Best streaming device for a cord cutter?

whitenack

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
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10,560
A little background...

I have been a cord cutter for a couple of years now. I have 1 TV in the house, in the living room. I have an OTA antenna that takes care of my local networks. This antenna feeds into an old Tivo from my cable TV days, which then feeds into a Logitech Revue (Google TV) which then feeds into the TV. I like Google TV because it lets me stream ESPN3 on the TV

For Christmas, my wife has asked for a TV in the bedroom (I'm a lucky man). I was thinking about doing the same setup (Antenna to Google TV box to TV), but just realized that none of the Google TV boxes have coaxial inputs, only HDMI. I could still use a Google TV box, I'd just have to set it up on a separate component input, which is not exactly what I had in mind.

I see that Boxee Box and Boxee TV have coaxial inputs, but I am not sure about the ESPN3 capability.

I know that Roku is very popular, but, again, no ESPN3.

Just trying to get a feel for what other people are doing.
 

billmanky

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Dec 2, 2012
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10,510
your time-line reads about like my own. When I cut the cord I added a Roku to the living room tv and added Hulu + and netflix subscriptions. With Hulu + I haven't missed much, but sports are still the biggest pain point.

I set up a net-top box to compliment the Roku but it just never worked really well. Recently I discovered PLEX, and have since retired my office PC to the basement as my media/file server. That net-top box is now the Office PC -- it's strange now using that machine in it's near perfect silent state. This setup so far is working out much better.

The plex serving to the Roku works really well, and there are 'channels' that can be set up for serving internet content such as the network offerings and ESPN3.

I also have a myth backend running on my linux based media server. Using this I'm able to get pseudo dvr like ability with live tv, and to view recordings for stuff that is not available via Hulu. Currently there is no integration from PLEX to Myth for changing channels, etc -- this is not really a concern for me but I may see if I can't build in some additional integration.

Sports:
Hopefully something will come along soon to allow better access to sports content -- NCAA football/basketball are my targets. I've looked into Big-Ten subscriptions but it seems like a lot of the games are still only available as delayed streams so I'm not clear what I would be paying for... I would prefer to keep everything on the legitimate side but will not go back to paying the cable company for all of the garbage that I don't want and for their idea of customer service.