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Emby and Comcast Xfinity?


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scanner50

Hi guys. I have DirecTV and I'm getting tired of the rain-outs which occur often here, and their convoluted mobile viewing "solutions". I used to use basic cable with WMC back in the day and loved it, so thinking of getting a cablecard tuner for the server and making the switch. Would love anybody's input on this. So my questions:

 

1. Anyone have experience using Xfinity with Emby and how is it working out so far?

 

2. Is most programming still Copy Freely (including sports)? Is that even still a thing?

 

3. How is the Roku for navigating the guide / setting a recording / watching live TV? Or would I be better off with something more robust at each TV like Kodi/Emby?

 

Thanks in advance for the replies!

Edited by rainking430
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kpate77

I can only comment on #2, as I had a Comcast cable card before MB supported live TV. At that time, most everything was copy freely, with the exception of FOX, and premium channels (HBO, etc.). However, when googling at the time to find out why FOX wouldn't play, I think I remember that the copy freely settings are regional with Comcast. Again, this was slightly over a year ago, so things could have changed. Maybe someone else can offer better insight.

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scanner50

Thanks for the input, kpate77! I'm hoping the fact that no one else has anything to add is a good thing! :)

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jhevener

Hi guys. I have DirecTV and I'm getting tired of the rain-outs which occur often here, and their convoluted mobile viewing "solutions". I used to use basic cable with WMC back in the day and loved it, so thinking of getting a cablecard tuner for the server and making the switch. Would love anybody's input on this. So my questions:

 

1. Anyone have experience using Xfinity with Emby and how is it working out so far?

 

2. Is most programming still Copy Freely (including sports)? Is that even still a thing?

 

3. How is the Roku for navigating the guide / setting a recording / watching live TV? Or would I be better off with something more robust at each TV like Kodi/Emby?

 

Thanks in advance for the replies!

 

I have been using Comcast Xfinity without any settop boxes for a few years. I switched to 2 cable cards which I have connected to both a Ceton InfiniTV 4 tuner card and a HDHomeRun 3 tuner networked device. THis gives me 7 tuners to choose from. I still use Windows Media Center on most of my HTPCs but am having very good luck watching TV on Android devices, Windows web clients and a Roku 3 on emby. I am able to stream live TV to any PC on the internet and really enjoy it. I'm using the ServerWMC server Plugin for streaming. The guide is fantastic. Highly recommended.

 

The cable card allows streaming of encrypted channels if you have a package with comcast that supports those channels. I can't attest to the ability to record any of the encrypted channels though ServerWMC but I can attest they record just fine with Windows Media Center. Since ServerWMC just rides on the back of WMC it should do so as well. I will do some tests later and report back.

 

Roku streams liveTV very well but there is very little guide support and the interface is a real PITA to navigate through 512 channels a page at a time. Still, it is a nice app and hopefully will be able to offer a usable guide at some point.

 

If you can overcome some of the hurdles of setup and are willing to run dev builds, LiveTV on emby is pretty good and getting better all the time. If you go this route and run into any problems I'll be happy to assist if I can since I've done a recent setup and there are plenty of helpful people on the team that will be able to give you a hand too.

 

Welcome to emby!

Edited by jhevener
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scanner50

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup Jhevener. I don't have WMC on my server anymore and planning on upgrading it to Windows 10 when available (which most likely won't have it either), so hopefully some of the other backends that are available work just as great as it sounds like ServerWMC does.

 

I'm looking at possibly an InfiniTV6 for the cablecard. And since it sounds like Roku might not be great for a "whole home" DVR experience, maybe I'll get some cheap mini PC's and experiment with the different Windows/OpenElec/etc. options I have with Emby to find the best UX for us.

 

The biggest hurdle now will probably be DirecTV. I checked and I'm still under contract till August, so I don't know if I'll be able to make the switch right away. I've already switched to Comcast for internet (having a great customer experience btw) so maybe I can convince them to give me a month trial for Xfinity to see if I can get all this working, and then pay my early termination fee if I decide to jump ship.

 

And while I have been using Emby for quite awhile for everything else non-TV, thanks for the welcome! Plex has nothing on these guys. :)

Edited by rainking430
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jhevener

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup Jhevener. I don't have WMC on my server anymore and planning on upgrading it to Windows 10 when available (which most likely won't have it either), so hopefully some of the other backends that are available work just as great as it sounds like ServerWMC does.

 

I'm looking at possibly an InfiniTV6 for the cablecard. And since it sounds like Roku might not be great for a "whole home" DVR experience, maybe I'll get some cheap mini PC's and experiment with the different Windows/OpenElec/etc. options I have with Emby to find the best UX for us.

 

The biggest hurdle now will probably be DirecTV. I checked and I'm still under contract till August, so I don't know if I'll be able to make the switch right away. I've already switched to Comcast for internet (having a great customer experience btw) so maybe I can convince them to give me a month trial for Xfinity to see if I can get all this working, and then pay my early termination fee if I decide to jump ship.

 

And while I have been using Emby for quite awhile for everything else non-TV, thanks for the welcome! Plex has nothing on these guys. :)

 

I use my server for storage exclusively (36TB and counting) and use one of my more powerful HTPCs running Win7 Pro 64 bit as my emby server as well as running MBC client on it. Aside from having to leave it on 24/7 it's a pretty sweet setup that has given me no problems. I'm considering building some XMBC clients with Raspberry Pis as an alternative to intel NUC which can get pretty expensive. I also have a few chromecasts and the plugin, which if you have a android smartphone or tablet is also a real sweet and easy setup as well.

Edited by jhevener
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KarterJK

Hi guys. I have DirecTV and I'm getting tired of the rain-outs which occur often here, and their convoluted mobile viewing "solutions". I used to use basic cable with WMC back in the day and loved it, so thinking of getting a cablecard tuner for the server and making the switch. Would love anybody's input on this. So my questions:

 

1. Anyone have experience using Xfinity with Emby and how is it working out so far?

 

2. Is most programming still Copy Freely (including sports)? Is that even still a thing?

 

3. How is the Roku for navigating the guide / setting a recording / watching live TV? Or would I be better off with something more robust at each TV like Kodi/Emby?

 

Thanks in advance for the replies!

We have Comcast and use 3 Silicondust HD Homerun Primes (you don't need that many) with 7 TVs, great support and community.  We get better service now than we ever did with settop boxes. Service has been down a few times, but normally not a problem. (West coast US, Oregon)

 

Windows Media Center

We use Windows Media Center with all of them and it works great for LiveTV

Silicondust has done a great job (some use Ceton cards), we get a better picture now than we ever did with a settop box

 

The only difficulty now days with using Media Center is getting a remote control to run it.  Logitech harmonies will work and you can use then to turn off your TV (but expensive).  Their are a number that will control everything except they won't power down your TV.  Fortunately, we got origial microsoft remotes several years ago, when there were still plenty around.  Other than that we have been extremely happy using it.  Lowered our monthly bill by $50 a month (having to rent set top boxes), plus we can record now.

 

One bad side to it though, if you use Xfinity on Demand, you will lose this function, it simply won't work.

 

We use Emby with ServerWMC for all of our tablets, phones etc, but had to build a seperate movie library (it doesn't handle .vob format well).  We would use Emby for LiveTV, but the TV guide is simply not as good as Windows Media Center, but Emby is still in the making.

We use MyMovies as a library interface for Media Center (it handles .vob files without problem)

 

 

Kodi (formerly XBMC)

My only complaint with them, and this was a while back, was that for movies libary it also didn't seem to handle .vob formats for looking up titles, I did a lot of manual entering for movie title names.  Though I think MyMovies may have an interface for it as well.

not tried Emby with it.

 

 

MediaPortal

I tinkered with this and for Movie Libraies it handled the .vob files without problems, but I never could figure out, how to get LiveTV to function, I found it difficult to configure.  I am sure others would probably disagree

 

So those are my experiences, cheers :)

Edited by KarterJK
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scanner50

Thanks for all your input, guys. Giving me a lot to think about. I'm going to do more research, but if anyone else wants to pipe in with their experience using Emby with Comcast, I would love to hear it.

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  • 1 month later...
scanner50

Ok, so I'm resurrecting this old thread because when doing more research I now have a few more questions that I'm hoping you Comcast users can answer for me.

 

First, I am trying to decide between two possible configurations. One is using a Ceton InfiniTV 6 which people are saying needs a special cablecard called an m-card? Is that correct? Or I could use two HDHomeRun Primes, which would obviously require 2 different cablecards. Is one a cheaper option (beside tuner cost) or better option overall than the other? Some are saying the m-card is counted as two cablecards by Comcast. Is that correct?

 

Lastly, I'm seeing conflicting info online about how Comcast adjusts your monthly bill for using cablecards with your own equipment. Some are saying you get a credit for each cablecard (m-card counts as two credits they say?), but I've found others saying Comcast is charging them every month for cablecard use. What has been your guys' experiences?

 

Thanks!

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scottd34

Ok, so I'm resurrecting this old thread because when doing more research I now have a few more questions that I'm hoping you Comcast users can answer for me.

 

First, I am trying to decide between two possible configurations. One is using a Ceton InfiniTV 6 which people are saying needs a special cablecard called an m-card? Is that correct? Or I could use two HDHomeRun Primes, which would obviously require 2 different cablecards. Is one a cheaper option (beside tuner cost) or better option overall than the other? Some are saying the m-card is counted as two cablecards by Comcast. Is that correct?

 

Lastly, I'm seeing conflicting info online about how Comcast adjusts your monthly bill for using cablecards with your own equipment. Some are saying you get a credit for each cablecard (m-card counts as two credits they say?), but I've found others saying Comcast is charging them every month for cablecard use. What has been your guys' experiences?

 

Thanks!

 

We do not get billed for the first cablecard, I have a 4 tuner ceton card witha  single M card.

M is for multichannel cards.  This is in the northeast US.

 

As far as comcast, we have had comcast + wmc for the last 5 years and aside from a few quirks which I am thinkign is more just because of something I did, the setup has been working fine.  I tried serverwmc but was getting some permissions issues which I havent had a chance to dig in to, so I removed it until I can get some time to look into it deeper.

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dark_slayer

The ceton is just a very poor choice these days

 

The prime is a much more stable network tuner allocation model, and it will work with the upcoming Silicon Dust HDHomerun DVR kickstarter

 

Comcast gave me a $1.50 credit for my first cablecard. I only used a single cablecard tuner. It will depend on your regional billing dept as to how a 2nd card will be charged. In our area it would be $10 to get the second card (same as a second outlet fee, which I told them was asinine to which they didn't care). The overall offset cost would be $8.50 for two cards if you are billed the same way as I was getting the credit for the first

 

The ceton has a lot of lock ups for some users, it doesn't work as great with ServerWMC, the kodi pvr addon for the prime changes channels faster due to the way it accesses tuners (Helix and later versions)

 

Also, our experience may not reflect yours, but my wife and I never even needed three tuners to satisfy the way we watched TV. We at most watched one show while recording another, but primarily just watched recorded shows or a live feed. We never needed 6, just as a personal data point. All that being said, if you still have your heart set on Ceton I have a used infiniTV6-eth ;) PM if interested. There are, of course, a variety of low price sales on them these days already

Edited by dark_slayer
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scanner50

We do not get billed for the first cablecard, I have a 4 tuner ceton card witha  single M card.

M is for multichannel cards.  This is in the northeast US.

 

As far as comcast, we have had comcast + wmc for the last 5 years and aside from a few quirks which I am thinkign is more just because of something I did, the setup has been working fine.  I tried serverwmc but was getting some permissions issues which I havent had a chance to dig in to, so I removed it until I can get some time to look into it deeper.

 

Good to know, thanks scott. So it sounds like the m-card is counted as a single card after all? That's good. Doesn't sound like you've had the problems with your 4-tuner Ceton card that dark_slayer mentions?

 

The ceton is just a very poor choice these days

 

The prime is a much more stable network tuner allocation model, and it will work with the upcoming Silicon Dust HDHomerun DVR kickstarter

 

Comcast gave me a $1.50 credit for my first cablecard. I only used a single cablecard tuner. It will depend on your regional billing dept as to how a 2nd card will be charged. In our area it would be $10 to get the second card (same as a second outlet fee, which I told them was asinine to which they didn't care). The overall offset cost would be $8.50 for two cards if you are billed the same way as I was getting the credit for the first

 

The ceton has a lot of lock ups for some users, it doesn't work as great with ServerWMC, the kodi pvr addon for the prime changes channels faster due to the way it accesses tuners (Helix and later versions)

 

Also, our experience may not reflect yours, but my wife and I never even needed three tuners to satisfy the way we watched TV. We at most watched one show while recording another, but primarily just watched recorded shows or a live feed. We never needed 6, just as a personal data point. All that being said, if you still have your heart set on Ceton I have a used infiniTV6-eth ;) PM if interested. There are, of course, a variety of low price sales on them these days already

 

dark_slayer, thanks for the info about Ceton vs SiliconDust tuners and the advice about quantity. I've been leaning toward SiliconDust already but 3 tuners in the Prime are a bit restrictive for our usage. Currently we have a DirecTV Genie DVR with 5 tuners and there have been times where all tuners were occupied, mostly during prime time. That said, I think that when that happens it's recording from local channels, in which case maybe mixing a Prime with an Extend and antenna would make more sense.... Hmm....

 

Oh, and thanks for the offer for the used Ceton card, but I'm going to hold off till I see what develops with the native Emby TV plug-in they are working on. Speaking of, am I correct in assuming that it will handle cablecard encryption?

Edited by rainking430
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xnappo

Nope.  The only solution for encrypted cable card remains WMC.  Sounds like Silicon Dust's kickstarter will to, but no idea how that integrate with Emby.

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dark_slayer

Nope. The only solution for encrypted cable card remains WMC. Sounds like Silicon Dust's kickstarter will to, but no idea how that integrate with Emby.

Negative

 

Backends that can handle encrypted cablecard are

-WMC

-Mediaportal

-Argus

-NextPVR

-Myth

 

Ones that can do copy once are

-WMC

 

Really it comes down to whether or not your cable subscription is copy once or copy free. If HBO and Cinemax are in the picture then copy-once support is a must

 

For Comcast and Fios however, the majority of their package is copy free. For me with Comcast just about a year ago, the copy once channels were sprout, Palladia (occasionally), and national geographic. All others were copy free

 

This reflects most all Comcast areas except some parts of Atlanta AFAIK. FiOS is even better from what others report. Occasionally charter is free as well, but depends on the region. TWC and Cox don't fare well

 

This brings up another point though . . . the prime is a must have outside WMC (or with it IMO). NextPVR may have some ceton support, but the best overall non WMC support will be from SiliconDust

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dark_slayer

I assumed he really meant copy once.

Yeah, that's the beauty of Comcast and FiOS . . . their offerings are copy free with the exception of a few one offs like I mentioned (national geographic and sprout, sometimes Palladia depending on the broadcast)

 

Of course HBO or Cinemax will never work this way either, on any provider

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scanner50

I assumed he really meant copy once.

 

 

Yeah, that's the beauty of Comcast and FiOS . . . their offerings are copy free with the exception of a few one offs like I mentioned (national geographic and sprout, sometimes Palladia depending on the broadcast)

 

Of course HBO or Cinemax will never work this way either, on any provider

 

Yup, I meant copy-once. We don't use the premium stuff, but NG may be an issue as we've been known to watch things on that channel. Also, I wonder if the extra sports package would be copy freely or copy once, which would be a deal breaker as I don't want to rely on WMC since it's officially dead now. I may need to ask Comcast when the time comes...

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xnappo

Just be glad you aren't on TWC where everything is locked down :( 

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overClocked!

I have used Comcast / Xfinity with my Windows Media Center / CableCard setup for many years now.  I bought the Ceton InfiniTV4 PCIExpress card many years ago and it works wonderfully.  There is no better DVR interface than that of Windows Media Center, and that is no exaggeration.  Awesome HD quality with my VIZIO 1080P screen.  I will say that I disable the network tuners and only record on my main HTPC since I was many having issues over the network.  So to simplify things, I just keep all tuners on the one PC and don't allocate them to any other PC.  Live and Recorded TV we watch primarily with Windows Media Center.  But I've been using ServerWMC with Emby to watch recordings and live streams on mobile devices when in another room or when I'm not at home.  The quality is superb compared to another app I use called Remote Potato and the stability of it continues to improve.  The only downside is that it doesn't support any forward scrubbing in the Web interface (I use Safari on iPad2/iPhone6), and it does tend to leave orphaned ffmpeg processes after I've stopped watching, which I'm sure will be worked out in due time.  Most of my channels are open and available except certain copy protected shows and premium channel content.  For those, I simply use the Mobile Apps (Xfinity TV Go, etc.) to watch that premium content on the go.

 

I have held off investing in the InfiniTV6 due to uncertainty of the future of the CableCard.  We already know that Windows Media Center will be killed off with Windows 10.  I wonder if it is only a matter of time before the TV EPG guide service Microsoft provides will cease to function for those of us that plan to stick with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1?  So I stick with what works, and my Ceton card has been rock solid and top quality for about 6 years now.

 

I'm in Southeast Texas and subscribe to one of Xfinity's Triple-Play bundles.  Comcast has changed the way they charge for CableCards.  They initially started out charging me $2.75 per month for it, and the price has risen steadily over the years.  They started charging something called an "Additional outlet fee" for any connection you have beyond their one included set top box.  I now pay $9.95 per month for one CableCard (they bundled the additional outlet service fee with this).  I do receive a $2.50 credit for Customer-Owned Equipment.  I told them that I do not use their set top box and if I could get a credit for returning it and not using it.  They won't.  So I'm going to try out this X1 DVR just to see what the hype is about since it is included in the cost of my bundle.  

 

@@jhevener - Do you still pay the same price for your service without having the set top / dvr box from Comcast, or do they credit you for this (it's a $19.99 charge here).  If not, I would love to know how you managed to persuade them to remove that charge for the box from the bundle.

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tigrao
First time poster here.  I registered because I really wanted to comment on my experience with Emby and Comcast.
 
I got the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime in December because I was frustrated with my X1 DVR.  I also knew that after the promotional period I was on, I would be charged $10 a month for the box.  I have also been using WMC and ServerWMC with my setup.  It was been such a breath of fresh air compared to the X1 and its limitations.
 
I've not had many issues at all using Emby to stream live TV from my home HTPC through the web client to my work computer or my mobile devices when I am on the go.
 
Emby won't stream the copy once channels.  I don't care about any of the channels that are marked copy once. For me in my area (northern Utah) they are:
 
511 FLIX-E
516 ENCFAM-E
518 ENC-W
520 ENCCLA-W
522 ENCSUS-W
524 ENCWSTN-W
528 ENCBLA-W
530 ENCA-W
550 HBO-E
551 HBO-W
553 HBO2-W
555 HBO SIGNATURE-W
556 HBO FAMILY-E
557 HBO FAMILY-W
558 HBO LATINO-W
559 HBO COMEDY-E
560 HBO ZONE-E

651 HBO-E HD

704 ENC HD-E

734 TCM HD-E

737 HBO2-W HD
738 HBO LATINO HD-W
 
Just my two cents...
Edited by tigrao
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  • 2 months later...
docmarmo

Just to update this thread, Fios @ Fox's request has implemented the Copy Once Flag just like HBO/Max. Emby using ServerWMC or Emby's new live TV pluggin Fox networks will no longer play for me. Just a black screen. I have 2 HD Homerun Prime tuners. There's a thread I started over at DSL Reports that's gotten a lot of traffic with some very disappointed subscribers...

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  • 8 years later...
hjason7812

I just got xfinity cable and would like to know how i can implement cable to emby without using a homerun etc? i have the streming app that is how i get tv but like i said i would like to be able to implement it to emby and have a better guide etc.

Thank you

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On 3/23/2024 at 3:21 PM, hjason7812 said:

I just got xfinity cable and would like to know how i can implement cable to emby without using a homerun etc? i have the streming app that is how i get tv but like i said i would like to be able to implement it to emby and have a better guide etc.

Thank you

HI, does xfinity make their TV streams available for other apps to use? Not to my knowledge.

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