CwF wrote on 2022-08-31, 21:16:
I went without tv for a few decades and now in civilization built a octa tuner debian machine with a huge antenna and get 92 channels, 25 great ones, better than than cable of yesteryear. With no streaming, cable, satellite bills I can build a new box or add another drive every few months...
With so many old series that I originally missed being rebroadcast I'm not bothered by the reality that reality tv sucks. Very few new shows are worth watching except news maybe. I like to cue up the old series completely and then binge them over a week or two. I think I get more out of it that way, engrossed. Old movies just keep coming. It's almost a cultural study from the patterns that emerge, era common sociology. Like advertising time. An hour show in the 50's and 60's might be 55 minutes. It hit a low of 38 minutes in the 80's. Later on with the dawn of cable only networks we see variations.
Today HD rebroadcast are higher quality than DVD's. The well done SD channels are as good. h.265 makes them tiny. There all free over the air now! Eventually I'll catch up!
I gotta work on my Tuner/server setup again, I keep getting "almost there" and repurposing hardware, or having new stuff come in that requires a replan, or having software stop being supported (Well really web services that the software needed) ... that and I keep trying to get a quad tuner card for cheap/reasonable and getting thwarted. We did a family christmas pool bit like a secret santa a few years back, to stop us 12-16 adults just buying $10 junk for each other. So everyone got something they wanted that was half decent. Supposed to give ideas to whoever got you. So sent the dude like 3 different links to quad TV tuners for PC, and bolded and underlined "Not a normal TV converter box" and what did I get, yeah "The dude at the store said this would be what you meant ." a normal TV convertor box. "Thanks very much! *fake grin*" ... then a load of just missing them and no response on classified, and an amazon order where they said 3 in stock that turned into zero 2 days after I ordered and got refunded. But I got two Hauppage PCIe ATSC, one USB ATSC, several converter boxes and several oldskool NTSC PCI tuners. So gonna be trying to cram as much of that as possible in one box. Think I'm gonna be trying to tie it all together with plex. Could get 3 or 4 users trying to stream at once, not sure if that's too much to expect from one box to do at the same time as not missing recordings on two tuners simultaneously. Wondering if it's possible to de-prioritise "general snarfing" i.e. "grab all episodes you can get of X whatever channel/time" vs programmed single event recording.
At this moment, looks like rig will be two Hauppage and two analog set to charge or replayTV or something SD with a lot of classic stuff through boxes, Core2 Quad at 3ghz, 8MB DDR3 Q45 motherboard, 128GB SSD boot and working area, 2x3GB seagate mass storage. Might have some variance in GPU, will see if decoders in HD6450 are still supported, or might use GT610 or if needed the K620.
Edit: Hah, might manage a little more DDR3 than 8MB, 8GB perhaps.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.