Kinda Cutting the Cord? Tablo has advice.

If you have started streaming, but still subscribe to a cable service, you really haven't cut the cord.

My mother was like that for a while. She began streaming, and even had a Plex server running for her DVDs ripped to stream, but still kept her cable subscription for a while.

It took a while for her to realize and acknowledge that she was paying for a service she wasn't using. She did use Roku as a Comcast/Xfinity TV box using the Xfinity app, but eventually realized that some free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) services offered enough content of the type she wanted.

She did drop her cable bill from nearly $300 to less than $100 for cable and Internet, but later on realized she could do even better.

I'm not criticizing what she did, as her saving nearly $200 is a very good thing. And I never pushed, as she needed to be comfortable. So, it was kind of an insurance policy, but her cable watching was eventually non-existent.

Her experience is more common than you might realize. Or perhaps it's very similar to yours.

Tablo had an article this week talking about this. As you might expect, they pushed adding an antenna. That's understandable as they are in the over the air (OTA) TV recording, and that's antenna driven.

For times when you would normally reach for your cable remote to tune in to news, sports, or shows like Jeopardy, The Bachelor, or Abbott Elementary, you’ll want an Over-the-Air TV antenna.

With an antenna, you can watch major network channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, the CW, PBS, and many more subchannels with awesome retro content, perfect for times when you don’t want to pick something specific to watch.

And I have to agree. I'm not in the business of selling DVRs, but if you can put up an antenna, that is a great way to watch TV for free.

I suggest reading the entire article, as it offers good suggestions about the equipment you have for streaming, as well as suggestions on how to watch free streaming content.

I think Tablo, or any quality antenna TV DVR, can help your Streaming Life be better. I has certainly done that for me.

How to record streaming content

So, how do you record streaming content?

Short answer: You can't.

Long answer: You cannot or may not record streaming content, for both technical and legal reasons.

For some who are new to streaming, this may not make much sense. After all, if you subscribe to Sling TV (for example; any streaming service could be the example), you get cloud DVR functionality. So why can't you use a Tablo or other similar device to record streaming content.

Well, let's think for a second. When you record content from Sling TV using their cloud DVR, where is that content stored? That's right, in the cloud. And what is the cloud? That's right, it's somebody else's computer. And it's computers owned or controlled by Sling TV (in our example).

That means that the folks who got the original stream from the network and formatted that content to work with streaming are the ones who made the recording. They got to it before it ever went out the Internet from their servers to your location. It was all done "in house."

What they did with the streaming content was essentially turn it into what Hulu has: content that was sent out live earlier but nor in an on-demand format rather than a live streaming format (yes, they're different).

In order for, say, Tablo to record the streaming content, you'd need to feed it from your Roku (or other streaming device) to your Tablo. And the content from an on demand stream is a different format than the content Tablo is designed to get, from an antenna.

Sure, to you, they seem the same. But they are not the same, and being able to record one format (the over the air content) is not at all the same as being able to record live streaming content.

Besides the technical issues, there are the legal issues. I won't go deep into this, but the summary of it is that Tablo (or other local DVR) can't legally record it. Over the air is one thing. Streaming is a very different other thing.

If I want to keep content for a long time (what passes for forever), I'll simply buy the content. I can still watch it live if I want, or I'll watch it after it comes available via the purchase.

You may have noticed that I didn't say flat out that it is totally impossible. The Short Version was a summary only. The Long Version never said it was 100% impossible. Rather, I mentioned the obstacles with it, including the legal issues.

I'm not one to suggest, nor offer assistance to, some who breaks the law. I'm saying don't do it. I won't help you get around the legal stuff with technical stuff. Others might, but I won't.

I want to enjoy my Streaming Life knowing that I'm doing the right thing, and not depriving anyone, even a large fat company, of what is legally theirs.

Two antennae?

When I was younger, we had an antenna at the house. I was the one designated to go turn the antenna before my parents bought a rotor to turn it.

If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, I'll try to explain. At the top of the antenna pole was a motor to which was connected a short pole that contained the actual antenna. And running from the motor down to the TV was a power cord that attached to a controller that determined which way to point the antenna.

If it was set correctly, setting the controller to north pointed the antenna north. If it was moved to the east, the motor would turn and the antenna would point to the east. And it went the full 360° of the compass, pointing the antenna where you wanted it.

And, if you aren't sure why that would be needed, well, that was because we were one of many many families that could pick up TV from multiple cities, or at least, from multiple directions. For some nearer the big cities, there may be an antenna on one side of town and another on the other side of town. Or one of a bunch of other reasons why you would want to point the antenna to a different direction.

For us, it was Savannah in one direction and Jacksonville in another direction. We could pick up the stations from both, if the antenna was pointed that way.

Before we got an controller and rotor, I was the one designated to go outside and physically turn the pole to point to Savannah or Jacksonville.

Today, it may not be quite as easy. First of all, my antenna pole isn't as tall as the one my parents had. Next, the digital signals don't really pick up from Jacksonville as clearly as the old analog signals did. And part of that is because I'm in a slightly different terrain from where my parents' house was.

I don't know if I want to try to pick up stations from a location other than Savannah. I'm close enough to pick some up, from the charts I've seen, so it may be something I want to do. But if I do decide that, I don't want to turn the antenna. Rather, an option might be to put up a second antenna and combine the signals.

Here's the thing. That can lead to interference between the signals and make the channels unwatchable. How do you deal with that? Well, you can get antennae that are designed to do just that. Tablo had an article on their Website that covered that very topic a few days ago:

When you live in between two cities, or in places where local Over-the-Air TV broadcast towers are oddly distributed, your antenna needs may be a bit different than most.

Even 'omnidirectional' TV antennas can really only pick up stations from about a 40-degree spread. So if you're in a similar situation to Tom, you have two decent options: a TV antenna with poseable 'elements' or two directional antennas and a combiner accessory.

The articles goes on to mention a specific antenna sold for that purpose. It may be something that I look into, although I'm not sure I want to replace my current, works quite well, expensive antenna.

However, if you are thinking about putting up an antenna array that picks up stations from different directions, you should at least research if something like that is feasible.

If you are able to put up an antenna, or add an antenna to gain extra stations, you will probably be quite happy with the additional choices these offer to supplement your Streaming Life.

Plex breach

I've been a fan of Plex for quite a bit. But recently, Plex did something that I really didn't like. They got breached.

Sure, I know, these things happen. But these things should not happen.

Any company that pretends to be technology based or handles money -- and that includes companies such as Plex -- knows that there are people that will try to break in, and need to secure their servers.

Plex got hacked. Somebody broke in and got user information. And I got an email last week:

Dear Plex User,

We want you to be aware of an incident involving your Plex account information yesterday. While we believe the actual impact of this incident is limited, we want to ensure you have the right information and tools to keep your account secure.

What happened

Yesterday, we discovered suspicious activity on one of our databases. We immediately began an investigation and it does appear that a third-party was able to access a limited subset of data that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords. Even though all account passwords that could have been accessed were hashed and secured in accordance with best practices, out of an abundance of caution we are requiring all Plex accounts to have their password reset. Rest assured that credit card and other payment data are not stored on our servers at all and were not vulnerable in this incident.

What we're doing

We've already addressed the method that this third-party employed to gain access to the system, and we're doing additional reviews to ensure that the security of all of our systems is further hardened to prevent future incursions. While the account passwords were secured in accordance with best practices, we're requiring all Plex users to reset their password.

What you can do

Long story short, we kindly request that you reset your Plex account password immediately. When doing so, there's a checkbox to "Sign out connected devices after password change." This will additionally sign out all of your devices (including any Plex Media Server you own) and require you to sign back in with your new password. This is a headache, but we recommend doing so for increased security. We have created a support article with step-by-step instructions on how to reset your password here.

The email was even longer than what I've posted here, but that covers the main parts of it.

I'll give Plex credit for not hiding it, as some companies have done, and letting users know, as well as suggesting that password changes be conducted.

But ... this never should have happened. No company worth a darn should let something like this happen. Somebody didn't do their job.

Things like this are quite aggravating. I want to simply stream content, both from the Internet and play my local content. I just want to enjoy my Streaming Life. I don't want to have to worry about my personal data being compromised because somebody was too busy to do their job.

Pi Hole testing, part 2

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had set up and was running Pi Hole, a DNS service that is often used to block ads. I also mentioned that I didn't want it to block ads, but rather, to block tracking of online activity.

I'm not doing anything that I would be ashamed for my kids to know about, but rather I don't like being tracked and the data being sold and used to target me for ads and emails.

During the initial setup, the default blacklist included information for ad services as well as trackers. I also used a Raspberry Pi device that was actually overkill for the job. I used a Pi 4 B with 8 GB RAM. That's more that is needed to do the job. However, a Raspberry Pi 2 that I had ordered arrived last week, and I set it up. I used Raspberry Pi OS Lite (formerly Raspian), which is a command line version of the OS. There is no desktop interface, and everything is command line. I added a USB connected Ethernet port and set a status IP address. I added Pi Hole service, and added the scripts. This was essentially my re-doing step one of the three step process on this project:

Blocking trackers is actually functionality that is built in to many Web browsers. However, I'm looking for a network wide solution to blocking trackers. That's where Pi Hole comes in.

It's a multiple stage process I'm going through. First, I want to see how easy it is to set up and run in general.

Next, I am researching how to block trackers on the network without impacting ad services....

Then, I want to confirm how well the process works on the network.

I'm at stage two, where I'm trying to block trackers without impacting ad services. I've turned off all of the ad blocking scripts. However, some ads are still blocked. That's because some ads also track your usage. Ads that don't track usage aren't getting blocked, but ads that do track usage do get blocked. This is more in line with what I've been looking to do. As I said, I don't mind ads. I do mind my online activity being tracked and sold.

It's been right at a week now that I turned off the ad blockers and are using only tracker and malicious Website blocking lists. That freed up 135,885 URLs (yes, I counted them). I'm feeling a lot better now knowing that I'm only blocking trackers and am letting regular ads through.

Actually, some of those are trackers and are in other lists, so I didn't actually free up 135,000 URLs, but I did free up a lot. If a Website or service has ads and the ads don't track my usage, then I'll see the ads, and I'm okay with that.

I understand why others use Pi Hole to block ads. And if you fall into that category, that's your decision, just as how I'm doing things is mine. My online experience and Streaming Life need to work as I want them to work for me, just as you should have yours work as you want.