the service I've seen. I've yet to get an invite, which is fine, since I need reviews to see if the hype is true.

This is not a very good review.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01 ... t-live-tv/

But neither is it a terrible review.

To be honest, it appears they're setting up their own distinct cable network. Not a la carte at all. Though it wasn't really advertised that way something of that implication was there. You buy the service and you get some select channels. You can't drop channels and pay less or or add other channels and pay more or the same, you're stuck with what they have. That is pretty much the definition of my current cable system. Of course mine is five times as expensive but I get 10 time the channels ... channels I never ever watch.

Now that is okay if the price is right and they have all the channels you want (which in my case they do) and few of the channels you don't want (which in my case is also true) and you don't mind not being able to rewind or skip ahead (which is a little irksome to my spoiled self). Don't even think of skipping commercials and by golly, part of their deal appears to be that they will add their own targeted ads (the targeting is not defined but I assume regional for the time being).

I'm not hating it but I'm not in love either.

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Sat Feb 07, 2015 7:12 am

Received a sling invite, thinking about it.