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// LESSONS.LEARNED

Lessons Learned

You’re paying close to nothing for nearly every channel, sport and PPV on the planet — so glitches and timeouts happen. Here’s what works, and how to get around the quirks.

Channels & feedsPlayers & devicesSportsRecordingWhen something breaks

1Channels & feeds

Local news and local cable channels glitch the most.
For whatever reason these are the flakiest. If a feed is acting up, try the SD or LHD version of the same channel — usually a happy path.
Audio delays happen on some movie channels.
It’s weird. Easiest fix is to ignore it and come back in a few minutes, or use your external player to nudge the audio/video timing.
TiviMate has the best encoding + image-sizing controls.
Comes in super handy when messing with certain feeds (StarzPlay, for example). Worth knowing where those settings live before you need them.

2Players & devices

Firestick is the recommended device.
Use Downloader to install MX Player and set it as TiviMate’s “external player.” Essential for feeds with playback errors, subtitles (foreign films are surprisingly great), and sometimes performance is just better.
Phones and tablets often outperform TVs when you’re not at the TV.
If you’re mobile or in another room, don’t fight a flaky TV app — just use your phone or tablet.

3Sports

Games get rebroadcast ~4 times before they reach your market.
Tip: go to the source (local market feed) or check the FanDuel channels — FanDuel often owns the broadcasts.
Sports seasons bring new channel categories.
Keep an eye on the channel list — NCAAF and NFL show up around season start. Yes, every single game.
Multi-view on a big TV: 2 streams is the sweet spot.
Adding a 4th stream increases timeouts. All-HD increases timeouts too — mix one in SD and one in HD, and use software encoding to help. During football or basketball season you can add a second subscription so you have two playlists (one per subscription) with multi-view on a larger TV — works like a champ.

4Recording

Don’t record without an external drive.
It fills up fast.

5When something breaks

404s that last more than a few minutes → ping me on Signal ASAP.
The upstream folks aren’t exactly forthcoming about outages or maintenance, so word-of-mouth is the fastest way to find out what’s going on.
Got a tip that should be here? Let me know and I’ll add it.