Since so many classic shows are still available over-the-air (OTA), I have set up a nice little system to record them.
Last year I purchased a Tablo DUAL LITE Over-The-Air DVR on sale at Best Buy for $99.00 and attached a 1TB external hard drive. There were only a few issues I had with it: It runs really hot because of airflow, this was fixed by simply placing it on its side. The second issue is it has a tendency to bog down when looking for shows, not sure what the fix for that is except to allow more time to search (or eliminate channels). Lastly, all shows are recorded in 20 second chunks, so to download the show, I would have to merge them together, which would be a royal pain. That’s where TabloRipper comes into play. TabloRipper is a windows program that pulls the recordings off of the Tablo via WiFi, then merges them together (commercials and all), once copied, the files can safely be deleted from the Tablo.
(Raspberry Pi 3B+ microboard)
The last part of the puzzle was assembled earlier this month when I purchased a V-kits Raspberry Pi 3+ (Amazon), which was configured to run Kodi media center/entertainment hub right out of the box (included on micro SD chip), all that was required was a few clicks of the mouse, the system was up and running in about 30 minutes. This particular setup ran approx $80.00 with another $100.00 for a 4TB external hard drive.
The 3B+ Pi board includes a full size HDMI port, 4 USB Ports a micro USB port (for power) and an AV port.
Between all the components, the total footprint of this set up is 12″ wide, 6″ deep and (because of the Tablo being on its edge) 6″ tall
(Kodi Main Screen)
As for which channels I find myself recording most from? MeTV for older television shows (Peter Gunn, Perry Mason) and Comet for movies.
A word of advice, I attached a WD “Elements” drive to my setup, I recommend changing the name to something more descriptive, because once all your data has been put into place, you cannot change it without having to re-scan all the media back in the center.