Category: Cord Cutting

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First Look: Didja’s Local TV Streaming Service

One of the interesting things about being in the Silicon Valley is that startups are popping up all around you. Earlier this week I came across Didja, a startup providing a free service that streams local broadcast television, similar to Sling TV or DIRECTVNow. It includes a cloud DVR that allows you to record about 300 hours of shows.

Didja is based in Mountain View, California. As it turns out, they’re half a mile down the street from me and in a building that used to house one of my former clients!  Well, with such an auspicious location I had to see what it was all about. Continue reading “First Look: Didja’s Local TV Streaming Service”

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Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!

April 7, 2018: Please take a look at the follow-up to this review.

Koherence’s projects have long been powered by SiliconDust HDHomerun tuners. At present 13 HDHR4s are feeding the three production Entangles, and a venerable HDHR Rev 2 handles other sundry tasks. The RF and power supply cabling has started to become quite…entangling…so the announcement of the four-tuner HDHomerun Connect Quatro was received with much anticipation. As soon as a (not quite local) Best Buy got it in stock, I was off to get one for evaluation! Continue reading “Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!”

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The Project Entangle Wishlist (i.e. why write a DVR?)

So I’ve been getting this question a lot over the past several months: Why Project Entangle? Why would I go about writing a DVR?

On the surface it’s easy to think I’m crazy (in addition to being inkoherent). After all, there’s the Tablo OTA DVR (in fact I’ve had one since the Indiegogo days, although it’s been gathering dust for a couple years). Plex has added DVR support. And the fine folk at SiliconDust now have a DVR for their HDHomerun devices too. And there’s TiVo. Having been affiliated with them for close to two decades, I have a variety of them from Series2s to Roamios. Continue reading “The Project Entangle Wishlist (i.e. why write a DVR?)”

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Just What Is High Definition?

I recently read a newsgroup thread that started with someone asking just what high definition was. The thread wound in some surprising ways, with individuals asserting, among other things, that anything 16:9 was high definition and that 480i digital content was high definition (while presumably 480i analog was not). I suspect most of you wouldn’t agree. After all, we all know 720p and 1080i are HD while anything less is SD, right? Well things aren’t quite so clear cut.

Continue reading “Just What Is High Definition?”

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First Look: DIRECTV Now

Parting ways with Comcast hasn’t been as traumatic as I’d feared. Netflix’s library of Star Trek episodes has filled my “background TV” needs. And Prime Video along with Netflix have sufficed for those times when I couldn’t find anything to watch OTA.

However every now and then I get that yearning for Discovery and the History Channel. So I was quite intrigued to hear that DIRECTV was launching an IP streaming service. Even better, as part of the early adopter promotion, I could get the “Go Big” package for $35 for life. And to sweeten the deal even more, by pre-paying the first three month’s subscription I could also get the new AppleTV free. Needless to say I signed up as soon as the service was available.

Continue reading “First Look: DIRECTV Now”