Jared Newman / TechHiveĮmby’s menus have a way of looking clunky at times.Īs of this writing, though, Emby’s live TV service is available on far more devices. Guide data is also included in a Plex Pass subscription, with a single $150 payment providing lifetime service. Plex’s interface is a bit slicker than Emby’s, and its setup is less intimidating, as it supports USB tuners and allows an Nvidia Shield TV box to function as a server. If you’re willing to roll your own DVR, the main alternative to Emby is Plex, which recently added its own live TV features on Android TV and iOS devices. There’s no easy way, for instance, to start watching a program from the point at which you left off, and Emby seemed to categorize all recorded programs–including movies–as “TV.” Also, because Emby always defaults to maximum video quality, I had to fiddle in some situations to avoid buffering, and to remove interpolation artifacts in Emby’s Fire TV app. Without a subscription, you can only watch live TV channels.Įmby would benefit from just a little more polish as well. Once the HDHomeRun is connected to your router, Emby should detect it automatically.įinally, Emby requires its own Premiere subscription for DVR service, priced at $5 per month, $50 per year, or $100 for life. This is the only way to avoid any ongoing service charges with Emby DVR, but it’s a huge hassle.
The easiest path to procurement is a $25-per-year subscription to Schedules Direct, whose login credentials you can plug directly into Emby’s menu.Īlternatively, you can grapple with a program like MC2XML to generate a file that Emby can read, drawing on free TV guide sources. (The Extend isn’t entirely necessary if you have a powerful PC, since Emby can handle transcoding on its own.) For cable subscribers, the $130 HDHomeRun Prime can stream live TV with a CableCARD, though it can only record unencrypted channels.Īfter setting all that up, Emby’s configuration menu should detect the HDHomeRun automatically, but you still need a source of guide data to see what’s on. The entry-level HDHomeRun Connect costs $99, while the HDHomeRun Extend costs $180 and adds built-in transcoding, which consumes less bandwidth and storage.
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