HDHomerun Prime Owners Thread - Page 8

I bet they did it because they have all the approvals they need for the Prime 3 tuner and didn't want to go to the expense and trouble of getting a 6 tuner unit approved and I agree that kinda sucks because here for now they charge me 9 bucks a month for my extra card. If I wanted the extra tuners it would at least cost me a extra 20 a month to use them all even though that M card could handle all the tuners if they hadn't split it up like that.
I'll have to call and complain about the card rental and general high price again anyways and they'll probably give me some kind of discount again and break on the card. Some places have a first card free deal and 2 or 3 bucks a month for extras after the first one, apparently not here.

I'm considering switching from D* to Comcast for a Doubleplay deal. But looking for better DVR options. Won't even consider the Comcast DVR and the Tivo Premiers are too costly for monthly or lifetime service.

So my understanding is that with the HDHomerun Prime and a Windows 7 box (which version of Windows 7?), there would be no monthly fees for guide data?


Is the simple overview that I'd need to connect a PC to each TV where I would want DVR recordings? Say I have two PCs connected to two TVs. Would the 2 PCs "share" the 3 tuners from the HDHomeRun?

And I would hook up the HDHomeRun to my router by ethernet but each of the PCs could be connected to the same router by Wifi?

My understanding, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that tuners have to be assigned to different computers, i.e., they won't be redistributed on the fly based on which htpc needs them. A better option I think is to have one htpc managing all the tuners, and then have have Xbox 360s for the other TV's in the house acting as extenders.

Windows 7 home edition is fine. Also, I would strongly discourage you from using wifi to distribute video around the house. Go for wired.

Actually based on the missing remote review, it sounds like the tuners will be shared. It would nice if someone could clarify. One thing to keep in mind though is copy once flags. Basically it means if you record a show on one computer you will not be able to watch the recording on another. That depends on the particular channels and cable provider though. This is not a problem when using extenders like I described

Is it copying or streaming in that case? How do the DVR makers get away with their Whole Home DVR schemes then?

Their boxes are locked down and all meet the hardware standards to allow streaming between them. PCs aren't

The Prime tuners are shared between PCs, the Ceton tuners have to be assigned.

The Comcast DVR I agree with because it's crap and too expensive to rent, but a lifetime Premiere can easily be had for less than $500. A decent HTPC with the Prime will cost at least that much, so there's not as much of a diff cost-wise as you think. One less tuner for the Tivo, of course. The HTPC makes a lot more sense if you want to use extenders.

You're in luck with copy protection on Comcast, btw - they only protect the movie channels so all other recordings can be viewed on any PC.

The Prime assigns tuners as needed. And so for, with 4 PC's and an iPad I haven't run into any real problems with it doing that. I just reserved an IP address for the Prime on my router so the PC's never have to worry about the Prime losing it's IP address.

With Comcast where I'm at, most channels aren't copy protected, but some are. For example AMC HD is copy protect, regular AMC isn't. I can record on the HD channel, but I can only watch on that machine.

I wanted to share my experience with "upgrading" from the HDHomeRun to the Prime. I built a new dedicated HTPC a few months ago and have been using WMC with the HDHomeRun and it's been fantastic. But, I moved and decided to go back to cable and upgrade to the prime. I have Verizon FIOS and the cable card activation was easy: took my dvr to Verizon, swapped it for a cable card, got home and installed it in the Prime, and called to activate. No issues whatsover. But, I could not get WMC to accept the tuners because it kept giving me the error about my pc not being cable ready. It turns out that when I installed WMC with the OTA HDHomeRun a few months ago it did not install the "Digital Cable Advisor" that allows WMC to integrate with cable cards. But, this is not a separate download so after updating WMC several times I still did not have the "Digital Cable Advisor" An hour later, I decided to run the WMC setup again and this time it installed a 6mb packet which included the "Digital Cable Advisor" Once I clicked on the icon it then tested my computer and said it was digital cable ready and I was suddenly watching tv. This WMC setup did not lose any of my recordings or webbrowser settings and seemed to be the only way to get "Digital Cable Advisor"

Very annoying, but I hope this helps someone as it took me most of my kids nap to figure it out.

This is indeed wrong. You must be thinking of the Ceton product. With the HDR Prime, any PC can use any available tuner. Sharing is transparent.


Beat me to the switch. Guess I should get up earlier.


+1

Looking at the HDHomerun Prime as a solution, just switched from antenna/PC tuner to comcast.

Looking for a bit of advice. What i've got:
Main Desktop computer. AMD quad core, 1GB DDR5 graphics card, 8GB RAM (2TB storage). Display: either 22inch monitor or 32inch tv. Wired internet.
Laptop: i5, 1GB graphics card, 4GB RAM (500GB HDD) Wireless internet.
NAS running FreeNAS: 2.5TB storage. Wired internet.
Upstairs: Airport Extreme (wired to modem, wired to desktop and NAS)
Downstairs: Airport Extreme running as extender, wired to Xbox 360, all other HT stuff.

I understand content is locked into a device in certain cases, but can I stream the recorded content via Xbox 360 from both computers? Can I transfer content to the NAS, but only play it back on the device that recorded it? Ultimately, I want the flexibility to record content on whatever, store it on the NAS if possible, and play it back either on the recorded device or the Xbox 360. Right now, streaming content from the PC to the Xbox 360 works great, I never watch live, just recorded.

Any insight/suggestions would be appreciated!

Yes you can stream from the 360 but I don't know if you can register a 360 to more than one media center. I don't believe you can...

For those of you who watch all three channels at the same time in WMC, how do you go about doing that?

Essentially, I need to watch three stations simultaneously on three different monitors while its recording. I've been told that it's impossible with WMC so I'm guessing I need another extender (currently have an XBOX 360).

Any help appreciated.

Yep, 2 extenders and the main PC

Worth getting another XBOX 360 or is there another extender on the market that's cheaper/just as good?

XBox is the best and only current extender. There are some older ones that you can find out on Ebay from Linksys.

I setup my prime on Saturday and noticed Nickelodeon HD seems to have an occassional hickup every 10-15 seconds (black bar goes across the screen on top or bottom) but all the other channels work fine. I have Verizon FIOS and confirmed this is the correct channel, in my package, etc.

Has anyone experienced issues with just one or two cable channels? I need some direction on trouble shooting.

Been looking for a extender myself and most of the few linksys ones go for close to what a used Xbox would go for with shipping. If I knew for sure the red ring of death is usually a easy fix I'd buy one of those and repair it as there are a few of those on Craigs list here for dirt cheap.
Of course when my On Demand is working I can watch most of the newish movies I want to send to the front room anyways, but many times my On Demand is dead with a error 7 which means low signal. They randomly stopped by yesterday when the guy was checking signal leakage in my area and he said the cables into my house had a issue. He tried to fix it but decided the cable under the street is damaged so it needs to be replaced after he used a cable signal tracer thing that told him it had issues at the 70 foot point of the 200 foot run to my house.
Was glad he didn't go nuts about all my goodies hooked up and reiterated that it was the outside cables that tested bad. Guy was actually pretty cool and helpful too.

How is the hdhomerun prime's reliability compared to the ceton infinitv pci and usb devices?

A friend was showing me his inifinitv 4 usb and pcie devices but said he was having constant problems with both of them.

I sometimes have up to 4 recordings going on at once with my cable dvrs so I really want a 4 tuner device but I will settle with 3 if ceton doesn't come up with a fix for all the problems their devices are still having.

I've been running mine since late Dec or so and just once I had the network die on this machine and no tuners found glitch. I restarted and did a bunch of things but finally I fired up the front room PC and it's network was running fine, which then got the Prime up and running again, then the network in here started working again too. I've had a few glitches I caused, and issues with this box waking from sleep properly but that was the first time for me that the prime was just not working, and that was very recently. I've got a bunch of season passes setup and the guide auto updates every few days and it just captures my shows. I've had two at once going so far and the playback later after editing down and converting to MKV was smooth on both. I've had more issues getting this box happy, and WMC working right then I've had with the prime so far but it is a PC and network device so I expect a few glitches now and then, just hopefully not every time I try to get everything to do something.

I wanted this unit because it was mostly standalone so I didn't have to stuff one more card in here, plus having all tuners available to any PC on this network once everything is installed properly is a very cool feature. From what I've seen of Cetons support they are top notch as well but their unit was until recently significantly more expensive and has to be inside my PC, plus you have to assign tuners to any extra PC's on the network so maybe a little more limited in how you can use it, but 4 tuners would be even better if price was no object.

I posted an issue on this forum a few days ago about NickHD being a little pixilated on my 3 day old Prime. The channel worked fine on the FIOS box. So, in my infinite wisdom I unplugged everything and plugged it all back in in case it was a connection issue. Now, when I open WMC and go to live tv or select a channel in the guide none of the channels work. WMC says channel unnavailable. But, if I push record it suddenly "activates" the channels and I can get everything just fine. I can now change channels/tuners freely and if the recording stops on it's own, the channels seem to work (I can't stop the recording or I have the issue again). This seems to be a WMC / DRM problem.

Anyone have a similar problem? I opened a silicondust ticket as well since 2 hours of reinstalling HDHomeRun, resetting up WMC, etc didn't seem to make this issue go away.

I'm sure you've already tried a cold restart of the PC too, right? I've only seen 'tuners unavailable' once in a couple of months' use, and a PC reboot fixed that. I've never restarted the Homerun other than installing the latest firmware a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, I don't think I did a cold shut down / power up of the PC. I'll try that tonight and report back.

It's not the tuners unavailable message, it's the channel is unnavailable. So, it easily finds all 3 tuners but if I select any channel it gives me the error. If I start to record that channel (or any channel) suddenly all 3 tuners work fine and I can watch live tv and record two shows if I want. But, when that recording stops it's only a matter of time before live tv with no recording on any tuner gives me the same message. So frustrating.

I can't believe unplugging the unit and plugging it back in is now giving me this issue.

Is anyone viewing their HDHomeRun from a Mac? What's the best free client for watching streams, please?

If you unplug your equipment, what's the proper sequence to power everything on for the first time? Or does it matter?

I have a Prime, a HTPC, and a Verizon Fios combo Router/Cable and I never know which one to power on first.

I have discovered that my HDHR is incredibly sensitive to too little or too much signal. Whereas my cable boxes will function without a hiccup within a band of 0dB to 20dB of signal, the HDHR will pixelate like crazy if the signal dips below 8dB. If I boost the signal too much with an amplifier to greater than 15dB, I get the "channel unavailable" message.

Last week I had tuners unavailable on my wife's PC, and PC reboots didn't fix it (this was after an extender meltdown coinciding with a new router). Restarting the HDHRP freed them up again. Incidentally, the extender meltdown was fixed by unplugging the downstairs network switch from the router and hooking it directly to the upstairs switch that connects the HDHRP with the HTPC.