One more thing about cable companies being required to carry local channels. Yes, they are. BUT, they most certainly are not required to carry them in hi-def. So the antenna is actually better.

smerfherder wrote:outputs through ethernet to your network device ie wireless router

must use a computer with media center or similar software

Since it has a telephone jack out, maybe it could be plugged into one of those old videophones and I watch TV from there?

Or maybe I use one of these telephone to antenna adapter and plug the output from that to my VCR and record off channel 3.

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/rj45-to-coax-adapter-kit-1-piece.html

quick questions...would it work for internet as well?

sharkync wrote:Wooters

Please stop posting about how much something costs on Amazon. That's part of the pitch/scam. Of course it will cost more on Amazon - woot! is OWNED by Amazon.

Get with the program!

That's actually why.

Maybe you need a new program... you could find one with the SiliconDust Dual HD Digital Tuner!

sharkync wrote:Wooters

Please stop posting about how much something costs on Amazon. That's part of the pitch/scam. Of course it will cost more on Amazon - woot! is OWNED by Amazon.

Get with the program!

You obviously don't browse the discussion section, much, because if you did, you'd know that the Amazon price posted by people is sometimes cheaper than Woot. Also, just because Amazon bought Woot doesn't make them the same company. Woot is here to make money for Woot, not Amazon. If they were here to steer people to Amazon, then they wouldn't make any money and might have to lay off employees, give smaller raises, smaller or no bonuses (if they get any), etc. Making money for themselves - Woot - enables the company to grow, along with their paychecks and benefits.

DaZoneRanger wrote:You obviously don't browse the discussion section, much, because if you did, you'd know that the Amazon price posted by people is sometimes cheaper than Woot. Also, just because Amazon bought Woot doesn't make them the same company. Woot is here to make money for Woot, not Amazon. If they were here to steer people to Amazon, then they wouldn't make any money and might have to lay off employees, give smaller raises, smaller or no bonuses (if they get any), etc. Making money for themselves - Woot - enables the company to grow, along with their paychecks and benefits.

Forget the employees, what about the monkeys?!? For heaven's sake, think of the monkeys!

(Just kidding, TT. *looks around nervously*)

Lots of comments about saving money, but you will need to still pay the cable company for the channels that come over your cable line right? I have Charter Cable in my area and just to hook up to their line and not use a digital cable box from them costs about $50/month.

I hope that woot will offer the SiliconDust Homerun soon. I think I'll wait for that.

ebnub wrote:Lots of comments about saving money, but you will need to still pay the cable company for the channels that come over your cable line right? I have Charter Cable in my area and just to hook up to their line and not use a digital cable box from them costs about $50/month.

I get 45 channels with "bunny ears". No $50/month for garbage I could care less about watching. Free. That's how I save money with this product.

Use this to get free cable TV!... sort of.

I have cable internet but don't pay for TV service. The cable company put a high pass filter on the line which cuts out all the analog channels and the ClearQAM channels below the cutoff frequency but I still get most of the local channels in HD as well as a handfull of SD cable channels. YMMV

neilrs wrote:Use this to get free cable TV!... sort of.

I have cable internet but don't pay for TV service. The cable company put a high pass filter on the line which cuts out all the analog channels and the ClearQAM channels below the cutoff frequency but I still get most of the local channels in HD as well as a handfull of SD cable channels. YMMV

I have cable internet, but no TV so I imagine they put something similar on my line. Do the tuners on new TV's these days have the same type of tuner as this HDHomeRun? I suppose I could plug a TV into the wall and see what happens.. too bad I'm at work right now.

Can this be used with a cable box? Mainly to allow me to watch TV in other rooms? Will I still get only OTA channels or all my cable channels as well?

I just bought this for $99 last month! Uggg horrible timing!

ebnub wrote:I have cable internet, but no TV so I imagine they put something similar on my line. Do the tuners on new TV's these days have the same type of tuner as this HDHomeRun? I suppose I could plug a TV into the wall and see what happens.. too bad I'm at work right now.

If your TV has a QAM tuner (this HDHomeRun has QAM and ATSC tuners) then you'll be able to get any ClearQAM (unencrypted) channels. How many channels you get, if any, depends on your cable provider. They are supposed to at least broadcast any local channels unencrypted but if they set the channel frequency below the cutoff of the filter you won't see them.

If you want all the digital channels from the cable company without renting a set top box, you'll need a cablecard (from the cable company) and something like this: http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/ You'll still have to pay the full price for digital cable and probably a fee for the cablecard as well.

jsoko wrote:Does it work when you need a digital adapter just to watch tv? I have comcast. Just plugging in your tv into the wall doesn't work anymore.

Nope. No more cable boxes needed. You hook the HDHomeRun directly to your cable and your router. You then have access to two seperate digital tuners to record two shows, watch one show and record another, or watch two shows on different computers. I have one already and this now makes 4 tuners I can use similtaneously.

macraig wrote:Some words of advice from a veteran HDHomeRun user: plan your home network layout and usage patterns very carefully if you expect to use this device without hiccups. Even a gigabit home network can be completely saturated by disk activity from a single high performance NAS. Got a VOIP ATA plugged into your router? There's some other traffic that will be demanding priority. If you are trying to stream HDTV programs over that same network at the same time, something's gotta give and the process that does may not always be the one you'd prefer. QoS will save the day, you say? Good luck with that... QoS has never lived up to the hype.

Consider your network usage carefully before you click that i want one! button.

In my opinion, all you need is a good switch. Some of the better switches are smart enough to isolate the network traffic so it goes down the proper cable to the devices that need it.

So, if you have device1 and device2 talking to each other, it will not affect the available bandwidth of device3 and device4 that are communicating. So, if I have a computer using bandwidth streaming video from the tuner, it WILL NOT affect the VOIP phone that is using bandwidth on a completely different cat5e cable to the switch.

My recommendation is to avoid using the ports on your router as your switch. You don't need a managed switch for home use but definitely get yourself a good gigabit switch. Then, run a separate cat5e or cat6 cable to each network device and you're all set.

jzmacdaddy wrote:Here's a stupid question...does "dual tuner" mean 2 shows at once? Or just digital/analog?

There are no analog broadcast TV stations anymore.

colbytitus wrote:There are no analog broadcast TV stations anymore.

Actually, there still are some analog OTA stations left. Low power and translator stations did not have to switch.

I own 2 of the original HDHomerun dual tuners by SiliconDust...
Over the past 4 years I have saved... a minimum of $2,400 by dropping cable and going OTA only Expanded basic package = 50.
I had Expanded + HD which ran about $100/month
So my actual savings were really closer to $4800!

Check out www.TVFool.com to see what channels are in your area, buy the appropriate antennae/equipment, have a couple old computers you can dedicate to Media Center. Score a couple of these tuners and you will be free from cable in no time.

If I had the money I would buy more today! Great deal and a solid product. Also, my 4 tuners total allow me to watch and/or record up to 4 HD channels at the same time.

Buyer beware this will not work across two networks easily, and probably impossible if you have a firewall. I have a wifi subnet and wired subnet and my HDHR3 will only work with devices on the same subnet. The subnets are firewalled. The reason is that after the initial communication is established with the HDHR3 the client opens a new port and sends that port number back to the HDHR3 in a UDP payload. HDHR3 then tries to talk to the client on that new port. The clientside port is arbitrary and the firewall has no way to NAT the traffic. HDHR3 works great with devices on either subnet otherwise.

ssusty wrote:Buyer beware this will not work across two networks easily, and probably impossible if you have a firewall. I have a wifi subnet and wired subnet and my HDHR3 will only work with devices on the same subnet. The subnets are firewalled. The reason is that after the initial communication is established with the HDHR3 the client opens a new port and sends that port number back to the HDHR3 in a UDP payload. HDHR3 then tries to talk to the client on that new port. The clientside port is arbitrary and the firewall has no way to NAT the traffic. HDHR3 works great with devices on either subnet otherwise.

Yeah, but have you tried using the inverted di-lithium array in parallel? That could be a workaround.

mike808 wrote:One more thing about cable companies being required to carry local channels. Yes, they are. BUT, they most certainly are not required to carry them in hi-def. So the antenna is actually better.

The antenna option is out where I live. The best I could get is maybe one channel in some specific direction. Other people can get more in the middle of the small city. I have to rely on Comcast (the only cable provide) to get our TV channels. The small converter box they give you is miserable. It provides ultra low quality TV signal. It's even worst than watching analog TV on the old CRT TV. I use QAM to get the unencrypted channels on my HDTV whenever possible.

brainstormx wrote:Nope. No more cable boxes needed. You hook the HDHomeRun directly to your cable and your router. You then have access to two seperate digital tuners to record two shows, watch one show and record another, or watch two shows on different computers. I have one already and this now makes 4 tuners I can use similtaneously.

I am looking for something like this but with direct connection to a TV instead of watching it on a computer or have to use a computer connected to a big screen TV. I wonder why the TV manufacturers offer so much features on their TV sets. If they have to rely on the adapter to watch low quality digital TV, all the features on your expensive HDTV will be useless forever. If you have to connect a computer to your HDTV to watch TV, the same things happen. They should all just make a plain flat panel featureless TV for this purpose and cut the cost in half or more.

I got the 3 tuner version of this product from Sellout a few weeks ago and couldn't recommend it more. I have Comcast, so it was a nightmare getting the CableCARD activated because they're a bunch of rebel scums (they ended up turning my internet off.. What the Force?). The up side is that Comcast doesn't chargea penny for the first CableCARD. Aside, from that I love this product.

The quality of the recordings is fantastic. I have HD programming and watch the shows on my 58" Samsung plasma and the quality looks the same as with the HD cable box. Right now I just have my tuner set up with my HTPC. What I did was I shared the Recorded TV folder on my network and all my W7 Media Center computers can play back all of the content that I've tested so far. Streams very well over 300Mbps wireless N.

So glad I don't have to pay Comcast a monthly payment to rent something they probably paid $35 for....

I got rid of cable over 3 years ago... Best thing I ever did !! Was paying $95 a month for crap and the signal coming over cable is compressed and the quality is no where near as good as OTA broadcast.
I get 28 HD local stations, all networks and independants... ALL FREE.. So my $95 a month pays for new HD TV's and other toys like this...
I have netflix for $8 a month for movies as well as internet TV.. Cable TV sucks...
I had an antenna mounted on the roof, very small and cost only $60.. I use the existing cable network I had to pipe the antenna to the rooms.. Free yourself from cable and see how much money you save... You won't miss it !!!

This fits in with my choice to opt-out of the $150/month plus tax cable bill. I only have two TV's and they both use an antenna. I subscribe to Netflix (although there are other choices) for my film fix. The only thing I really miss are things like History Channel. But CH 13 here has Nova and some other culturally interesting programming.

Over the years I began to realize that companies have figured out how to get you to pay for things you never had to pay for before. The amount of bills you have to pay today is staggering in comparison.

SIMPLIFY!

cengland0 wrote:In my opinion, all you need is a good switch. Some of the better switches are smart enough to isolate the network traffic so it goes down the proper cable to the devices that need it.

So, if you have device1 and device2 talking to each other, it will not affect the available bandwidth of device3 and device4 that are communicating. So, if I have a computer using bandwidth streaming video from the tuner, it WILL NOT affect the VOIP phone that is using bandwidth on a completely different cat5e cable to the switch.

My recommendation is to avoid using the ports on your router as your switch. You don't need a managed switch for home use but definitely get yourself a good gigabit switch. Then, run a separate cat5e or cat6 cable to each network device and you're all set.

I agree with you, but I feel compelled to correct a few things.

1. All switches are "smart enough to isolate the network traffic so it goes down the proper cable to the devices that need it." That's what makes them switches and not hubs. Higher quality switches have the processing power to do this with fully saturated traffic without dropping packets.
   
   
2. To the OP: "Even a gigabit home network can be completely saturated by disk activity from a single high performance NAS." Let's take a look at the highest performance consumer NAS currently available -- A QNap TS-1079 ($2500) benchmarks at around 108MB/s, which is theoretically less than the 128MB/s available on a gigabit link. That's close -- I'll give you that. Functionally, though, with protocol overhead, you're correct. But if you have a $2500 NAS (with disks you're going to be more than $3500), you can afford to buy a switch that will support that sort of sustained throughput. (An 8-port Procurve 1810 is only $150 and should be fine, or a $500 Cisco WS-C2960-8TC if you're feeling like dropping a bunch of money.)
   
   However, if you're talking about something less than $1000 (which is far more likely to be in your typical Wooter's home), the performance drops to 60MB/s (at the very most) and likely closer to 30MB/s. This is nowhere near saturating a gigabit link. (And to counter the "build your own high-performance NAS for less than $1000 argument -- a heavily spec'd FreeNAS server will net you around 65MB/s of real world performance.)
   

I am computer illiterate...what else do you need to use this thing? I see references to an antenna? Also, something about not working withe wifi network. I have suddenlink and a new computer with Media center and a tv tuner that doesn't work with suddenlink for some reason. The silicon site shows most of my channels as receivable with this device. Please help me in my confusion

macraig wrote:Some words of advice from a veteran HDHomeRun user: plan your home network layout and usage patterns very carefully if you expect to use this device without hiccups. Even a gigabit home network can be completely saturated by disk activity from a single high performance NAS. Got a VOIP ATA plugged into your router? There's some other traffic that will be demanding priority. If you are trying to stream HDTV programs over that same network at the same time, something's gotta give and the process that does may not always be the one you'd prefer. QoS will save the day, you say? Good luck with that... QoS has never lived up to the hype.

Consider your network usage carefully before you click that i want one! button.

In my experience, I only had problems with multiple Hi-Def streams when I was running my network at 100Mbits. Each HD stream is about 20 Mbits, and collisions where inevitable with my 4 continuous streams of HD. Once I upgraded the network to gigabit...AND removed any legacy (100Mbit) bottlenecks...No problems at all. PS: I also use voip for the primary home line & no more problems post-upgrade.

One additional comment, be prepared to add hard drive space if you are into saving your video via XBMC, Sage, etc. These saved video files, unless transcoded, can be large. For example, last night's 2-hour episode of the voice is approx 12GB on my Hard drive. I can reduce that later to about 700MB via transcoding.

This was one of the best purchases I have made in tech equipment. Once Comcast started encrypting the Local HD feeds (DC), I cancelled cable and put an antenna in the attic. I can get over 35 channels via this setup.

ssusty wrote:Buyer beware this will not work across two networks easily, and probably impossible if you have a firewall. I have a wifi subnet and wired subnet and my HDHR3 will only work with devices on the same subnet. The subnets are firewalled. The reason is that after the initial communication is established with the HDHR3 the client opens a new port and sends that port number back to the HDHR3 in a UDP payload. HDHR3 then tries to talk to the client on that new port. The clientside port is arbitrary and the firewall has no way to NAT the traffic. HDHR3 works great with devices on either subnet otherwise.

You need to study up because there's is a potential way around your problem. Go read the HDHomeRun Development Guide. It gives you commands you can use to specify exactly what IP/Port to send the stream to. As long as you have VLC (or something similar) listening on that port when you run the command you should be fine.

How does this compare to a Roku?

mike808 wrote:One more thing about cable companies being required to carry local channels. Yes, they are. BUT, they most certainly are not required to carry them in hi-def. So the antenna is actually better.

Depends on if you're near enough the towers. I'm less than twenty miles away from most of the towers and the signal quality is crap. I'll take a dependable signal over HD any day.

My local market (Cox) does in fact carry all the OTA stations in high definition, including their additional sub-channels. Which is a win-win.

zyphos wrote:Depends on if you're near enough the towers. I'm less than twenty miles away from most of the towers and the signal quality is crap. I'll take a dependable signal over HD any day.

My local market (Cox) does in fact carry all the OTA stations in high definition, including their additional sub-channels. Which is a win-win.

not really a win... Cable companies compress the hell out of the signals to meet their bandwidth demands. OTA reception is not compressed and the difference is very noticeable from what cable delivers.. I'm over 30 miles from the towers and have some large trees in the way.. but signal strength shows max on the TV reception. Most stations went to UHF so the antenna is smaller and the signal carries further..

mike808 wrote:One more thing about cable companies being required to carry local channels. Yes, they are. BUT, they most certainly are not required to carry them in hi-def. So the antenna is actually better.

They would be dumb not to carry them in HD though. They need to broadcast the locals in high def for their subscribers so why suck up the bandwidth with a duplicate SD feed? Plus the network feed is HD so they would have to transcode the signal to SD before sending it. Seems very very unlikely. I pay comcast $10 a month and all my locals come in clear qam HD.

Exactly how is this better than hooking up your laptop to your TV and watching any of the major networks + a mess of cable channels from the web, for free??

The web has everything, including catlogs of TV series that go back years (I plugged in and watched "The Outer Limits" one night). Plus, you have the power of your laptop so wireless or HD is not an issue.

Just askin'

gak0090 wrote:Yeah, but have you tried using the inverted di-lithium array in parallel? That could be a workaround.

My point exactly!

mikem53 wrote:I got rid of cable over 3 years ago... Best thing I ever did !! Was paying $95 a month for crap and the signal coming over cable is compressed and the quality is no where near as good as OTA broadcast.
I get 28 HD local stations, all networks and independants... ALL FREE.. So my $95 a month pays for new HD TV's and other toys like this...
I have netflix for $8 a month for movies as well as internet TV.. Cable TV sucks...
I had an antenna mounted on the roof, very small and cost only $60.. I use the existing cable network I had to pipe the antenna to the rooms.. Free yourself from cable and see how much money you save... You won't miss it !!!

I did the same at the beginning of this year. I don't get HGTV or FoodTV - the two channels I used to watch the most. But I found now that after 3 months I don't really miss them. Netflix and antenna.

Does this work with Verizon FiOS TV service? If so, would I hook it up with our without the cable box?

What software are people running with this?

I used to run the Snapstream BeyondTV with my old analog setup years ago.