Ditching the cable tv, anyone else do it?

:noidea: This sounds like science fiction to me. :prof:
I have been searching for IPTV and my head is spinning with all the information.. I will look into that more later.

I have also searched what would be involved in taking a few shows I have recorded off my vip722 dish network dvr/receiver - can I assume there is no easy way to do that? I noticed some people are opening up the boxes, removing the hard drive, booting up in Koppix/linux, copying data from the EXT3 formatted Dish network drive to their ntfs drive to their computers, then using a special program off the internet to read those files -- at least that seemed the most reasonable approach, but sounds like far too much work to me.

Apparently connecting to the usb port and moving the shows to the external drive will encrypt the data by tying it to the dish account number?

soooo confused.
 
The stations I have been listening to seem to be commercial free but as soon as they start with them I will be dumping it too. Too expensive but I thought I would give it a try for a year in the new car. :thinking:



I dumped Sirius/XM at the first of the year due to commercials and it costs too damn much. Had it in both vehicles.
 
I have been searching for IPTV and my head is spinning with all the information.. I will look into that more later.

I have also searched what would be involved in taking a few shows I have recorded off my vip722 dish network dvr/receiver - can I assume there is no easy way to do that? I noticed some people are opening up the boxes, removing the hard drive, booting up in Koppix/linux, copying data from the EXT3 formatted Dish network drive to their ntfs drive to their computers, then using a special program off the internet to read those files -- at least that seemed the most reasonable approach, but sounds like far too much work to me.

Apparently connecting to the usb port and moving the shows to the external drive will encrypt the data by tying it to the dish account number?

soooo confused.

Like you said it is possible to get content off your dish dvr box but it is and will be a huge effort and time sink....

I'm pretty in tune to this stuff, I have to be...:thinking:

List up your requirements and I'll see if I can help point you to a solution/s...
 

James

Staff member
I have been searching for IPTV and my head is spinning with all the information.. I will look into that more later.

I have also searched what would be involved in taking a few shows I have recorded off my vip722 dish network dvr/receiver - can I assume there is no easy way to do that? I noticed some people are opening up the boxes, removing the hard drive, booting up in Koppix/linux, copying data from the EXT3 formatted Dish network drive to their ntfs drive to their computers, then using a special program off the internet to read those files -- at least that seemed the most reasonable approach, but sounds like far too much work to me.

Apparently connecting to the usb port and moving the shows to the external drive will encrypt the data by tying it to the dish account number?

soooo confused.
Short answer? You can't transfer or remove shows/data from satellite receivers, the data is encrypted so that you can only play them on the receiver that it was downloaded on.
The stations I have been listening to seem to be commercial free but as soon as they start with them I will be dumping it too. Too expensive but I thought I would give it a try for a year in the new car. :thinking:
Sirius channels never had commercials when I had it, but XM did. So I'm guessing that when they merged the Sirius channels stayed commercial free and the XM ones didn't. :noidea:
 
Follow up - giving up cable/satellite is like quitting smoking, little rough at first, now I wonder why I had it in the first place. Never was a big sports tv fan, but I still have the Dodgers, Angels and Ducks on regular tv. All channels are HD or HD quality, much better picture quality than Directv. Also get channels I didn't know existed, including TUFFTV - the mens channel, nothing but racing, fighting, car movies etc.
As for everything else, there are so many movies and tv shows on the internet, it's unreal. Much larger selection than I used to have. I could watch tv nonstop for the next 10 years without repeating anything. I give it a :thumb:
 
I'm not sure that it works on a 722, but I downloaded a bunch of stuff from my older 522 DVR. It was simple to open the case and pull out the HD. Then put the drive in an external USB enclosure. Install the software on my laptop and plug in the USB drive. After that it was select the shows and put them on the laptop's drive. Pretty easy actually. There is one hitch. The sound on "premium" channels like HBO is encrypted. You can get the video, but no sound. For regular TV and some cable channels it is in the clear.

Then I put the drive back in the DVR and put the cover back on.

I just looked it up. The software is called pvrexplorer, but it doesn't list the 722.
 

James

Staff member
I'm not sure that it works on a 722, but I downloaded a bunch of stuff from my older 522 DVR. It was simple to open the case and pull out the HD. Then put the drive in an external USB enclosure. Install the software on my laptop and plug in the USB drive. After that it was select the shows and put them on the laptop's drive. Pretty easy actually. There is one hitch. The sound on "premium" channels like HBO is encrypted. You can get the video, but no sound. For regular TV and some cable channels it is in the clear.

Then I put the drive back in the DVR and put the cover back on.

I just looked it up. The software is called pvrexplorer, but it doesn't list the 722.
Really? I'd looked into this once and the verdict was no not possible, but then again it was Direct TV. :noidea:
 
Like you said it is possible to get content off your dish dvr box but it is and will be a huge effort and time sink....

I'm pretty in tune to this stuff, I have to be...:thinking:

List up your requirements and I'll see if I can help point you to a solution/s...

ok, the first thing I would like to know about: Queuing up shows. Can I start to watch things then select pause to have it download content in case my jittery (and possibly slow) connection is acting up? i.e. have it work like youtube.

The second thing: could I download stuff and watch it offline?

I would imagine the answer is 'it depends'...
 
ok, the first thing I would like to know about: Queuing up shows. Can I start to watch things then select pause to have it download content in case my jittery (and possibly slow) connection is acting up? i.e. have it work like youtube.

All the major services will allow a certain amount of the stream to buffer up, but not the whole thing. Partly due to may of the devices have limited amount of memory but even in a PC scenario it won't buffer the whole thing. How fast is your connection? You really need to be about 1Mbit to stream OK, 1.5Mbit is much better.

The second thing: could I download stuff and watch it offline?

I would imagine the answer is 'it depends'...

As far as I know most services this is not the case, Netflix and hulu plus do not allow this. Amazon does but it might only be on a "PC".
 
All the major services will allow a certain amount of the stream to buffer up, but not the whole thing. Partly due to may of the devices have limited amount of memory but even in a PC scenario it won't buffer the whole thing. How fast is your connection? You really need to be about 1Mbit to stream OK, 1.5Mbit is much better.

My speed varies a lot. Usually 3MB, sometimes 2, sometimes 4, never below 1.5.
Besides the actual speed of the connection I am worried about the server itself - youtube periodicly (sp?) stops serving content occasionally. In addition sometimes the internet gets interrupted completely for 2 minutes at a time a few times a day, I know what is wrong but have not fixed it (phone rings, wifi on the same frequency as the phone, modem resets).

Having a few minutes of video queued up takes care of all of that. :thumb: In addition, if I wanted to use a lower speed connection then in theory that should be possible, to a point.
 
As far as I know most services this is not the case, Netflix and hulu plus do not allow this. Amazon does but it might only be on a "PC".

I am sure there is enough 'stuff' on the internet where things could be downloaded from. Typically people post at least 30 minutes of video each day and I should be watching that video, but I really have other things to do during the day. In theory I could download them during the day and watch them without a connection.
 
I would strongly suggest a wired connection, especially if you aren't using wireless N.

Actually it works fairly decent via wireless.. though I will use wired long term.

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Works great! :thumb:
 
Actually it works fairly decent via wireless.. though I will use wired long term.

DSC_1327Large.jpg



Works great! :thumb:

well idk a whole lot about Roku.. but i do know hulu plus is a joke :P

However, I do like netflix pandora and i havent had a problem as of yet with amazon so thats good haha
 
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