I don't frequent this section often, but I thought the topic might be of interest.
I had an analog Theater-550 based tuner card in my box for a few years and used it with Beyond-TV to watch the bottom 70 channels from Comcast. Worked great for the most part. When Comcast started making the digital switch in our area the channel count dropped to 23, and it started to be less attractive. When I recently rebuilt the machine I considered the future of analog TV and tossed the tuner into the trash.
For my birthday this past Monday my wife bought me a Silicondust HDHomerun. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the HDHomerun is a self-contained unit about the size of a four-port switch. It has two atsc/QAM tuners, two coax connections, an ethernet port, a power connection, a couple of LEDs, and that's it. Its purpose is to capture and decode digital cable/OTA-HD signals and stream them out over your home network.
Installation took about ten minutes, and it would have been five if I didn't have to go to the basement to fetch a splitter so that I could connect both tuners. The package includes two lengths of coax and an ethernet patch cable. In my case the cable modem and router are behind the TV in the family room, so I stuck the HDHR there as well.
Back in my office I downloaded the latest software from Silicondust's website and ran it. My first pleasant surprise came when I realized they have native Win7 64-bit software. Everything installed in under a minute and then setup ran, found the unit on the network, upgraded the firmware, and then showed me a setup dialog with both tuners detected. I set the sources for both to digital cable, hit scan, and in about five minutes or so the HDHR detected 110 clear QAM channels. I had set the preview application to Windows Media Player, and when I clicked the View button next to a channel it popped up very quickly with a nice, clear image and excellent sound.
The list of detected channels (Comcast Northwest Port Murray Digital, for those of you in New Jersey), included all the network broadcast SD and HD channels, as well as the SD feeds from all the cable-preemy channels like Discovery, SciFi (now SyFy? wtf), History, TLC, etc. Not a lot of HD, but that wasn't a surprise.
Next step was to set it up with Media Center, and that's where the pain came in, through no fault of the HDHR. If you haven't seen it yet, Media Center in Windows 7 has some nice improvements. One of them is that it gives you a complete UI-driven way to add/edit QAM channels and fix up the guide listings for them. That's necessary because the automatic mapping of clear QAM channels leaves a lot to be desired.
Media Center located both HDHR tuners without problems, and when it scanned it found 40 of the 110 channels. This is because it only maps channels for which it can find program information, and that left out something like 2/3 of what was available. Restoring the full lineup and getting the guide fixed up was a process that took a number of additional hours.
The process had two steps: first I went into Tasks | Settings| TV | Guide | Edit Channels and compared what was there to the list of raw channels in the HDHR setup GUI. Using the Add QAM Channels feature I manually added each missing channel at the appropriate frequency, set it to QAM-256 modulation, and gave it the same name as the one in the HDHR setup window. That process took at least 90 minutes, maybe more.
The channel lineup was now complete, but the guide showed no data for all but the main network feeds. Fortunately Media Center makes this pretty easy to fix. Unfortunately it still took a long time. What you do is bring up the guide, and when you see a channel with "No Data" you click the channel name, then Edit Channel, then Edit Listings. This brings up a screen where you can scroll through the available channels in the Zap2It Guide and choose the one that should map to this channel. For many of them it is a no-brainer, but for others the name in the guide isn't what you expect, so you have to search around a bit. This step took the most time out of the whole process, but once it was done I had good guide data for everything but CN8 and the three CSPAN channels. I am still not sure what I messed up there and will look at it again tonight.
Having done that I made one last pass through the guide setting the channel names to something short and memorable, i.e. 'History' instead of 'THE HISTORY CHANNEL', and I was done.
So how does it perform? So far I would give it an A+ rating for usability and ease of installation. An A+ for speed of stream acquisition and channel changes (I really thought this was going to be the downside). Maybe an A for sound, and a B+ for image quality. The quality of SD streams is at least as good, and probably somewhat better, than with the old analog tuner, and of course with this unit you get the benefit of stations transmitting in 480p for example, so some of the non-HD streams look a _lot_ better. Full HD content isn't as crystal clear as on my LCD panel in the family room, but it is pretty damn good. Watching Craig Ferguson in 1920 x 1080 last night, from the couch about ten feet from the monitor, I was hard-pressed to tell the difference.
All in all I am very impressed by the quality of the unit, and most of all the quality of the software. If there is one thing I would like to see improved, by someone, it's the process of getting the lineup straightened out. But that is hardly Silicondust's fault. Having used the HDHR now I find it difficult to justify the idea of an internal QAM tuner card, which is where my thoughts had been headed. With the HDHR the power consumption and heat generation are outside my box, and two users on the network can watch HD streams simultaneously. That's pretty damned cool.
Now if I can only figure out how to back up the channel setup, so I never have to go through that again... and here's hoping Comcast doesn't effing change it every three weeks... which they probably will.
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I bought the single tuner version of the HD Homerun and it also works fine with Windows 7 (64 bit).
I think it is basically the same as the dual tuner version, with one tuner removed, case color blue, and different psu. (after I bought it, I got a message stating there was a problem with a certain batch of psus and they gave me an option to get a replacement for free. Mine seemed fine, but I ordered it anyways, swapped it out, and put the potentially defective on in the original box).
OTA HDTV tuner chip in the HD Homerun seems good, but at least for where I am located, I think I got better reception sensitivity with tuner chip in my Hauppauge 950 usb stick (I think this was 5th generation LG chip?)
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Thanks . I'm really impressed with the HDHomerun so far.
I've been pleased with mine as well; I run it on my VMware ESX machine as a Windows 7 guest machine with about 700GB allocated to it (and 1.5GB of RAM). It works wonderfully at recording TV shows and serves as the media hub/server for 3 Media Center extenders located throughout the house.
Stupid question, but it fits into this thread: can you set up recordings from an extender, or do you have to set them up on the PC that is actually storing the media? I have most of my media on a windows 7 machine and I use media center to stream to my xbox 360. If I do incorporate a HDHR into my network, I'd like to know if I can set up a recording schedule from my xbox 360.
It'll be a sad day when I retire my HDHR. Once the m-card digital tuners come out I'll have no need. It's been a long time coming but finally we can have encrypted digital cable on a DIY HTPC!
Stupid question, but it fits into this thread: can you set up recordings from an extender, or do you have to set them up on the PC that is actually storing the media? I have most of my media on a windows 7 machine and I use media center to stream to my xbox 360. If I do incorporate a HDHR into my network, I'd like to know if I can set up a recording schedule from my xbox 360.
Well the HDHR doesn't do any of the recording, or control that process in any way. It's a combination of a remote device and some drivers that make it look like you have two ATSC/QAM tuners on any box you install the software on. What you do with the streams those tuners provide is up to you. If you're using BeyondTV, for example, then it has a web interface you can use to set up recordings. I have no idea if Media Center has such an interface, but I haven't heard of one.
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It'll be a sad day when I retire my HDHR. Once the m-card digital tuners come out I'll have no need. It's been a long time coming but finally we can have encrypted digital cable on a DIY HTPC!
Is there a card in particular you are talking about? I'm looking to buy a tuner but will wait for these if it's coming out soon...
Q1 2010 by the press release. It would indeed be cool to have full digital cable (not just clear QAM) in a DIY HTPC. I hope it happens. Here is Comcast's FAQ on CableCard, fyi ...
Looks like you have to get Cableguy to come out and push it into the back of the Ceton card for you . No on-demand and pay-per-view, obviously but you should get everything else, and that would be sweet. Silocondust could also evolve the HDHR to take a Cablecard. It's kind of a natural step, actually.
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It has happened already but the tuner cards are the last piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately the only cards you can get right now are the ATI internal and external ones. Those are $200-$250 each for single tuner versions and it's not something you can run to Best Buy and pickup. Ceton does have the 6 channel card in the works as well as a 4 and 2 from what I have read. I'm sure Hauppage and the rest of the tv card makers will follow soon.
Sorta off topic here, but what happens to these recordings you make from a Cable card tuner? Are they just MPEGs lying around on your HD? Can they be burned to DVD? Converted to other formats? Shared? Or are they heavily DRMed?
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Originally posted by: SMOGZINN
I'm pretty certain that Scooter transcended sarcasm years ago and is embarking on a new level of human sarcastic evolution that english does not yet have a word for and that most of us are too primitive to understand, so it is understandable that your natural sarcasm sense was not triggered by his post.
So do you need to subscribe to cable in order for this to work? If not, is this legal?
do you need to subscribe to cable service to receive cable service?
yes.
by the sounds of it, the OP's provider is failing to encrypt many of it's channels. i wouldn't count on this being common.
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When directly asked if MW2 on PC was simply a port of the console version, Mackey responded "No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings".
do you need to subscribe to cable service to receive cable service?
yes.
by the sounds of it, the OP's provider is failing to encrypt many of it's channels. i wouldn't count on this being common.
My experience is actually typical, if comments on forums like AVSForum.com are indicative. Comcast encrypts all of the premium channels, i.e. Discovery HD, History HD, etc. But they send all the network SD and HD feeds in the clear, so you get HD for most stations that have a callsign with a W or K at the beginning. They also send the SD versions of the premium channels in the clear. So I am getting History, Discovery, Discovery Health, SyFy, TLC, etc. SD feeds. Many, if not most, of these feeds are now ED, and look pretty damn good.
But I share your cynicism, and wouldn't be at all surprised if they encrypt more going forward. For now 100+ clear channels doesn't seem to be that unusual, but then again results definitely do vary. Worst of all you can't really know what you'll get until you plug in the device and scan. In my case we have a clear QAM-capable Sony Bravia upstairs with no STB, so I already knew that Comcast was sending a substantial number of clear channels.
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Everytime I try to tell you, the words just come out wrong
Stupid question, but it fits into this thread: can you set up recordings from an extender, or do you have to set them up on the PC that is actually storing the media? I have most of my media on a windows 7 machine and I use media center to stream to my xbox 360. If I do incorporate a HDHR into my network, I'd like to know if I can set up a recording schedule from my xbox 360.
I'm running the dual tuner HDHomerun under 64-bit Win7 using an Xbox 360 as an extender. So far so good, minus a few weird instances of a few shows not recording due to the media center service not responding.
You can add new shows to be recorded using your 360 as well as change recording settings (e.g., HD/SD, new/rerun, certain channels only, etc.). Typing in titles is infinitely easier if you have the chatpad; using a controller to enter text is a PITA.
As far as I can tell, the only things you lose using a 360 as an extender is WMC's Netflix integration (which is supported on the 360's dashboard anyway) and the Internet TV stuff which doesn't matter one bit to me. I'm sure there are other things, but I haven't really played around with those since I use only the most basic functions.
Sorta off topic here, but what happens to these recordings you make from a Cable card tuner? Are they just MPEGs lying around on your HD? Can they be burned to DVD? Converted to other formats? Shared? Or are they heavily DRMed?
I haven't seen a great deal of discussion about this with all the hoopla over CableCard for the masses.
With DVR-MS files most likely they will be copy-protected with little chance for conversion or editing (until someone possibly figures it out).
It is also my understanding that the copy-protected files may only be played back on the PC which 'created' or recorded the file.
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My HDHomerun/Win7-64 Experience
. I'm really impressed with the HDHomerun so far.
