“I’d prefer to think I’m ahead of my time instead of a contrarian,” Glenn Fleishman writes for Macworld. “My wife and I cut the cord many years ago, and have survived ever since on discs, downloads, streaming media, and over-the-air (OTA) programming.”
“One thing we’ve faced, however, is a shortage of options to record programs. Because digital video recorders (DVRs) shifted a few years ago to being mostly a commodity item offered by a programming provider like Xfinity or Dish, the market for standalone units shrunk,” Fleishman writes. “There are a few: Tablo, Tivo, and a couple of more niche brands.”
“However, these standalone units record data to internal drives, and rely on apps, streaming, and other controls to give you access,” Fleishman writes. “Since I have a Mac that’s on all the time and has terabytes of available storage, I’d prefer keeping control in my hands, storing recordings locally on my Mac, and choosing how I time and space shift.”
Tons more in the full article – recommended for cord-cutters – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Back in February, AppAdvice offered a nice recipe for cord-cutters:
1. A 4th Generation Apple TV
2. A Subscription to SlingTV, DirecTV Now or PlayStation Vue
3. An HD Antenna
4. An HDHomeRun Connect Box
5. The Channels App for Apple TVMore here.
SEE ALSO:
Record live TV without a cable subscription – March 23, 2017
The ultimate cable television cord cutting solution for Apple TV owners – February 17, 2017
Making sense of myriad cord-cutting options – March 17, 2017
The ultimate cable television cord cutting solution for Apple TV owners – February 17, 2017
I have been doing this for many years now with an EyeTV 410 box with amplified antenna on my iMac. It’s not HD, but I’m OK with that. Unfortunately, Elgato no longer makes boxes like the 410 that accept a card for decoding all terrestrial TV channels, so when it eventually dies I’ll have no obvious alternative in Holland.
Same here, except for a different model EyeTV. Gotta say every time I see that list of “cord cutting” options I have to think each one of them is still “corded” to the internet and requires a service contract of some time. My definition of cutting the cord is not HAVING to subscribe to ANY service!
The ChannelMaster DVR+ is the best, hands down. It fetches programming information for free over the Internet (unlike TiVo which requires a subscription $$).
Use the elgato usb 950 with eyeTV on the mac and get HD with a 10 foot antenna. Works a treat. Been doing it since 2009.
I just looked at Elgato’s website and it seems they are out of the TV-business altogether. No receivers/tuners/set-top boxes to be found anywhere. Maybe they lost interest in it.