HDHomerun Prime Owners Thread - Page 40

or get one or more clearQAM or OTA tuner. Won't be able to record non OTA stations, but if you have a lot of network recordings going on anyway, will save you the cable card rental. In WMC you can merge OTA/clearQAM tuners with the cable tuners (i.e. map them to the cable channels) and set the priority, i.e. set the OTA/clearQAM tuner first for ABC, NBC, CBS etc. Also bypasses the need for tuner salad as the 4 tuner limit is per type and not the total number of tuners in the system.

I have 2 Primes. I just shopped around and waited for a sale. Don't remember where I got them but it was from two different places online.

I did have issues in the beginning, as you can read in this thread but not really Prime related. I wanted free-standing boxes for true network access. Didn't want a tuner card that is tied into the PC.

The WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is holding up pretty good so far. I'm using W7 WMC and she is getting accustomed to it. I don't think she has pushed the Primes to all 6 tuners but she does have "braggin' rights" with her friends. During the day-to-day use she never even pays attention to the Primes since her interface is with WMC.

I also bought a Silicon HomeRun box as well which is not in service. Was gonna install an antenna to try to reduce the Comcast channel package. I will run with what I got for now and try again later on the bill-reduction scheme.

No regrets.

X2: The HDHR3-CC logs indicate that we are using the tuner about 20% of the time. Most of our programming comes in vie the HDHR3-US - QAM tuner. If your on an unencrypted QAM (i.e. FiOS). your good to go. Also, don't underestimate OTA;

I have been looking on CL as well for a Slim 360 and I'm finding a wide price range and options and accessories.
What did you actually get for your setup?
What did you wish you got?

I have a dual and I have had nothing but good experiences with it. I know this is a prime thread but I will say the dual works well.

Thrilled with my Prime as well. The install and help from Comcast was pretty good and once I got all the bugs worked out with WMC and getting this box to sleep properly it just works and I try to make sure to not fill up the boot drive with captures. They even added the ability to use it as a tuner with a few media players recently, some I guess work pretty good, mine works, but the channels are all 5 too high and sometimes it has stutters but it was free and is in beta so you get what you pay for.
I'll have to rehook up my WDTV Live and see if it plays better using the prime as a tuner sometime but not so great with my Pivos Aios media player that otherwise works great too.
Every so often I go through and edit down my captures and save them to a 2tb drive I added just to hold everything, then watch when I have time:)

My FiOS here doesn't give me any unencrypted QAM. So, I have my HDHR-US on an antenna, up in the attic - OTA. It is kind of like a backup too - if I lose FiOS for any reason, I have the antenna. I must say though, compared to the other cable providers I've had, FiOS has been remarkable regarding service. In 2.5 years I have not had a single outage.

Do you have the HDHR Dual in the attic with Ethernet from there to a switch?

I have the antenna in the attic and coax ran to a closet where my Dual and network equipment is located. The coax run is fairly short, about 12 ft.

Thanks. It was not clear how you had this set up.

Same setup as me. I have a closet with my Prime and Dual, the WHS 2011 server, and all the switches and such.

I just ordered an HDHomeRun Prime to go with my FiOS connection and plan on getting a CableCard for it in the next couple of days. I will be putting it in my living room, where the flatscreen and FiOS modem are now.

I may also want to set it up in my bedroom on an old CRT TV which hasn't seen much use lately using either an old Xbox 360 (that does not have and cannot get a Live subscription) or a Roku, but I can't find a straight answer as to whether or not the Roku is compatible or if Live is required to get it working on the 360.

Does anyone know for sure if either of these options will work? If not I will just get the free set-top box from Verizon (don't currently have TV Service and this won't be going on to an HDTV), but It'd be nice if I can use one of these two to access the HDHomeRun.

Do you have a PC with Win7 and WMC in your living room?

The Xbox should work as an extender to WMC.

I have a computer with Win 8 in the living room, as well as a fileserver server with Windows 2k12 in my office which I plan on using for the majority of recording since it already runs 24x7....unless the processor or graphics card requirements for this are steep since that computer is somewhat underpowered.

Does that Win8 computer have WMC on it?

What are the specs of that PC?

The PC in the living room is currently the following:
- Windows 8 Pro
- AMD A6-5400k (no discrete graphics but I am considering adding in an AMD discrete card Radeon DualGraphics)
- 16GB RAM
- 250GB HDD

The PC that runs 24/7 in the office has
- Windows Server 2012 (which I prefer to keep since it helps me with studying for my IT Certifications)
- Intel Atom D270S
- 4GB RAM
- 300GB Hard Drive + 1.5TB Hard Drive

Plus I also have my PC:
- Windows Server 2012 (may move back to 7/8 since I don't need a second DC as a physical server...it could always be virtualized)
- Intel Core i7 920
- 24GB RAM
- 320GB + 1.5TB Hard Drives

Live is not required to use the xbox as an extender for live and recorded tv. But it is required to watch Netflix on an Xbox. I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch 720p netflix on an xbox, let alone be willing to pay extra for the privilege, but some do apparently.

A Roku does partially work. In a pinch I can use my streaming blu-ray player in this way, but the results aren't ideal. First, you must run a DLNA server (Plex for example) that can play wtv files. Some files may or may not play according to the copy flag. The interface is not good because you only get lists of files. Also there is no possibility to stream live TV, no guide, no descriptions, no nice GUI. Bottom line, it kind of works, but I wouldn't recommend it. Xbox gives you full WMC functionality and is far easier to setup and use.

Of course, you'll have to install media center on any PC you intend to record on or watch live tv from. I personally wouldn't mess with doing this on Win 8 if I had a choice, but it seems to work well enough for some.

Does the PC in the living room have WMC on it?

The spec's of that computer look fine for PVR use. Before spending money on a graphics card get a SSD for the OS and use the HDD for the recording drive. Recording to a file server is a pain and materail flagged Copy Once will not be playable on another computer.

Even if streamed across the network? I generally do not copy the files when I watch them on other computers, just play them from a network drive.

I'm not sure if that PC has WMC installed now (I'm at work ATM), I can check when I get home...but I may just fall back to Win7 if it does not.

Not all versions of Win7 have it and it is a paid add-in to Win8. $10 for if it is Win8 Professional.

You cannot stream LiveTV across the network with PVR functionality without WMC at the present time if you have Copy Protected channels and it will not play to a Roku with PVR functionality either.

I've been away for a very long time. I know this forum is for the Prime but the Dual forum looks pretty inactive now. Hoping you all can help.

I built a new computer after several of my fans actually seized up on the old one (it was about 8 years old).
The upgrade moved me from XP to Windows 7 Ultimate.
Everything about the HW was an upgrade (I can give specifics but everything advanced about 8 years)
I'm using SSD for the OS and a 3Gig HDD to hold the video.
My HDHR worked fine on the old computer.

The problem is that the recorded video now has occasional very short freezes. They last for a fraction of a second and occur every few minutes (but not at regular intervals).
If I watch live, I don't see any problems.
Yesterday I recorded the same show on both tuners at the same time (one cable, one OTA)
They both seemed to have equal number and severity of freezes but they were at different times.
When I saw a freeze on one stream, I'd look for it on the other and usually it was just a hint of the problem.

I also tried watching a recording in real time while I had the resource monitor running. I saw nothing unusual when the freezes occurred.

Any ideas? How can I debug this?

Thanks,
Glen

What recording/playback software are you running?

I started with Windows Media Center. I didn't really like it (Dual Monitor trapping the mouse) playback seemed choppy and there was the split second freezing so I switched to CW EPG for recording. For playback I tried TheaterTek but I had some sound issues with that so I am currently using Windows Media Player.

I don't think the player is the problem since I can "rewind" and play the same section and it freezes the exact same way. I think the player is faithfully playing the flawed recording.

I have run diagnostics on the memory (8x2 Gig) and the 3 T HDD. I have not run any checks on the SSD.

Here is the full list of HW
Motherboard - MSI P67A-GD80 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
Processor - Intel Core i5-2310 Sandy Bridge 2.9GHz (3.2GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I52310
Memory - Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLT2KIT8G3D1608DT1TX0
Power Supply - OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular High Performance Power Supply
SSD - OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Video - EVGA 02G-P4-2643-RX GeForce GT 640 2GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready
HDD - Western Digital Caviar Green 3 TB SATA III 64 MB Cache Bare/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD30EZRX
DVD - Asus 24xDVD-RW Serial ATA Internal OEM Drive DRW-24B1ST (Black)
OS = Windows 7 Ultimate
Drivers are up-to-date

Try installing VLC and playing the recording with it. This will eliminate a decoder issue.

I installed VLC and the momentary freezes nearly disappeared. I'll need to put some more miles on to see how it really performs. But THANKS.

Q1. Is VLC the preferred player now (I've been away for years)?
Q2. What is the preferred recording method (CW EPG makes *.ts files, Win Media Center makes something else, others....)
Q3. Why would the player make such a difference as far as (nearly) fixing the momentary freeze problem?
Q4. There was still a hint of a problem even with VLC so I think something is still causing a problem during the recording (maybe I'll know more after using VLC longer) - any more help on that?
Q5. Unrelated - but what was Microsoft thinking when they decided I only wanted a single playback device at a time. This really messed up my plans.
Q6. Also unrelated - but what was Microsoft thinking when they decided if I wanted Media Center full screen on my "right" monitor, I would want my mouse trapped there so I could not do any work on "left" monitor? maximizer allowed me to move the mouse but seemed to degrade the video so I quit using it.

Thanks.

Freezes in the exact same way, or the exact same spot? Try playing the file with any player that allows you to advance one frame at a time to see if the freeze got recorded.

Also, I have a two monitor set up with Win 7 and WMC. I keep WMC on the right side monitor. As long as WMC is not maximised you can move the mouse back and forth. Just expand the window by dragging rather than clicking on maximize and you can fill the screen and still move your mouse.


Sent from my Nexus 7

Your problem sounds like Windows power management settings. Are you sleeping HDDs or throttling cpu/pci link state? Also, Multimedia settings -> When playing video -> "Optimize Video Quality"

I could be wrong, but for your video to play fine but freeze sure sounds like something is trying to throttle or sleep for a split second. WMP, WMC, VLC should have higher priorities in the Power Management world of Windows, but I don't know of anyone who's tested video playback on all players at all power settings to know for sure

Re: "freezes the same way or same spot?"..... single stepping frame by frame was a good idea.
When I went frame by frame with TheaterTek, the program locked up when I got to the bad spot. Had to kill it.
When I tried the same spot with VLC, it skipped a bunch of frames and jumped ahead by about 1 second.

Clearly these defects are in the recordings but VLC handles them very well during playback.

Re: power settings.... interesting.
I noticed when I looked at resource monitor the utilization is quite low (processor was 2%) so maybe its getting board.
The HDD and SDD are both SATA3 and probably have much idle time but an SDD doesn't shut down and HDD only shut down after many minutes but maybe the system in general is quite board and starting to doze off.
I found a minimum processor state setting and boosted that up (from 5%) to 25%.
I also turned off the PCI express power savings.
I will try some more recording tonight with these new settings.

Keep the ideas coming, thanks.

To answer your question regarding preferred player, I use WMC for all 3 of my systems, for recording and playback, and have zero problems. I'm watching live TV on my Dual right now as we speak.