TV Time
I would likely be paying $90 per month. Not worth having the choices because in the end I will only watch 2-3 hours per month.
I have never been a big fan of TV. I love documentaries and for a guilty pleasure, depending on the guest, I will check out a few podcasts per week, while sitting in the dialysis chair bored. I watch maybe 2-3 movies per year (usually during a long haul flight. Since my kidney disease diagnosis I have not watched but 3 movies,
I am thinking it would be good for my blood pressure to find some leisure time and indulge in some media. The problem is what do I subscribe to? Apple TV, Paramount Plus, Disney, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Prime Video, Peacock.... They have a little of something I would probably waste time watching, but added all up I would likely be paying $90 per month. Not worth having the choices because in the end I will only watch 2-3 hours per month.
I have been looking into subscribing to PlayOn again, it's been a few years since I last used it. PlayOn allows me to not just watch my shows on the subscriptions, but to download them into a DVR. Many times I will see something I want to watch but by the time I actually sit down to watch it, the show had been removed from the Netflix library. With DVR like functionality I could download shows to my personal library to watch at my discretion and leisure, not the provider.
PlayOn Cloud Service
The only reason that I didn't stick with PlayOn back then (I probably still have an active account to be honest) is because the record time a few years ago was in real-time. So I would have to start a movie, wait the entire duration of the movie to play - say 2 hours and when the movie was over at that point the video would be saved to my hard drive. At that point I might as well sit and watch it! Tough to do when I would fall asleep while it was recording or if I needed to use my laptop for something else. But if the service is installed on my server, that would free my machine even if they still do that lame real time recording. I would be happy if they could simply rip the stream. I guess we'll see.
PlayOn Cloud subscription is $4.99 per month and allows 30 DVR credits per month. I would never need any storage more than their cheapest most basic account would give me since all recorded media will be automatically moved to my server. Obviously I would need to subscribe to a streaming service in addition to that, but I really don't subscribe to all at the same time. I might spend a month with one and then next month rotate to another. But using my server together with PlayOn, the media I record stays with me as mine even if I unsubscribe from Netflix.
Enter Get Channels
Initially, I thought GetChannels would be redundant since I already use Jellyfin for my media library. But GetChannels does so much more than I thought. First it can present subscriptions such as YoutubeTV and Hulu live as live channels in the EPG. Then any content i download via PlayOn Cloud it will move the new file to the media library, label it, and put it into the proper folder (i.e. e kids movies, TV series, documentaries etc.) Not to mention GetChannels has the best commercial removal in the industry, which is good because many of the of the movies I watch are from Tubi, but most providers are putting ads in even on paying subscriptions these days. PlayOn will record the whole thing, even the ads. So commercial removal is a great benefit prior to storing the file in my library,
This lineup of those 3 apps working together is considered the power user setup, it hits all the bases I am not a power user. Like I said, I rarely turn on the TV, but when I do I just want it to work the way it should. The goal I guess is to build up my personal media library so that half the year I can watch the recorded media and not need to pay a monthly subscription for things that I only use 10% of the year.