HDHomerun Prime Owners Thread - Page 5

Got mine, but don't have the HTPC up and running yet (have most of the hardware ready to assemble, but no OS). Anyhow, thinking ahead a bit, will the HDHR Prime do clear QAM cable channels without a CableCARD installed? I'm thinking if it does, that would be a way I could test to make sure things are working smoothly at my end, prior to pulling in the cable company to try and get the CableCARD working.

Looks like you can use it without a cablecard but it isn't recommended. This is something I pulled from the HDHRP forums:

Posted By: foxbat121
Prime will work without Cable Card but I'd recommend against it. The reason is ClearQAM has totally different channel mappings than CableCard tuners. Once a channel is created, WMC won't let you remove it (you can only disable it). So you will get a lot of garbages in your channel line up that has nothing to do with CableCard channel lineup. The only way to remove them is to use 3rd party Guide Tool to remove it one channel a time.

Mine came today, will hook it up tomorrow. I move that we officially nickname this device the hurp-durp, even though the acronym doesn't quite match.

I jumped on the $169 shipped from amazon a week or so ago, arrived today about 4 pm so I drove over to Time Warner of Orange before they closed and two of the counter guys wrestled with their computer to give me a cablecard and tuning adapter for about half an hour. First they got out a Motorola system, but computer wouldn't let them give it to me, then they swapped that for a Cisco STA1520 and a Scientific Atlanta Powerkey Multi-Stream PKM800. Hope its right, got Chinese takeout on the way home and that combined with amount of rearranging I will need to do has it postponed to tomorrow. I'll be running my TW DVR for a good month or two in parallel until ALL the bugs are squished.

I got mine from Amazon ($169) on Thursday. I finally got it working fully today, with some caviats.

There is a big learning curve with this thing, and the doc is really skimpy. Thank heavens for the Silicon Dust support forum, and the Tivo cable card forums. Without them you will never get this thing to work.

What they don't tell you - the cable card only works properly with Windows Media Center on Windows 7. You won't get the subscription channels with Beyond TV, and you won't get HBO/Showtime/Max with the preview TV app, or MCE under Vista. Vista is not cable card ready, and Digital Cable Advisor is not available for it. I had a hard time even getting Digital Cable Advisor for the Win 7 system - a forum posting had a link that downloaded it and installed it from MSoft or somewhere.

I had to call Comcast twice to get all the channels working. The first call was to the special national activation hotline that I had to find in a support forum. They got the card activated, but I could not get ESPN, or anything other than the basic basic channels. I called again to get the other channels activated. ESPN, et al, now came in, but not HBO and company.

I finally found that the Setup on my Windows 7 system was set up for Beyond TV. I changed it over to Windows Media Center, and HBO, etc. finally came in with MCE on Windows 7. They still don't work with the HD Homerun Quick TV app.

Windows 7 is running on my older PC, that does not have HDMI. I can't find a way to play the WTV files on my Vista system that does have an HDMI connection to my HDTV. Looks like I will have to upgrade to Win 7 on the new system, and get an HDMI card for my old PC to get everything working.

This is a nice device for people who like to drill down and solve problems. I probably wouldn't recommend it for the faint of heart or the non-technical.

I got in on it too after my order from Micro Center was canceled a month or so ago. The installation went mostly painless. I did have to call Comcast back to refresh the cable card. On the first try the only thing I could get was basic channels. The second level support person even asked the question is this a HomeRun or a Tivo.

After 10+ years of using an HTPC IMO this was the missing link to the system. Now I don’t have to even change inputs to my AVR and I have cable to all 4 HTPC’s in the house.

The WMC guide and channel selection speed blows away my Comcast DVR.

So far I'm 100% satisfied and I’ll be getting rid of my Comcast box real soon.

Mike

It took two calls, but I am up and running with Midcontinent. The first call got my card activated and allowed the unencrypted locals, needed to call back to have them reset but now I get everything, including Showtime. On one PC it was easy, on the other I had to wrestle with reseting DRM to allow Playready to update, and then I had HDCP error messages. Mindbogglingly, the solution to those was to maximize and minimize WMC once. Now the second computer works. Xbox 360 as an extender works great, a little slower changing channels than the cable company box but no slower than satellite TV. Will have to fiddle with the Harmony remote to get all the functions present on it that I'll need, but I have three weeks left in which I still have the cable company DVR for free. Good times.

Oh, good to know... in that case, I think I'll just wait for the CableCARD.

My notes show the TW CC tech line as 1866 606 5889, but I am still looking at how I will redo my available AC sockets and wiring.

TW DVR is 80% full, watch or lose, or keep the DVR until we have time to watch, think 2012. What concerns me is that I will need another split on the coax, but I guess its time to retire one of my VHS recorders and use the one going to that.

And mine arrived today from J&R because Amazon was out and they had the same price with free shipping last weekend and Amazon fulfilled the order.
Been wanting one since it was posted here but price was a bit too high for my comfort zone, that was enough of a savings to push me into deficit spending so I can finally record Comcast the way I used to before the "upgrade"
At least they finally talked me into full HD service and phone for less then I was paying before for everything separately with less channels and I get free long distance now too.
I'll have to head over tomorrow to get a card and see if I can get it all activated and on the network.

So I already have my WMC set up with my single and dual tuner hdhomerun. Tomorrow Comcast is coming to give me a cable card for my prime. What if anything should I do ahead of time?

I have the same question as I am having TWC arrive this afternoon. I am going to at least go through the digital cable advisor beforehand. Hopefully that runs smoothly.

Well let me know how it goes . Looks like I will just need to bring up the card, run the SD software, and then add to WMC. Hope that's it.

Good luck guys. I'm in the opposite situation...have my CC but waiting for the HDHRP to come in from Amazon.

Called CC today to verify they will be bringing me an M-Card!

I got my card today at a local field office and then got WMC all back in order and reactivated as far as features I turned off seeing how until now I had no intention of using it.
I called their 888 number and was greeted by a very cheerful gal who said she could do that when I said I needed to activate a new cable card. Was very painless and the hardest part for me was getting all the media center crap going again and finally getting it to scan and find all my channels.
Now I'm trying to figure out how I watch it with my other gear on the network but it sees all my channels and is working so far. I spose I'll have to use WMC with my other PC but haven't figured out how to see it on my media player that is networked so I can watch whatever is live. As long as I can record what I want though that is a minor annoyance as I'll just capture to my hearts content and edit and watch later.
I haven't read ALL the docs yet and it's only been running a couple of hours so I'm sure I'll read some more and figure it out better. Any suggestions of things to do or make it work better then it does with the windows stuff is appreciated.

For those asking what to do ahead of time, make sure you've run the Digital Cable Advisor ahead of time. It might not be there so you'll need to figure out how to get it installed. If you have old drivers, etc. it'll fail when you run it. Do it before the tech gets there so you're at the part where it's the cable co.'s fault it's not working .

So I ran the Digital Cable advisor beforehand. I now can see the TV guide but when I try to watch Live TV I get a video error. Any clue what I need to do now? I was able to install PlayReady once I got my internet setup. Do I need to do a DRM reset?

NOTE: I no longer get the error but do not see any kind of video on the screen at all. Any clue? I do hear audio.

UPDATE: I am able to view live tv and hear audio on my other HTPC on an HD5670 on the latest AMD drivers. The other HTPC that I am having issues is using a GTS450 on the latest nvidia drivers. Is there an issue with the latest nvidia drivers? This is the only difference between to the 2 pcs. Both are running through a receiver.

I'm also having issues with no picture. I can hear sound but nothing on the screen for video. i am running a gt430 with the latest drivers.

Do you know what flags your cable company has set on your channels? If it is copy_once, for that channel you will only be able to watch live TV on your PCs or on Media Extenders connected to them... can't stream to other types of media players, due to the DRM. You will also only be able to watch recorded TV on the PC that did the recording or extenders hooked up to that PC, nor will you be able to edit it.
If it's copy_freely, you can watch the recordings on anything that will play them. In theory nothing prevents streaming live TV from copy_freely channels, but I don't know whether there is adequate and reliable software for doing that.

Thanks for the driver notice. I will try an older version. I think I saw this on the Ceton thread as well that people had to revert back to an older version.

I have a question about the channel lineup. I see a lot more channels on WMC than what was scanned by the hdhrp. I read about the wmc_sync software that comes with the hdhrp downloads and assume this will make sure that both the channels that were scanned using the HDHomerun Setup will match what is on WMC. Is this correct?

Also since the tuner did not scan the channel would that explain why I can't view liveTV on that channel? In my case I am supposed to have various HBO HD channels (HBO, HBO2, HBOL, etc) but the HDHomerun Setup only scanned one HBO HD channel. The guide on WMC shows the correct amount of HBO HD channels but when I try to watch one that isn't on the scanned list I get nothing. Will wmc_sync correct this and be able to view the channel? I can view the non-hd version so I know I have access to the channel.

Another question is that the green light on my tuning adapter keeps blinking. Does this mean I need to get that replaced? I power cycled it and unplugged it but that did not solve anything.

Other than these things I was able to pretty much get everything installed easily, now comes the tinkering to get things just right.


UPDATE: After reading through various tivo forums I suspect that my tuning adapter needs to be re-balanced or something to that sort. This is why I can't see all of my HD channels cause it isn't working properly.

BTW here is the number to call for TWC to resolve these tuning adapter and cablecard issues: 1-866-532-2598. From reports it appears these techs are more knowledgeable and can fix this quickly and easily.

I think in my scenario it all goes back to the tuning adapter not working properly. The light keeps on blinking and does not stay a steady light. I will mess with it when I get home before even looking at the wmc_sync program.

I looked at the channel lineup and I'm supposed to be getting those channels in HD. I have other friends who are on TWC and they get several HBO HD and SHO HD channels. I presume once I get my TA working all should be well. Cross-fingers

No problems with my CC install today, they got me fixed right up. I had a moment's panic when I ran the channel scan in WMC and it only seemed to find my ClearQAM stations but then I realized it just took the whole channel list from the CC Everything worked great!

OK, another question, do I need to activate the card for each tuner in this box?
I have tuner 1 going just fine but it appears that I have to activate the card again for tuner 2 and 3
I guess that's not a huge deal as the first one was easy enough but I THOUGHT that once the card was activated it did em all but looks like maybe not.
Just got home today and was playing with it and was trying to figure out the other tuners and this came up. Guess I need to check their forums too and finally download the users manual and figure more things out, thanks.
That may also explain why the gal at the office said it would cost me 8.95 a month for the card, maybe it counts as more then one so technically it wouldn't be the first one free anymore.

OK, it appears that all my tuners do work, I just don't understand how to access each one individually yet, when I went in and manually tried each one with known working channels they all worked so I'll just have to do some more research and figure out how to do things in Media Center that I've never really used before. I'll have to try some season pass type things and get it up and working to the other PC in the house and MAYBE I can get it to work with the media player I have, but as long as I can see the recorded shows and edit them, which I can, that's good enough for now.
Pretty cool device and lets me record anything I pay for in full res with the original audio intact which makes me really happy

Got a hold of TWC cable card support and they confirmed that my TA is bad. I need to take it in to get it swapped out. Hopefully this one works cause all I am getting in a blinking LED light.