Antennas, Tuners, and Live TV
Installing an In-Home Antenna
Choosing an appropriate antenna and installing it correctly are the most important steps to receiving high quality over-the-air broadcasts of your local channels. The number of channels you can expect to receive will vary based on your location and surrounding geography, but a great resource to get started with is AntennaWeb.org.
Simply plug in your address and AntennaWeb will display a map showing your location relative to your area's TV transmission towers. You can see which networks you're likely to receive, what kind of antenna you should buy (ranging from a small omnidirectional antenna to a huge roof-mounted amplified beast), and in which direction you should point it.
In our case, we went with the Channel Master CM-4228HD, a rather large omnidirectional antenna that advertises an 80-mile range. This should ensure that we can receive every broadcast in our home Northern Kentucky area, and we may even pick up a few channels from neighboring cities in Ohio and Indiana.
The type of antenna you'll need will depend on how far you are from the towers and how high you are relative to local geography. If you live in an apartment on a high floor in a major city, you'll probably be fine with a small Mohu Leaf stuck next to a window. If you live in a rural valley, you'll need a high-powered directional antenna, if you can receive anything at all.
Whichever you choose, try your best to position it as high as possible and free of any large obstructions between it and the TV towers you're trying to reach. Keep in mind factors that can interfere with reception, such as metal framed buildings and power lines.
Once your antenna is installed, it's time to add the second vital component: the tuner.
Setting Up HDHomeRun
The next component you'll need to receive OTA signals on your SHIELD is a TV tuner. You can use either a network-based tuner (which feeds the TV signal to the SHIELD via Ethernet or Wi-Fi) or a USB tuner (which connects directly to the SHIELD via USB). The tuners that are compatible with both SHIELD and Plex are the SiliconDust HDHomeRun line of network tuners, the Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD USB tuner, and the AVerMedia AVerTV Volar Hybrid Q USB tuner.
If you plan to only use the tuner with your SHIELD, and if you already have a coaxial cable run from your antenna location to your SHIELD, you can stick with one of the USB tuners. If, however, you'd like to access live TV directly on other network devices, a network tuner is the way to go. This option also obviates the need to run coax from your antenna all the way to your SHIELD. You just need to get the coax to the closest Ethernet drop (or Wi-Fi, although we don't recommend a wireless connection between your tuner and the SHIELD), connect it to the tuner, and then the tuner transmits the signal to the SHIELD via the network.
So, to recap, here's what you need to get started with live TV via Plex:
- Over-the-air antenna
- Network or USB TV tuner
- A Plex Pass (Live TV is a Plex Pass-only feature as of the date of this article)
- A running Plex Server (either on your SHIELD or a separate PC or NAS)
If you have all of that, we can setup live TV and DVR in Plex.
Setting Up Live TV & DVR in Plex
We're using the HDHomeRun Connect for our tuner, but the steps are similar for other network and USB tuners. First, plug in the tuner and connect it to both the antenna via coax and to your network via Ethernet. Give it a moment to boot up and join your network, then launch the Plex Web interface head to Settings > Server > Live TV & DVR.
From here, click Set Up Plex DVR and Plex will scan for your tuner. Once it's located, follow the on-screen prompts to scan for channels, select your ZIP code and television provider, and refine your channel selection.
Note that the channels that Plex finds during its "scan" won't necessarily be tunable. Once setup is complete you may need to refine your antenna position or add an amplifier to receive some channels.
When setup is complete, Plex will begin downloading guide and metadata information for your channel lineup. This process can take quite some time, as Plex adds rich metadata information to each program just like it does with your personal media library. Note, however, that you can begin using Live TV via Plex immediately as data downloads in the background. Plex can also use multiple tuners simultaneously, so if you have an additional TV tuner, you can set it up now.
Switching back to the Plex interface, you can test out Live TV right away via the web, or you can hop over to your SHIELD to try it there. Plex doesn't use a traditional program guide layout, which can be a bit annoying, but it does display live, recorded, and upcoming content in the same "poster grid" layout that is used for your own media.
You can browse live TV via channel, search via content type (movies, TV, sports, news, etc.), or search for a specific show, movie, or sports team to see a list of all live and upcoming broadcasts.
Plex offers full DVR functionality with advanced features such as the ability to add a few extra minutes of recording time to the start and end of a show, record only first-run episodes as opposed to repeats, record broadcasts only offered at a certain minimum resolution, or record the show only on a certain channel or in a specific timeslot. Essentially, Plex DVR can handle any function found on your typical cable box and more.
The really special thing about Plex DVR, however, is how it optionally integrates with your existing media library. By default, TV shows and movies are recorded to the same locations as your existing content, and added automatically to your media library complete with full posters, artwork, and metadata.
Of course, some users may prefer to keep DVR content and their ripped media library separate, in which case you can configure Plex to save your DVR recordings to a separate directory, and not add them to your existing library. You can also configure Plex to delete recordings after watching, or after a certain number of days, and also to only keep the most recent handful of episodes. This is useful for recording daily broadcasts like the Today Show or your local news, without having these frequent recordings muck up your pristine ripped media library.
Once Live TV is up and running, you can watch via your SHIELD, but you can also stream it to your other Plex clients and a growing number of Plex apps. The following devices are supported as of the date of this article:
- Amazon Fire TV
- Android Mobile
- Android TV
- Apple TV
- iOS
- Roku
Live TV via Plex is currently only viewable via the primary Plex account, so you can't share it with your Plex friends, but anything you record via the DVR will be immediately accessible to your shared users.
OK, so we have our NVIDIA SHIELD up and running with Plex for both our on-demand media library and over-the-air television. Next, we'll look at the "wow" factor of 4K HDR support.
You can’t run it on a Shield,
You can’t run it on a Shield, but if your PLEX DVR is on a windows box, you have to get MCEbuddy, and comskip. It picks up the recordings and strips out the commercials. It works so much better than I ever thought possible.
don’t they both do the same
don’t they both do the same thing? both mcebuddy and comskip? which would you set up first – i would love to know as im running a simliar setup and would like to avoid manually fast forwarding!
When net neutrality goes the
When net neutrality goes the internet providers will be mostly the cable provider and content providers not owned directly by the internet provider/cable company will have to pay or their content will take forever streaming out the internet customer at the end of the deal. So look for all that free streaming content to become paid content. And digital over the air TV is a joke as they have so reduced the channel width and sold off the best signal propagating bands for over the air TV over for data usage. I can barely get good and stable TV reception and most of the over the air content is the bottom of the barrel total crap content and the signal drops every time a bus or truck comes down the street.
Um, actually the FCC just
Um, actually the FCC just approved the ATSC 3.0 standard that will allow for even more channels to be available over the air in the future. The spectrum being sold off that you are referring to was actually do to improper planning from affiliates who chose to stick with VHF without taking into account the transmit power restrictions in place for VHF. And, the quality of content is purely subjective. I personally find that the cable networks have nothing but terrible reality TV garbage, with a few exceptions of course, whereas most of the shows we watch are on ABC, FOX, etc. Take for instance The Orville, The Flash, Arrow, Gotham, Blacklist, etc. Some of the best TV shows available are available over the air, in my SUBJECTIVE opinion. Don’t conflate opinion with fact.
It’s unfortunate that you get bad reception where you live, but for me I pull in TV stations from over 50 miles away using a roof mount antenna. I actually have to disable some of the channels because I get multiple ABC stations so I disable the one that isn’t intended for my area. In total, after a channel scan, I’m pulling in 71 channels.
Yea I cut the cord like 7
Yea I cut the cord like 7 years ago no more cable TV or Sat TV. Get all of my TV and movie watching off of the internet. BUt if you want to stay all legal you are basically replacing one cable with another. Once you start doing subscriptions for things like Netflix or HULU etc etc it all adds up.
It is a lot nicer being able to pick your own content which is more important to me oh and no advertising every 2.5 minutes. I know if I go over to someones place and try to watch cable TV now I find myself getting very annoyed very fast because of the constant station breaks for advertising.
I am looking at doing this
I am looking at doing this and I would like to get a NAS to store the content. What one would recommend? I have heard good things about WD, QNAP and Synology. I see that some say they have “plex support” but I am unsure how much power I would need the NAS to have. I would only need it to be able to do 1 maybe 2 streams at a time. Thanks.
If you plan on using the NAS
If you plan on using the NAS as a Plex server, then I’d honestly recommend rolling your own. I’ve had very little success with transcoding on NAS devices. My recommendation is to build your own NAS box with a decent CPU and install FreeNAS or unRAID and go from there. You’ll have plenty of power to handle transcodes, and if you play your cards right it could actually end up being cheaper than any of the dedicated NAS boxes. If you do decide to go with a NAS box though, you need to get one that specifically states it supports hardware transcoding. Usually you will pay a premium for that feature however. Synology has the DS418 and DS418Play NAS boxes which should have enough power to do what you want.