HDHomerun Prime (cable-card support) $149.99 with Clip & Save $50

Love this thing but cable companies cable card support sucks and they intentionally keep the channels different from their boxes to make it harder to use. Not to mention many channels won't decode or come up. Still, worth it and Plex now enables usage of it too

I love it too. I have two of these in my basement. It took some elbow grease to find the right cablecards. We record tons of stuff to Plex and stream to smart TV/mobile devices.

Wow I can't believe these are still so expensive. I bought my hdhomerun prime almost a decade ago to use with Windows Media Center. It was light years ahead of cable box DVRs and ended up saving me money in the long run vs renting a DVR. Over time I stopped watching regular TV as much and it was clear Microsoft was no longer invested in MCE so I repurposed my rig and sold the tuner. Yes other options are available but none were as smooth to work with as Media Center and I didn't want to spend time tinkering anymore.

IMO, Microsoft missed a big opportunity to better integrate cableCARD tuners with Xbox One.

These are expensive now because they initially were going to create a 6 tuner version of this (which I and many others wanted), however they got a ton of pushback from cable companies that worked to kill the device. Additionally, recent regulations have made it so cable cards don't need to be supported anymore and so cable companies will likely over time get rid of them (i really hope this policy choice changes).

I have 3 of the 3 tuner devices which for a total $15-30 a month cable card cost gives me 9 TV tuners. Fios is probably one of the most open providers here - they only DRM restrict the FX channels / HBO / Cinemax / the Fox cable channel groups…. Everything else is open. Some important use cases here

(1) Plex DVR service with a large DVR drive - can record many shows at once - use MCEbuddy to post process script it so that it will take the recordings, rip out commercials, re-encode to a small file size
(2) Channels DVR service - lets you play this both inside and outside home network using Channels DVR server on your PC — For inside home this lets you put a TV anywhere you have internet service - all you need is ChannelsDVR on the device or Plex
(3) This also lets you put a ton of old iPads or Kindle Fire HD devices around and use ChannelsDVR service to create a kitchen TV or gym TV etc.
(4) Firesticks can also get Channels application - this means that you can carry a Firestick with you when traveling and turn hotel TVs / AirBNB TVs / family TVs / any TV into your home cable TV service. This is especially great for international travel and turning international hotel or AirBNB TVs into your home TV service.
(5) Phones and tablets can access and stream TV service from Channels anywhere you have internet or cell service
(6) Can easily mount a TV outdoors and use internet service or ethernet connection to stream TV to that outdoor TV (using Channels or Plex)

Channels application is much faster and more stable than Plex often; Plex is more ubiquitous and exists on almost any and all devices.

I've got this running with my Plex server but Spectrum has DRM protected a vast majority of the main channels that you'd want to watch and record from: ESPN, NATGEO, all the cable news stations, USA, AMC, Lifetime, FOOD, HGTV, A&E, HISTORY, FS1, TLC, NICK, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, Bravo, Hallmark (big one for the wife), FS1, TNT, TBS, etc. Since Plex doesn't yet support DRM, I'm left to only be able to watch these live through another client. Fingers crossed that they add DRM support one day.

Hope the OTA goes on sale.

I've had one of these for years and works great, but windows media center is still the best option to watch TV with these which is sad. I switched to Plex after guide listings went away because I could pay a one time fee to Plex for guide listings instead of yearly to get them in windows media center. Plex works ok but it's pretty buggy compared to media center.

Oh man this brings back memories of the endless media center building and tuning. I was a big MCE fan but had one of the internal cards from Ceton.