Best low cost route for multiple TVs in house? Cable/Sat?

T

tglarsen

Member
I have a new home and 6 TVs spread out through the place.  I am currently signed up with Comcast, but am hating the extra costs of the additional boxes they require you to rent. (Cannot buy, thanks, comcast)
 
Does anybody know the best route to go, and would you recommend Dish over Comcast?  I gotta have the Pac12 network, and those are the only 2 in the area to offer.
 
I have a Leviton panel that houses my cable splitter to 8 rooms, and an HDMI splitter that takes my 1 HDMI signal from my MacMini and sends it to 4 different TVs.
 
So, my questions;
1. Cheapest/best route to go for mutli-TV cable box viewing
2. Dish or Comcast
 
I've seen some people do streaming with a cable card and HomeRun boxes, but wasn't sure how that works.
 
Thoughts?
 
A friend recently solved the problem of the high rental cost of cable set top boxes by getting a TiVo Roamio Plus and a set of TiVo Minis for each of his TV sets.  The Roamio Plus has 6 tuners, but requires just one cable card.  The Minis allow each TV set to watch a recorded or live program.  Watching a live program requires one of the 6 tuners, so you that means while you are watching live, that particular tuner can't be used to record a program.
 
Purchasing the equipment required some substantial upfront costs, but he figures the payback period will be a bit over 1 year based on the outrageous rental fees his cable company charges for each set top box.
 
Ohhhh, that is an interesting solution.  I can have that live above my panel and run the show.  Looks like everything needs to be hard wired, though.
 
Interesting thing I see;


What does TiVo Mini cost?






To be activated, TiVo Mini requires:
  1. A one-time cost of $99.99 for the unit
  2. A service plan:
    • Monthly service fee: $5.99/month with a minimum of one (1) year commitment and an early termination fee
    • Product lifetime service (PLS): One-time service fee of $149.99





 
I'm wondering, is this only if you want to use the DVR options?
 
I'd be perfectly fine with buying one of these and having my cable DVR on the main TV, and everything else runs the home.  Would just hate to have more costs and Tivo sneak in some extras.
 
Thank you for the suggestion, as this gives me a great place to check.
 
+1 RAL
 
Here have cable and satellite and OTA.  It used to be a couple of lifetime owned Tivo boxes connected to satellite TV.  Its now a satellite DVR; not rented.   Been using satellite service for probably close to 20 years now.
 
That said and still working on the WAF as she is very used to the Tivo boxes. 
 
I built a MythTV box with multiple tuners.  Changed the LCD TV "set top" boxes to XBMC boxes.  These stream live or recorded television just fine.  I keep one box in the house with multiple web based streaming multimedia services (well like Amazon, Netfllix, et al).  Its mostly DIY and not really an "off the shelf solution".
 
I also back feed channels to the house cable.  I can mix HD and SD stuff this way.  (TVs then have two sources of video; RF and XBMC only).  I don't watch much TV though; just the wife does.  That said have shifted a bit from watching recordings to streaming; works OK these days.  (IE watching the Seinfeld show from season one in order - never really watched it when it was first broadcast - such that its all new to me these days). 
 
Noticed wife doesn't watch any live TV these days and its all recorded content only on "demand" whenever she pleases.  She has noticed that I can pause, fast forward or rewind streaming web based media stuff.
 
Just chatted with Tivo.... they charge $6/box and you must buy the service for everything to work.  Odd.  Not sure how your friend has it set up, but the person specifically said I cannot use the boxes without the fee.
 
 
 
RAL said:
A friend recently solved the problem of the high rental cost of cable set top boxes by getting a TiVo Roamio Plus and a set of TiVo Minis for each of his TV sets.  The Roamio Plus has 6 tuners, but requires just one cable card.  The Minis allow each TV set to watch a recorded or live program.  Watching a live program requires one of the 6 tuners, so you that means while you are watching live, that particular tuner can't be used to record a program.
 
Purchasing the equipment required some substantial upfront costs, but he figures the payback period will be a bit over 1 year based on the outrageous rental fees his cable company charges for each set top box.
Click to expand...
 
tglarsen said:
I have a new home and 6 TVs spread out through the place.  I am currently signed up with Comcast, but am hating the extra costs of the additional boxes they require you to rent. (Cannot buy, thanks, comcast)
 
Does anybody know the best route to go, and would you recommend Dish over Comcast?  I gotta have the Pac12 network, and those are the only 2 in the area to offer.
 
I have a Leviton panel that houses my cable splitter to 8 rooms, and an HDMI splitter that takes my 1 HDMI signal from my MacMini and sends it to 4 different TVs.
 
So, my questions;
1. Cheapest/best route to go for mutli-TV cable box viewing
2. Dish or Comcast
 
I've seen some people do streaming with a cable card and HomeRun boxes, but wasn't sure how that works.
 
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
 
Is ATT Uverse available in your area and are you willing to run ethernet cable to each TV?
 
Unfortunately not available.
 
I am able to get ethernet to each TV, if needed.
 
We have Comcast, Verizon (not FIOS), and of course... Dish.
 
 
mikefamig said:
Is ATT Uverse available in your area and are you willing to run ethernet cable to each TV?
Click to expand...
 
Have FIOS in Florida. Switched there from satellite to FIOS when first introduced. 
 
Small subdivision offers cable and fiber to all of the homes which is a neato thing.
 
Each TV here and there has at least one RG-6 and one network connection.  In the Midwest the two connections are utilized.
 
I did over do the pre wire with multiple RG-6 / network cables everywhere around 10 years ago.  (RG-6 is really not necessary these days).
 
There is no real best and most cost effective means these days; prices are always changing.
 
Best deals typically have been the 1-2 year discounted priced contract and then asking for better price at the end of the one or two year contract or switching providers and starting all over again which is a PITA.
 
BTW when I cancelled DTV in Florida (~2006) to switch to Verizon FIOS; DTV offered one year of free service (used it there since the early 1990's).
 
tglarsen said:
Just chatted with Tivo.... they charge $6/box and you must buy the service for everything to work.  Odd.  Not sure how your friend has it set up, but the person specifically said I cannot use the boxes without the fee.
Click to expand...
 
I checked with my friend... he bought lifetime service plans for his Roamio and Minis through the use of a "coupon" that you can buy on eBay, like this one.
 
With the coupon, you get the Mini with lifetime service for $174, and no monthly $5.99 fees.  With that cost, it is less than a year's cable company fees for a set top box.
 
I'm curious why you would keep the cable company's DVR.  Why not use the TiVo's DVR capabilities instead?
 
mikefamig said:
Is ATT Uverse available in your area and are you willing to run ethernet cable to each TV?
Click to expand...
Uverse still requires a STB but NOT ethernet, it still goes back to their RG via whatever infrastructure choice, they only offer the cabling choice as an convenience.
 
Htpc with cablecard and multiple HDMI video cards (actually I don't know if you can do this so may need media center extender here too) feeding an HDMI matrix switch (4x4). Media center extenders for the other 2 TVs.
 
Do you really need 6 TVs with live cable/sat feed at the same time? Why not have a single box and distribute that to the TVs that you would actually watch Pac12 on and use a Netfilx/Hulu/Amazon subscription on the others. You would still get most, if not all, the shows your family would watch and have on-demand as well. If you don't have a TV with streaming features built-in you could pick up a tiny box to connect to it.
 
Sports... love being able to watch sports from whichever room I'm in.  That's kinda the killer for me.
 
I have smart tvs in each room, so I can get most of the streaming services, but I need to get live TV to each.  
 
I was thinking of the multi-switch, and that may be an option, though I only have 4 HDMIs out to TVs.  I'd love to have a single box and 6 tuners that could send the signal out. 
 
Multi-room sucks when you need to pay for so many boxes.
 
That Tivo option may be the best route at this point, but expensive up front.
 
 
video321 said:
Do you really need 6 TVs with live cable/sat feed at the same time? Why not have a single box and distribute that to the TVs that you would actually watch Pac12 on and use a Netfilx/Hulu/Amazon subscription on the others. You would still get most, if not all, the shows your family would watch and have on-demand as well. If you don't have a TV with streaming features built-in you could pick up a tiny box to connect to it.
Click to expand...
 
I like this option, though I have Macs in the house... and 3 XBox 360s and a XBone.
 
However, this looks to be a good options;
http://cetoncorp.com/products/infinitv-6-ethernet/
 
Nice call on this, as it would save me at least $25/mo in box charges.
 
Are you running this or have any experience with it?
 
And thoughts compared to this;  HD HomeRun
 
If using my 360s is a way to beat out the system, may as well give it a run.
 
az1324 said:
That's why I said HTPC.

http://www.amazon.com/Ceton-InfiniTV-PCIe-6-channel-CableCARD/dp/B00D97B9BU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1407036074&sr=8-2&keywords=ceton

A few cheap xbox 360s as your media extenders.
Click to expand...
 
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