I finally created the worlds first cheap convergence box for all of your media content accessed w...

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

I finally created the worlds first cheap convergence box for all of your media content accessed with one device.  This took an insane amount of effort but this is what I did.

 

Started with an Amazon Fire Stick ($40) then sideloaded kodi on it as well as firestarter to launch it.  Had Kodi connect to my Freenas Box with all of my local content through a NFS share.  I then bought a used HD Homerun Prime used for $80.  I used kodi's HdHomerun View app for live TV.  I then set up MythTV in a jail on my freenas box with mythweb to remote in to tweak recording settings.  This gave me everything but the premium channels.

 

For live premium channel viewing there is a HD Homerun View app but as of right now it only is for the full fire tv not the stick (wish I saw this sooner).  I sideloaded it anyway and got the SD channels working but too much stutter on HD channels.  My only premium channel is HBO so I just use HBO Go for recordings.  Silicon dust is working on a crossplatform DVR app for the Cinemax and Stars guys out there.

 

I will note this is a little buggy sometimes but no worse than your average smartphone.  I did have one freeze during setup and have had to reboot the stick about once a month.  MythTV flaggs and autoskips the commercials.  All the FireTV apps cover the basics like Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu Etc.

 

I did spend $1200 building an 18TB Freenas box with a $50 haswell pentium running the show and 16 GB ECC memory. Obviously, with the weak CPU you can replicate this with far less money maybe in the $500 or less area depending on required storage.  Mine idles at 50watts.

 

Limitations and quirks

FireTV wifi only works on two channels for 5GHZ wifi (why nobody seems to know)

No lossless bitstreamed audio (at least I still have something extra with my $500 HTPC until they fix this flaw with android)

It took me 3 hours arguing with the cable company to activate my cablecard

MythTV is insanely complicated to set up in a jail and even if your cool with that the settings take a bit work to get right.  I hope to get a plugin to make this install easier. (I went with MythTV as it was one of my only options on FreeNas and I did not want a power hungry windows media center computer with no support for future versions of windows)

 

If anybody wants to give this a go I am more than happy to help.  Only took me 12 years of my life to finally have an affordable to get and store it all.  I still use for my HTPC for archiving blu-rays and DVDs at least.  It may take a few years of avoiding DVR rental fees to pay itself back but it will.  The average person spends $236 a year on cablebox rentals.  Let me know what you guys think.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Nice. Well done! I'd hardly call $1300 cheap, but not bad if it works well.

 

I played with MythTV a bit along with NPVR and many others for a while when Time Warner was still sending me analog channels. Just before they cut off that service and started requiring cable boxes, we canceled our cable TV service and couldn't be happier.

 

We're Prime users, so the Fire TV made sense. We got the box for the living room and the stick for the bedroom. I've tried Kodi on it a few times and like the concept, it's just not easy to get to unless you use Firestarter and bypass the default Fire UI.

 

The 18TB storage and 16GB RAM I'm jealous of. My home server is also an old dual-core Pentium, but it leaves me wanting more. I've got Plex on the server and that does a great job cataloging ripped and downloaded movies.

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

Well lets be honest you can start sending it content with a windows notebook and a samba share.  You don't need a $1200 NAS for this to work as well.  Especially true if you do not transcode.  Synology has some descent NASes as well that can do PVR stuff I think.  It's all relative to how greedy for space you are.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Benjamin Webb you sir have more dedication to your projects then most (applause)! My goal is HDHomeRun Prime box, Synology NAS and usage of the HDHomeRun DVR software. It would really be sweet if the method you used could be incorporated to easily avoid the cost of the Channel listing service SiliconDust offers although it is not that expensive. Guess I I am always looking for the non-monthly service fee, when I can get it.