Now Tv

[hawsey]

From a recommendation off dwl99
I just ordered a Now Tv streamer https://shop.nowtv.com for £9.99 delivered and £2.04 cashback via topcashback.
It can be hacked to run plex and looks a good punt for a bit of tinkering on the cheap.
Anybody else got one of these gadgets?

[dwl99]

I think the holy grail would be XBMC on one of these but I believe that it has been definitively stated that it will never happen

[castalla]

From a recommendation off dwl99
I just ordered a Now Tv streamer https://shop.nowtv.com for £9.99 delivered and £2.04 cashback via topcashback.
It can be hacked to run plex and looks a good punt for a bit of tinkering on the cheap.
Anybody else got one of these gadgets?

The Roku is/was 'hackable' for a brief moment - not sure about the NowTV box.

In any event, I don't think anyone has an xbmc distro under development.

[dwl99]

The NowTV box can be put indo Developer mode http://www.strayed.co.uk/2013/07/29/how ... ow-tv-box/ which enables you to sideload a single app. Plex has many addons, including Youtube. Obviously you need Plex Media Server as a backend on your PC or NAS. I would have preferred a plain vanilla UPNP client for the NowTV box to avoid the need to have Plex running alongside Twonky on my setup but you can't have everything

[castalla]

The NowTV box can be put indo Developer mode http://www.strayed.co.uk/2013/07/29/how ... ow-tv-box/ which enables you to sideload a single app. Plex has many addons, including Youtube. Obviously you need Plex Media Server as a backend on your PC or NAS. I would have preferred a plain vanilla UPNP client for the NowTV box to avoid the need to have Plex running alongside Twonky on my setup but you can't have everything

I thought you meant that the box could be hacked with an alternative system.

Plex needs a hefty PC to run effectively - not really an alternative for xbmc, imho.

If you just want to play files on the NTV stored on a PC, etc. then there's Chaneru2

[dwl99]

Chaneru2 looks exactly what I need, thanks for the info. Looks like I can point it to Twonky running on my NAS.

[hawsey]

Ahh thats what I will be needing then as well.
I run xbmc on my revo and I think plex would tip it over the edge as did LMS when I tried SPos.
Looking forward to its arrival now.....

[hawsey]

I can't find any info on installing Chaneru 2 or anyone that has it working , have you got it going Castalla?

I did find this on my search for it though , its called MediaBrowser3 not had a good look but its something else that the Now Tv box can do ....

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permal ... now-tv-box

[pete]

If you guys want me to look; I picked up a "few" Aopen Digital engines. These are small core duo machines and they work well for XBMC.

They have either DVI or HDMI outputs. I am using them all over the house.

I can look on this side of the pond.

Thinking I paid $30-$40 USD for each one with no power supply. They are very well constructed.

/best

Pete

[castalla]

I can't find any info on installing Chaneru 2 or anyone that has it working , have you got it going Castalla?

I did find this on my search for it though , its called MediaBrowser3 not had a good look but its something else that the Now Tv box can do ....

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permal ... now-tv-box

Have a look here: http://www.chaneru.com/

I have a Roku LT - it works okay but the NowTV is a strange beast!

In fact the whole Roku experience is quite bizarre - a few decent channels and 1000s of rubbish which our US cousins seem to love and can't live without. They deleted the one decent channel (Filmon) without warning - personally, I'm not a great fan of Christian fundamentalist and horror movies .... or news clips about Justin Bieber.

[hawsey]

Cheers Castalla , I will try again tomorrow as I still can't see if they work on the Now tv box lol must be tired lol .

Pete those Aopen Digital engines sound interesting , will have a look on ebay and see what they are about

[castalla]

The Roku is a very frustrating device. I managed to 'root' mine before Roku issued a patch which disabled the patch. I can telnet cinto the device v- but that's as far as it goes. There's nothing worthwhile to do.

HHmmm?

[dwl99]

I agree, the range of TV channels is carp. Bizarrely enough, I don't think anyone would ever get a NowTV box to watch the internet TV stations! Its only use for me is for iPlayer, Demand 5, ITV player etc and for media streaming all for 8 quid - you can quite safely ignore the rest of the rubbish on it.

Pete - if you can source an Aopen Digital engine for $30 - $40 I would be extremely interested, they're way more expensive over here!

[pete]

Yup here many companies were using them for digital signage:

http://www.aopen.com/us/digital-signage

Many have gone out of business and many are just dumping old stuff to get new.

Lately the prices on used ones have gone up; primarily for use with XBMC I think.

I purchased a few at once here and they came with embedded XPE on them. So I got the licenses if I want to use XPE but switched over to now using small SSD's. They are built in a very industrial way; commercial appliances to be on 24/7.

The power supplies for these are 19VDC standard laptop bricks which can be had these days for as little as $10 USD.

Note that the "better" ones are the commercial digital engines rather than the home mini pc's. That is my take on them though. My first MCE box (that I liked) was an Aopen Mini-PC with a mini tuner inside, bluetooth, wireless and the Gb interface. I had also built larger MCE boxes but this one had the most features and was the smallest size.

My favorite NMT was the little Patriot PBO box because I put small 1Tb notebook drives in it (bought 5 of these) and chrooted the OS to give me a bit more.

You can today get a larger than USB sized quad core arm based android device and redo the OS such that it runs Linux; its just a bit more difficult to do these days. I did just read an article about this whole smart TV thing along with all of the off the shelf media players (mostly Android) that are being offered. Many of these are now restricting their services for HD content promoting said services such that you purchase the box and the service. There was no mention of XBMC in the rating of some 10 different boxes / services. (ratings included using Roku and smart sticks with HDMI connections to your LCD TV).

Personally here do not watch a lot of live TV; but playing with this stuff. Today its basically just XBMC boxes, MythTV box with multiple tuners and one box running PlayOn TV (which connects to multiple digital streaming TV things).

Here as folks drop basic TV cable services and go to Internet Digital TV stuff; The largest ISP's are attempting to control HD content delivery changing or filtering methodologies of HD content digital delivery mostly because they are losing customers to basic internet services I think?

[offbeatdave]

I agree, the range of TV channels is carp. Bizarrely enough, I don't think anyone would ever get a NowTV box to watch the internet TV stations! Its only use for me is for iPlayer, Demand 5, ITV player etc and for media streaming all for 8 quid - you can quite safely ignore the rest of the rubbish on it.

I picked up a cheap Roku LT for the bedroom TV (no HDMI input on TV) and I agree - I only use iPlayer, 4OD, Demand 5 and, now they finally released a decent media streamer, the Roku Media Streaming channel. Did try channelru or whatever it's called before Roku put a decent streaming channel on there.

Is there an ITV player on the NowTV version then? I did read this at the weekend:

Meanwhile, another channel that we've been crying out to have added to Roku UK players also took a step closer towards reality during the past seven days with THIS ANNOUNCEMENT from ITV and Sky that (as part of a wider agreement involving the new 'ITV Encore' channel) we can now finally expect to see an "Official" version of 'ITV Player' added to the NowTV Box. The aforementioned article (published by The Guardian) came about as a direct result of THIS PRESS RELEASE from ITV and A SIMILAR PRESS RELEASE from Sky. Perhaps significantly, if you recall an earlier announcement from Sky in respect of '4oD', the news also heralded it's arrival on UK Roku players. So, with that important precedent already set, it's probably safe to assume that we'll get an 'ITV Player' channel for Roku UK at (or around) the same time as it's added to NowTV Boxes later this year. So, all in all, it's been a pretty good week in terms of Roku-related news, don't you think ?!!

For me though the rest of the channels are bizarre! I do occasionally browse new channels just in case but seriously, who watches all that stuff!?

[castalla]

For me though the rest of the channels are bizarre! I do occasionally browse new channels just in case but seriously, who watches all that stuff!?

Americans?!

[hawsey]

To be truthful I am only getting this because it is 8 quid after cashback and I love tinkering with stuff B-) ,

When I retire my acer revo it would probably be for something like the hp proliant that can house my hdds,
For a basic xbmc box the rasp pi with 512 ram has to be the cheapest workable solution and most people probably have all the other stuff you need to get it going in a drawer somewhere. Next up the Android boxes are pretty good now
Was hoping it would arrive today but no sign yet....

[dwl99]

You might want to consider a Zyxel NSA210 NAS - the're as cheap as chips & have very low power consumption. I sold my Revo at Xmas as it was sooo slooowwww, the NSA210 with a 1TB HDD came in about 60 quid. It runs Twonky Media Server, Squeezebox Server and can download torrent files. My Panasonic smart TV streams video from it beautifully.

[hawsey]

Dave ,
Great idea but only one big problem , I am a big xbmc nut and much as it would probably give me less grief doing the above it would mean I would still need something to run my xbmc .
The hp boxes can be nas and xbmc I believe .
Openelec runs good on the Revo booting off an sd card mind so its just that at the min I have the revo , two 1tb hdds that's three power supplies and power packs ! I must admit the WAF is not good lol
I even thought of a masssive hdd for one of the old xboxes and using that as a sort of nas , hd content is not so important for me , power consumption would be big though .
Maybee even a Joggler with a big hdd would do it .
Due to costs , prob just stay the way it is lol

[pete]

Yup; here dad watched TV by seeing how many channels he could change with the remote in a period of time; any channels that he would stay on; he would promptly fall asleep; morning, afternoon or evening in less than some 5 minutes.

I noticed wife doing same here. She doesn't really watch any live TV other than flicking through channels. She also falls asleep after staying on a channel for more than 15 minutes or so.

Its almost a check of how many channels are available and how fast you can work the remote control and concurrently keep up the attention span?

Here the provided combo services of television, internet and telephone in package deals have skyrocketed from around $100 USD to some $250 to $300 per month. It almost looks like the two are sync'd; IE: as folks drop broadband cable; internet prices go up to continue to provide profitability.

That said folks are dropping regular cable TV and doing al la carte internet TV stuff. Some ISP (internet service providers) are keeping prices down while others are increasing prices at an alarming rate because they can.

I've kept the combo fiber connection in FL to a reasonable ~160 for TV, Internet and Telephone. That said one day in the last couple of years the provider did up my rates; stating that I requested the service adds. It was a PITA to deal with them as they told me they could not undo what they did. What I have seen though is the company is keeping its internet fiber prices relatively low when people switch.

This methodology contradicts what the ISP is doing here in the midwest upping their internet prices while folks shut off their cable TV and the ISP's provided VOIP services such that the company continues to replenish its money cache by off setting their losses of TV services and upping their internet pricing structures.

A good 75% of the 60 channels broadcast HD stuff here is pure junk / filler of some sorts. (but its free)

What is neat though is you can test your HD 1080 reception; but that is getting old.