HD Homerun results

[dclive]

I recently purchased Silicon Dust's HD Homerun, an external, over-the-network dual HD tuner for your PC. It's $169 at a variety of online stores; google and you'll find a few. I went with one suggested on the manufacturer's web page.

I've been using it with Vista MCE, but I understand it works with SageTV, MythTV (Linux), and many other programs and OSs. I understand it's working on Macs, with VLC, too.

I've been running it on a quad-core 6600 from Intel with 4GB of RAM, but the machine is doing a lot of other things, too (2 servers in VMWare, for example) so it's a busy machine. Watching one high-def show while recording another high-def show isn't an issue - no stuttering or other problems.

HD Homerun allows you to hook the device to your network, so that any machine on your network can "connect" to it and view digital TV. It ONLY tunes digital TV, so you'll need to attach either your analog cable system to it (to pull free clearQAM signals, which it does perfectly - in 640x480 digital and highdef digital) or an antenna (to pull free over-the-air OTA signals, in 640x480 digital and/or highdef digital). You plug the device into your router with a network cable (100 megabit required, gigabit's nice if you have more than 2 of the devices on your network going at once (4+ stations at once!).

All future info is based on my experiences with QAM. If you aren't completely clear on QAM, ask away. Basically, though, it's a free and open way to get digital/highdef from your analog cable - plug the cable into HD Homerun, and it will decode the signals. Federal (US) law says your cable provider must give at LEAST the main local channels, in highdef/digital (whichever they provide to your cable provider), free to all analog cable subscribers. They also usually give all the analog cable channels you're already getting --- but digitally, in 640x480.

Quality varies tremendously. In most cases the digital output of non-highdef shows is about as good as the analog signal. If a show is highdef, though...wow! Quality is fantastic. I've had no tuner issues - the tuner in this is actually stronger (so far...) than the tuner in my new Sharp Aquos 32" 1080p model (62U something...). I'm impressed, as the QAM tuner strength is important -- I'm doing almost 100% of my recording from this QAM signal.

Analog cable in VistaMCE (recorded by another tuner - remember, this one is digital only) is about 3GB/hour. HDTV in VistaMCE is 6GB/hour, but I've only tested one show, and that was SD (640x480) so ... time will tell. Plan on using lots of hard drive space if you record a lot. I've got almost a TB available, but still, I can see how it could be eaten up quickly.

Speed is only so-so. When you go to a channel in VistaMCE, it will take anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds for the picture to appear. Since almost 100% of what I watch is recorded content (ie I don't usually watch live TV) this isn't even a minor issue to me.

If your network goes out, you won't record a thing. You must have the network in place, going, and reliable in order to record.

Setup was a little time consuming. It took a while to learn how best to do it. Basically, you must run their utility to discover all possible stations you might have in the tuner, and then you must go through them, one by one, see what is playing on the channel, and then match that with what is shown on zap2it.com, and then plug in the 4-digital channel name (KTRK, KRIV, etc.). Once done, run VistaMCE's setup, go through a few more gyrations, and it's done.

Problems occur because inevitably you've left off a few channels you wanted (tuning in their setup applet is touch-and-go - i.e. not so good) so you have to ... not quite start over, but you do have to go thru the full VistaMCE tuner setup again (5-8 minutes), which gets old fast. Anyway, do it once and never have to change anything again...

 

[Quasmo]

I love my HD Homerun. I use MCE 2005. Unfortunately my local station decides it wants to change my digital channels around every month, so I have to run the search again. One thing with the quality issue is that because it's digital the quality will vary based on what your local station decides to allocate to a channel, so some HD channels will be more compressed than others opposed to OTA where everything is uncompressed.

 

[Modelworks]

Sounds like it has its good and bad points.
I like some of the features it has.

I'm keeping my eye on the tivo series 3, they are coming out with a 300.00 box that does HD and supports cable cards. Someone is working on an app now that will let tivos stream the content they are watching at the time.

Now if they would just lower that monthly fee.

 

[dclive]

My take is the HD Homerun gives all the features of the TiVo and ReplayTV devices, but at no monthly charge.

Last night I recorded 2 HD movies from UHD (Ultimate HD) channel. Worked flawlessly. So far so good!

 

[RupTheKid]

Thanks for your thoughts. It's really helpful to get honest opinons of gear.

 

[montypythizzle]

Dclive, willing to sell that for 92 dollars shipped?

 

[dclive]

Sorry - is that a joke?

 

[montypythizzle]

Originally posted by: dclive
Sorry - is that a joke?

Its used though

 

[dclive]

I'll sell for $250. Best offer.

 

[kreactor]

will the epg still get the listings from zaptoit comes sept? or is it a paid subscription like mce?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: kreactor
will the epg still get the listings from zaptoit comes sept? or is it a paid subscription like mce?

Which EPG?

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: kreactor
will the epg still get the listings from zaptoit comes sept? or is it a paid subscription like mce?

Yes, you have to set it up in MCE though. I had to change my service type to the Digital package (I use analog tuners) and then turn off all of the channels I don't get. I then have to tell MCE that the digital channels from the HD Homerun are the HD channels recieved from Comcast.

 

[dclive]

Note that the EPG from MCE is free.... that kinda threw me too....

 

[erwos]

I also have an HDHR, a system like the OP's, and, nicely enough, mostly the same experiences. If you want clear QAM or OTA HDTV, it's the best thing on the market, bar none.

The only thing that I really want to add is that the HDHR will really stress your network. Make sure you're running a gigabit network if you get an HDHR, even if some of the clients are 10/100.

 

[dclive]

My 10/100 network can do about 8-9 MB/s without breaking a sweat. A single HD channel can need roughly 2MB/s, so having 4 channels going (2 HD Homerun devices powering 4 physical tuners) will almost saturate a 100Mb network.

 

[dclive]

Edit: Throw contention into the mix and it's saturated.

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: dclive
Edit: Throw contention into the mix and it's saturated.

I have mine running straight into my HTPC with a crossover cable. If I got another I would get another Ethernet card.

 

[kreactor]

my pc has a gigabit lan port but i don't think my tew-brp452 router has gigabit support

will i need a gigabit router and gigabit lan cards in the network?
will cat6 cable offer any improvements over cat5? (in terms of picture freezes/stuttering?)

 

[dclive]

I suggest re-reading my above comment. Unless you bought two of them and have all four tuners going at once, 100Mb ethernet is fine.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: dclive
I suggest re-reading my above comment. Unless you bought two of them and have all four tuners going at once, 100Mb ethernet is fine.

Yeah, and assuming you don't ever want to copy a file across the network while watching TV or that you're not using media center extenders. The HDHR guys are pretty clear that you want to be running gigabit if you can, and I agree with them.

 

[dclive]

I think it all boils down to how many streams of HIGH-DEF (not standard-def, which is much lower bandwidth) shows you'll record at one time.

If you have 2 HD Homerun devices and are recording four HIGH-DEF shows at once, yep, you'd want gigabit or you'd want to just direct-connect the devices to a NIC on the media center box (or have a private network - cheap in the age of $5 100Mb switches... - devoted to the HD Homerun devices).

Either way, "need" is a strong word, so I try to avoid it unless needed.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: dclive
Either way, "need" is a strong word, so I try to avoid it unless needed.

Well, if you don't want performance slow-downs on network file transfers, you probably need gigabit. Seriously, it's a little naive to assume that people with a pair of $200 tuners on their network are going to be only using one computer.

 

[dclive]

Assume a switch. If it's switched, transfers to the media center (from the HD Homerun) won't impact other machines on the network at all.... hence no network slowdown.

Assume no switch, and a direct connect line from media center to the two HD Homeruns via a private network of some kind (that's the smart way to do it if that's a concern). It won't impact other machines on the network at all, ever, no matter what you do.

(Assuming a switch) it's *only* in the laser-specific instance of the following that any of this would be an issue:
1. You have 2 HD Homerun devices and you send all data to ONLY one media center box
2. AND you wish to record 4 High-def shows AT ONCE
3. AND you need to exchange data between the media center box and your machine that's doing this large file transfer

Usually, the only scenario in which you'd do this is if your media center box is also your fileserver, and for some reason you need to do huge file transfers during prime-time TV.

Sure, it certainly can happen. But to say the average user needs this is... I think ... pushing it - a lot. I was directly responding to the post right above mine, where he asked if he needed Gigabit to get HD Homerun working.

I still believe the most direct and honest answer to his question is "No, you don't. Not by any stretch."

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: dclive
(Assuming a switch) it's *only* in the laser-specific instance of the following that any of this would be an issue:
1. You have 2 HD Homerun devices and you send all data to ONLY one media center box
2. AND you wish to record 4 High-def shows AT ONCE
3. AND you need to exchange data between the media center box and your machine that's doing this large file transfer

I completely disagree. 10/100, for rounding's sake, is 10mbyte/s. Any semi-modern computer can do file transfers exceeding that speed. You're going to crowd out even one HDHR with any non-trival file transfer. You're stuck on congesting the network just with HDHRs - the point is that HDHRs are not the only things doing transfers on the network.

Say what you want, but the developers recommend gigabit networks when you're using one of these. That should carry quite a bit of weight with any buyers.

 

[dclive]

Jafa is the site tech. He says 3 devices or more (6 tuners) would need gigabit, but only if all are using 1080i (HDTV): http://www.silicondust.com/for...3810&highlight=gigabit
He says: "We recommend using a cheap gigabit switch with 3 or more HDHomeRun units, gigabit to the PC. Your network configuration looks good."
I couldn't find another relevant post in the Silicon Dust forums.

Can you show me where the site techs suggest Gigabite for just one? That clearly contradicts Jafa, who says you need gigabit only for 3 or more UNITS (6 *tuners*), and even then that's only their 'recommendation'.

As for the other comments, are you clear on the difference between a switch and a hub? As I said, network congestion will only happen if your computer (that's doing all this network traffic) is going to your media center, otherwise your network bandwidth will be fine since your switch looks at the MAC address and won't send any traffic to any port except the destination computer. And if the media center is the fileserver, it will only crowd the HDHR (recording, as you said, 1 tuner at, let's say, 2MB/s) like so:
1 data copy to the media center: 8MB to data copy, 2MB to HDHR
2 data copies to the media center: 4MB to data copy 1, 4MB to data copy 2, 2MB to HDHR (minus some to contention)
3 data copies to the media center: 2MB to dc1, 2MB to dc2, 2MB/s to dc3, 2MB to HDHR (contention being taken into account)
-- it's only here, with 4 data copies to the MC, that you're going to lose the HDHR ....

How often will someone do this? How likely is it? And, the key question, is the media center the fileserver you're sending data to? If not, there is no issue at all....

And again, you can solve the *entire problem* by giving the HDHR its' own $5 switch, or even a 100Mb hub if you can find one.

So I'm sticking to my guns: Silicon Dust (the manufacturer) says Gigabit only for 3 or more *units* (6 tuners or more), and for the person asking the question if a (assumedly single) HD HR unit required gigabit, the answer is no.