I have a couple of minor questions remaining, but cut the cord a few months ago and am very pleased with where I am today. I knew nothing a few months before that and thought that others might benefit from my journey.
As a bit of background, I had been running a WMC PC with Ceton 4 tuner card for years. iSCSI 2TB from my NAS and scheduled recordings worked very well, when the guide data was correct, which took some work.
The NAS got me started with a Plex server and the channels are a terrific way to watch recent episodes of the major shows. Some of the more obscure channels do not work very well, but the major networks have been great and the commercials are removed for you.
I received an LG smart TV as a birthday gift in August. Started playing with the built-in apps and webOS and came across smartIPTV. Which works and is nice to use the TV remote, but the interface is ugly.
Many google searches later I had a trial sub to an epicstreams reseller and then a month long sub. While the streams themselves were pretty solid, the guide info was horrendous.
Came across a trial of Vaders and their EPG is much closer to correct and the streams have been pretty solid as well. Enough so, that I have not tried any others and purchased a three month sub that will likely get renewed again. The VOD can be hit or miss, but the live TV is damn solid.
I spent many hours with Kodi, Perfect Player, ProgTV (windows and Android) and others. Coming from WMC, the windows based ProgDBV seemed a reasonable choice and the interface was not terrible. I wanted to replace the large WMC machine with a smaller STB type device and after spending more time with PP for Android, purchased a $50 android box from Amazon that worked pretty damn well and if it was just for myself, I would have been perfectly happy with it.
Unfortunately, the family needs a bit more, so I ordered the Formuler z7+ from Amazon and got the T2 like many others. I am returning the T2 and have ordered the Z7+ from another reseller. In the meanwhile, I am getting familiar with DOL2.
I have installed a 16GB SD card and can record streams. But between the Plex channels and Vaders TV catchup, I see very little reason to record much anymore.
What I do need some help with is a link to a DOL user guide if such exists. The software is pretty involved and I would really like a comprehensive reference.
I also cannot seem to make the pause live TV feature work. I have read that others are having similar issues, but some seem to have been fixed by tweaking the external storage, but since I can record a stream, I assume that is not my problem.
This is probably my biggest issue at the moment. If I could get pause/rw/ff of live TV on DOL2, I can make the family happy, with a better experience than WMC all while saving $100/mo on pay tv, which would make me ecstatic.
EDIT: One other thing, even with the sleep function turned off, we get a confirmation request every two hours, which can be a real PITA during a longer movie.
Hope this is helpful to others getting started and appreciate any tips on my issue.
Thanks all.