LEM- wrote:Would this work with Verizon FiOS TV?

Note - we do need a FiOS box for each TV, there is no straight TV reception even for basic channels if connected directly to the cable...

Yes, but the only useful channel you'll get are local channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc) and music channels.

editorkid wrote:My router is an Apple Airport Extreme, which has only three Ethernet ports, not the industry standard four, and all three are in use.

But my Mac Pro has two Ethernet ports itself. Can I connect this to the currently unused Ethernet port? Or does that lead to all sorts of configuration nightmares?

one is a modem jack kid! whippersnappers these days! two lan jacks. Ha! back in my day...

I have two of these connected to my MythTV setup. About a year ago, one of the tuners on my first unit (purchased several years back) started to go. I'd get failed recordings, and the ones that went through suffered from lots of lost frames. Just a few days ago, I noticed the second tuner on the same unit showing the same symptoms.

Woot comes through just in time to replace it.

Pause, rewind, fast-forward live television

Wow, awesome, a time machine too? You can fast-forward live tv, that's amazing!!!

The HDHomeRun rocks. I've had one for about a year, and the product itself is great, but a couple of months ago my local Comcast encrypted almost all the basic cable channels, so now I get mostly just the network channels (including HD), plus Discovery and the History Channel. I also had Versus and watched the Tour de France with it, but halfway through July Comcast encrypted that as well. It's still a good product to have, especially at this price. I use it with SageTV, which is expensive but a pretty good product (except that it doesn't work properly with Vista and Win 7 UAC).

Does it work with Directv ?

thewronggrape wrote:So let me see if I understand this correctly...

I connect this thing to my home network by attaching it to my router via ethernet cable.

I use some sort of program (not included) to access the tuner from any PC on my network and use the program to record OTA shows (Over-The_
Air in my case since I would connect an antenna to the tuner).

Is that the basic gist of it?

You got it. Except they don't give you the program to record, you provide that. To be the cool kid on the block buy this and download Mythtv, then you have a real DVR.

tytiger58 wrote:Does it work with Directv ?

No

rcwills wrote:This is a great product, but beware that you are limited by what your cable company leaves unencrypted. When I started using this 8 months ago, Charter Cable gave me access to the over-the-air networks, PBS, espn 1 & 2, and a dozen or so of the mediocre low def cable channels that exist beyond basic analog cable. Slowly they have encrypted more and more. Now I get OTA fox, NBC, ABC and CBS, public access and a dozen or so shopping networks and religious stations.

The day I lost ESPN was the day I went back to paying $10 a month for an additional cable box.

You may be able to get a special "tuning adapter" box to decode some channels if they've gone to a multiplexing approach called "Switched Digital Video". this means they use one stream for multiple channels depending on what the box request. The tuning adapter might let your device send the same information. This was gleaned from asking my cable company Brighthouse how they would support a Tivo box.

Interestingly ATT U-Verse doesn't support any of that and Tivo said there are no FCC requirments to allow ustomers to use alternative boxes.

Boy, I hope this is still available in the morning when I'm able to make sense of which OTA channels I might be able to get.

"You must have an Internet network in place with a high-speed Internet connection to use this product"

What the hell does this product do over the Internets???
Did Woot just screw up the requirements and should've said "any home network"?

PS. Looks like a good product, too bad I just use HULU...

I'd be in for one at this price if I didn't already own a couple. Best clear QAM tuners I've ever used, and I've used a lot of different ones.

Pros:

• SiliconDust's Lineup Server is integrated with their Setup program on Windows, which makes finding and setting up QAM channels in Windows Media Center and SageTV a whole lot easier than with other tuners.
  
• Excellent support. SD has forums which have active participation from a couple of their employees, and their claim is that support tickets get answered within 1 business day, which has been what I've seen for the 2 tickets I opened. They also have an IRC channel for the really nerdy. No phone support, but it's not really needed when the company is as responsive as they are to tickets. Their support people are all located in America and actually have English as a first language, something sorely lacking from certain competitors.
  
• Their software offers an option to block bad PSIP data from cable providers, which is needed in some areas because the data the provider sends breaks Windows Media Center. Haven't seen any other tuner that offers this.
  
• Tuners can be pooled and accessed by multiple PCs.
  
• Clear QAM channels work in MCE2005 and Vista WMC, which no other tuners can do.
  
• No need for screwy kernel drivers on Linux or Mac, everything is done directly in the PVR software so it's a lot more stable and easier to get working.
  

• No analog (NTSC) support. There are hardly any analog broadcasts left, and most cable providers are shutting off analog channels anyway, so not a huge concern. Some other tuners do have analog, but some don't.
  
• No support for satellite and IPTV because they use totally different systems. This is true of all ATSC/QAM tuners.
  
• No support for encrypted channels, clear QAM and ATSC only. Again, same deal as all other ATSC/QAM tuners. SiliconDust is coming out with HDHomeRun Prime which works with CableCARDs to get encrypted channels. I plan to add one of those and keep my existing HDHomeRuns for the local channels, since about half my recordings are the locals and half are cable.
  

Amazon reviewer has warning for Comcast subscribers.



2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Works, but not for long, April 23, 2010
By J. Shook "amoeba97" (Central PA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: SiliconDust HDHomeRun HDHR-US Dual Networked High Definition Digital Television (White) (Electronics)
Since our cable provider is updating their encoding in June, this unit, which we just upgraded to so we can use our new MCE PC as a DVR, will not work because the signal will be scrambled and we will need a HUGE box from our cable provider to de-scramble it. We can rent this cable box for $40 a month and also a DVR for an additional fee if we want to keep recording shows like we currently do, but that will be the only way for us to do so. That makes our HDHomeRun useless after June. Basically we paid over $100 for something we will use for 3 months at best. If we didn't throw out the box, we would have returned it.

IF your cable provider is not like ours (Comcast), then this product is for you. Want to buy it from us?
It took about a week and a lot of google searching to figure out how to get it to work with our Windows 7 MCE guide. We are still working out a few glitches (sometimes the software has to be re-set up) but overall it does what it sets out to do. And we have no trouble recording one item on the one tuner and watching something else on another channel with the second tuner, or recording two things at once!

If only we knew about Comcast's change before we bought this, however, we would not have purchased it because it will be obsolete for us in June. :-(
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
TV Everywhere, April 4, 2010
By Rock J (SLC, Utah) - See all my revie

Get this if you want to watch TV on your computer. Forget TV tuner cards, this works tons better.

thewronggrape wrote:So let me see if I understand this correctly...

I connect this thing to my home network by attaching it to my router via ethernet cable.

I use some sort of program (not included) to access the tuner from any PC on my network and use the program to record OTA shows (Over-The_
Air in my case since I would connect an antenna to the tuner).

Is that the basic gist of it?

Yes, you can stash it in some corner next to your router, plug rabbit ears antenna, download the software and watch tv from your computer.

You need the software just to control the device to change channels. For watching TV any media player supporting mpeg2 will do.

This is a great price for these, I paid more than $150 each for the 2 I have.

stevesds wrote:"You must have an Internet network in place with a high-speed Internet connection to use this product"

What the hell does this product do over the Internets???
Did Woot just screw up the requirements and should've said "any home network"?

PS. Looks like a good product, too bad I just use HULU...

It does not need internet per se. But you need to have some sort of home network for this to plug into (Router with DHCP, etc). Most people who have that have high speed internet too.

Been using one of these for a couple years with my wireless 802.11n network and love it. Terrific price, btw.

editorkid wrote:My router is an Apple Airport Extreme, which has only three Ethernet ports, not the industry standard four, and all three are in use.

But my Mac Pro has two Ethernet ports itself. Can I connect this to the currently unused Ethernet port? Or does that lead to all sorts of configuration nightmares?

Yes it will work, but you have to set the interface to a static IP in the 169.254.*.* range for it to work. 169.254.0.1 is a good choice. Set the network/subnet mask to 255.255.0.0, and leave gateway/DNS/whatever else empty.

claymac1 wrote:Sorry, but I am not a techno-nerd...matter of fact....I am techno spoon.

I am having ATT U-Verse installed this week but I do not have TV or cable hook up in my office. Would like to watch sports on my computer while I work at night.

Will this work? What questions do I need to ask?

Would much appreciate any help!

No. U-verse is all proprietary and you can't use any third-party hardware directly with it. Your only option would be an analog tuner connected to the output of one of their boxes, and there's no analog support in the HDHomeRun.

dliidlii wrote:
... snip ...

If only we knew about Comcast's change before we bought this, however, we would not have purchased it because it will be obsolete for us in June. :-(

Reviewer makes a point, do not buy these to use it for cable service, they work great for OTA (rabbit ears) HD TV thought.

I don't think they are obsolete at all if you live in a major metro area like DFW where we have more than 60 digital channels over the air.

I have one and love it, with the same warnings about encryption as above.. slowly channels have vanished as comcast has been encrypting them.

I use mine with mythtv.

Someone questioned whether it would work with the jumbo remote (or something like that) and the short answer is "yes, it can" but since I found the remote stuff hard to grok at first I thought I'd share my understanding of it.

The hdhomerun does have an IR receiver, but it just passes the IR data over the network to your computer, where you have something running (lircd in the case of linux) waiting for it.

On linux it takes two steps (beyond setting up lircd for your remote and everything you'd normally have to do):

tell hdhomerun to broadcast IR to your computer, then tell your computer to listen for it.
(my computer is at 192.168.1.6, I chose port 5000)
# hdhomerun_config discover
hdhomerun device 1016C78C found at 192.168.1.6
# hdhomerun_config 1016C78C set /ir/target 192.168.1.5:5000
# lircd -H udp -d 5000

also it's a really good idea to keep the firmware up to date.

mvsopen wrote:I know that the FCC made it legal for cable companies to sell cablecards a few years ago. Does anyone know if this box supports that?

Heck, has anyone actually *seen* a cable-card?
(A card which works like the set-top tuner, and decrypts the digital channels) I'm not sure they ever made it to market, which is why you have to rent your tuner, every month. The newer TiVo's have a slot for one.

I got one for my (Woot) TiVo with no problem and it works fine. (Time-Warner)

OK, I have one of these, have had it for almost 2 years. Paid about 170 at new egg. It does a great job, and as opposed to having dual tuners in each of my media center PCs, it allowed me to use it for several machines. I use it for cable only, never tried an antenna (Comcast), and can say the cable reception was great. Only problem is with the way they have changed cable recently I almost never use it now, as so many channels are blocked/encrypted. Silicon dust is supposed to come out with a cable card dual tuner soon, THAT is what I will get next. Ceton is about to introduce a 4 tuner cable card unit for 400 bucks. It will be a PCI card though. This card does a great job at what it does, and the CPU impact (because the unit encodes the signal) is nill.
If you use this with an antenna, you should love it (if you get good reception now). I don't get very good reception, so I never tried. This is a great price, and they have done a good job at support IMO. Several updates since I got mine (4 or 5 in two years).

So if I understand this correctly, I plug this into my network instead of having to insert a TV card into my pc and Windows 7 Media Center will see it just like i had a tuner card inserted?

Also I’m guessing that I still don’t get the premium channels unless I route it through my cable box. then I would have to manually set the channel to record something? Or could this control the cable box (that would be awesome)

antennaweb.org is the holy grail of OTA information.

Among other things, you can learn what channels are available in your area and what kind of antenna you'll need to receive them.

Does this product have any advantages over the Slingbox PRO HD? (other than price, but assuming one already owns the Slingbox...)

I think the PRO HD is single tuner, but you can view live/recorded TV via local network OR over the Internet, on mobile clients as well as PCs. And it accepts video sources other than coax ATSC/ClearQAM (e.g. DVD player, security camera, ...).

shover wrote:So if I understand this correctly, I plug this into my network instead of having to insert a TV card into my pc and Windows 7 Media Center will see it just like i had a tuner card inserted?

Also I’m guessing that I still don’t get the premium channels unless I route it through my cable box. then I would have to manually set the channel to record something? Or could this control the cable box (that would be awesome)

It does show up exactly like a regular tuner to WMC.

No premium channels (except maybe when they're on free preview), and you can't hook it to the box. The cable box only outputs analog on the coax connector, and the HDHomeRun only does digital.

bitethat wrote:Looks quite interesting. Does it allow you to see the basic cable stations as well, or are you limited to only those whom broadcast specifically for it?

It does not get analog channels. To bad most cable channels in my area are analog. about 6 channels are digital via cable for me. The others are encrypted and this unit would not see them.

Question, ladies and gentlemen.

I have an HDTV that does *not* have a built-in HDTV tuner. Can I buy this thing and then use Windows Media Center (or something) from my Xbox 360 and watch OTA HDTV broadcasts from my *television*?

If so, I'm sold. The only other decent HDTV tuner I can find to hookup to my TV costs like $200.

Adaeniel wrote:To get this out of the way before people start asking, this product will (generally) not work to record anything from your cable provider. Some areas in the US may still be unencrypted, but most providers have encrypted their channels. I do not know if they are required to broadcast local channels unencrypted, however.

They are required to broadcast locals unencrypted unless they get a waiver. The only place I know that does this is brooklyn/bronx on cablevision.

I have used two HDHomerun boxes for a total of four tuners for nearly two years. In conjunction with BeyondTV it is as good as any DVR out there. What no one has mentioned is that the HDHomerun will likely lead to a new hard drive as well because one hour of OTA HD programming will eat up over 8GB of storage. As the new fall programming season starts in a couple of months it is not uncommon for all four tuners to be crunching hard and pushing data to your system and the hard drive. I needed to move to a fast and big 1TB
WD Caviar Black drive to keep up. BUT the picture quality is the best!! BTW you need the internet in order to set up the channel lineup, and access the program data for DVR software.

spectro wrote:This thing is a TV Tuner that allows you to watch OTA or Unencrypted cable TV from any computer in your home network.

I have 2 of these for a total of 4 tuners connected to mythtv. With these I can record 4 HD programs simultaneously.

Wow. That's a lot of TV to watch.

The biggest part for everybody to note is that this really won't be beneficial to people who are using analog cable as their primary service.

I've got an ATSC/Clear QAM tuner on my HTPC that gets me a total of 12 channels from my cable provider, albeit 9 of those are HD .


Before purchasing, check This page to see what is available to you from both over the air and your video service provider.

macraig wrote:Having said that, though, there are ways to work around it, like adding an extra NIC to every machine and a separate router, and create a second dedicated TV-only network. That way there's not bandwidth competition, and you can access an NAS or whatever without consequences to your TV experience.

HDTV signal is roughly 17MB per second per stream... 2 streams is say 35MB per second that leaves 90MB per second on your 1000baseT network for Pron surfing or whatever... I think you'll be fine.

spectro wrote:Yes, you can stash it in some corner next to your router, plug rabbit ears antenna, download the software and watch tv from your computer.

Right now, I watch over-the-air TV via an old pair of rabbit ears plugged into a DTV converter into my dinosaur of a TV.

Now... do I need another DTV converter to connect to these or... I think I just confused myself trying to think of my question... I don't right. The DTV converter was because my ancient TV didn't have a digital tuner. But this does so I'm... good? Uh... brain asplodes

Doesn't support DirecTV users.

Doesn't support analog.

Doesn't support 1080p recording.

Any use for Time Warner cable users??

Almost seems like a basic hdtv tuner for your pc. Would be cool if it could some how stream to non-tuner hdtvs.

OT PS...anyone hear of a DVR for you tv that supports file sharing, heard there was a specific model back in the days - not sure what model or if that file sharing service is now discontinued???

All the folks who've been saying how great these are... what are the specs of the machines you're using to play and/or record the video? I'm wondering if I'll need to upgrade my PC in order to use this.

csimmon1 wrote:will this work with a mac or do you have to get a jacket for it to work

Works great on Mac. i'm using elgato eyetv 3 DVR software($79)which is not included.

mvsopen wrote:I know that the FCC made it legal for cable companies to sell cablecards a few years ago. Does anyone know if this box supports that?

Heck, has anyone actually *seen* a cable-card?
(A card which works like the set-top tuner, and decrypts the digital channels) I'm not sure they ever made it to market, which is why you have to rent your tuner, every month. The newer TiVos have a slot for one.

Yes, Cablecards definitely exist; I have a multiple channel card in each of 2 Tivos, and have had for several years. They were supplied by Cablevision in my case, and cost a couple of bucks a month each. They work just fine.

OH BOY. HD.