Technicolor Skipper

[texneus]

Anyone heard of this before? Apperently also to be marked as the Channel Master Stream+. Runs Android TV (mini client potential) and includes a tuner for OTA viewing, so should provide respectable MPEG2 decoding. Would be especially interesting if SageTV could access and use the tuner. Don't know about price, seems to be freshly announced.

http://www.technicolor.com/en/soluti...-boxes/skipper

[texneus]

P.S. Apperently to be launched at CES 2018. Pics of the back show toslink, antenna, HDMI, etherent, and USB 3.0. And the remote looks be much more useful than the simplified-to-be-nearly-useless one that come on the shield. This could be quite a versital little device if the OS doesn't lock it down or limit apps.

[wayner]

I think that version is for Europe, or at least Italy.

The Channel Master Plus seems like it is for North America: https://www.cnet.com/products/channe...-plus/preview/

The only issue is that storage for the DVR is in the form of a µSD card. Not likely to be useful for SageTV folks. I wonder if you can use an external hard drive connected to the USB 3.0 port? You can get a small 2TB external drive pretty cheaply these days.

Here's another similar product - the Mohu Airwave http://airwave.gomohu.com/

[EnterNoEscape]

An app could possibly be written to expose it as a SageTV network encoder.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

An app could possibly be written to expose it as a SageTV network encoder.

For OTA content only or also for streaming content? I am guessing the former.

If you have an HDHR you can do this today with a $69 MiBox, except for recording OTA. But I am guessing this product will suck at that, at least initially.

[texneus]

The air wave looks like it's just an HDHR alturnative...Skipper & Stream+ are Android TV devices.

Channel Master has the Stream+ available for preorder on their Web page. And it does have a full featured (but not necessarily full size) remote. $99 introductory price w/free shipping. Rumored to be $150 normally, think I'll jump. I don't care about the tuner or DVR functions, I just want the Android TV with solid MPEG2 support for SageTV and streaming apps, and with the remote and ethernet, it's basically turnkey...something the Shield and Mibox aren't (IMO).

If the geniuses that are SageTV developers can figure out how to use the tuners (dual ATSC, BTW) that wood be some very nice gravy. But, that's a big if!

https://www.channelmaster.com

[wayner]

Are you sure about the remote? I don't know that this is really all that much better than a MiBox + a $10 USB to ethernet adapter. I guess you do get a dual OTA tuner but it isn't clear how useful that will be. I also wonder if it will really have better MPEG-2 support.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by texneus

The air wave looks like it's just an HDHR alturnative...Skipper & Stream+ are Android TV devices.

Channel Master has the Stream+ available for preorder on their Web page. And it does have a full featured (but not necessarily full size) remote. $99 introductory price w/free shipping. Rumored to be $150 normally, think I'll jump. I don't care about the tuner or DVR functions, I just want the Android TV with solid MPEG2 support for SageTV and streaming apps, and with the remote and ethernet, it's basically turnkey...something the Shield and Mibox aren't (IMO).

If the geniuses that are SageTV developers can figure out how to use the tuners (dual ATSC, BTW) that wood be some very nice gravy. But, that's a big if!

https://www.channelmaster.com

Anyone else notice the little asterisk buried in channelmaster.com referring to the subscription-free Google Live Channels Guide? I'm not sure if it includes cable channels or not, but for SageTV users that are OTA only, they could save $25 per year if an interface could be built into SageTV.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by wayner

For OTA content only or also for streaming content? I am guessing the former.

If you have an HDHR you can do this today with a $69 MiBox, except for recording OTA. But I am guessing this product will suck at that, at least initially.

I meant to stream OTA content back to the SageTV server. The idea being you have an Android TV box that also provides a few tuners. It's probably not something I would be interested in, but that's not say someone else might not think that's a great idea.

[texneus]

...which is exactly what I was thinking. It would only be worth it to me though if the tuner was better than an HDHR. I have one on order, I'll be sure to report back, supposed to be shipped before the end of January.

[texneus]

Well, my pre-order Skipper in the form of the Channel Master Stream+ arrived last night. Won't have time to do anything with it for a few days, but for those curious there is an owner thread over at AVS Forum. In summary, the DVR function looks very disapointing, the streaming is limited (no Netflix, Amazon at this time), and the built in tuners are not setting any new "channels recieved" records. Maybe this will all improve with time...

That said, none of this was why I bought one, my intent was to use the AndroidTV platform for SageTV and Kodi clients. I'll post back when I get a chance to do so, although honestly at its normal price of $149 it has some big shoes to fill vs. Nvidia Shield for not much more.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by texneus

That said, none of this was why I bought one, my intent was to use the AndroidTV platform for SageTV and Kodi clients. I'll post back when I get a chance to do so, although honestly at its normal price of $149 it has some big shoes to fill vs. Nvidia Shield for not much more.

Or a MiBox at less than half the price.

[texneus]

MiBox is a fine alturnative, but it's no miracle box. Caveats include: No wired eithernet. Limited MPG2 playback capability. Slow menu navigation. Poor remote. All make it unsuitable (IMO) for SageTV without lots of extra futzing, expense, and/or "putting up withs". Shield fixes 3 of those four. It's as near to a perfect "out of the box" client experience as we have at this time, but it's not perfect either: It's Expensive. The remote still sucks. The perfect mini client box for SageTV doesn't exist at this time, and won't ever exist if we just accept the status quo.

[texneus]

I finally had a chance to check this device out during the past week. Please note the comments below only pertain to the possibility of using it as a SageTV client. I did not test the built in DVR features, tuners, or any other apps. Also be aware it does not currently stream Netflix or Amazon. Channel Master says it is working with both services to offer their apps.

The short version: It's being returned.

The long version: The Stream+ and I really got off to a bad start. It was very frustrating to setup in part because it decided to reboot and apply an update half way through the setup process, then in the later half of setup the on screen keyboard covered up the bottom half of the page where you are entrying data and have to navigate to select OK or Cancel. The setup was so deeply flawed I really have to wonder if anyone at Channel Master actually tried it.

Once I figured out why I couldn't proceed and finished the setup, you are presented with the standard Android Lean Back launcher - a familiar sight to those using an NVidia Shield. I installed the SageTV client, which went well enough. Oddly though SageTV claimed to require a game controller? Anyway, you could ignore this and the client installed without further complication.

When the client launched, the menus were super lagy, but I also noticed the Stream+ was busy updating all it's included apps, so I just let it sit for a while and let it finish. Once done the speed of menu navigation was actually quite decent. Not quite as quick as the Shield, mind you, but very usable none-the-less. Off to play my first program.

For the test I decided to play a pre-recorded OTA MPEG2 1080i episode of "Yellowstone". The picture is drop dead gorgeous! Nicely saturated and good detail, at least as good as I've seen anywhere (I didn't spend a whole lot of time being analytical about it, but I'd say it was at least as good, and perhaps better, than what the shield provides). But it took all of 2 minutes to realize there is a huge problem: Repetative stuttering from repeated and/or dropped frames, and flickering that looks like once and a while it looses track of which field it needs to process within a frame. Colossus pre-recorded material is the same, as were live broadcasts from either source. I quickly switched back to the shield and confirmed the sources are good. No studder, no flickering. An unfortunate finding.

As best I can tell, the problem is most likely that you cannot set the refresh rate to 59.94 fps. All options are 24/30/60 fps, just a tad too fast, which is a fatal flaw. The video processor does it's best to retime the signal, but it has to so something now and then to keep the video in sync, and I suspect the necessary corrections are how these artifacts originate.

For those wondering about the remote, a FLIRC or similar is still necessary, unfortunately, unless somebody can figure out how to use the built in remote sensor with another remote.

The following keys work in SageTV: up/down/left/right/enter, back, FF, Rew, Play/Pause, all number keys.

The following keys are recognized by SageTV and should be mapable (didn't test): Channel Up/Down

The following keys are "hard wired" (there is no obvious way to override their default behavior) and have a mind of their own if pressed in SageTV: Info, Guide, DVR (Opens the Google Channels app), Period/Dot (No op - not recognized by SageTV), Home (Returns to the Lean Back Launcher). Volume up/down didn't seem to anything either, I assume (but did not confirm) this is to control the TV volume, not the Stream+.

So there you have it. Assuming they fix this problem, would I buy it again? Probably not. At it's pre-release price of $99 I'd re-consider it. It's regular price of $149 is a bit steap for what it is, even if it does eventually offer Netflix/Amazon. For not a lot more, the shield is faster, a known quantity, and well supported. Of course, things might be different if you are looking for a stand alone and portable DVR.