HDHomerun Prime Owners Thread - Page 15

After I ordered it I was looking at routers/switches to go gigabit if I had to. I figured I'd see what happens and go from there. I'll never have all the tuners running like that, I just did it to test it out. I'm glad that my network is handling it without any problems. It is certainly a "different" way to watch TV! And it'll save me $24 a month in equipment rental fees. And I really like having my recordings go straight to my hard drive, rather than having to capture from the DVR box.

I decided on the HDHRP because I liked the idea of not having to have a computer running to make it available to other TVs.

Steve

Well I broke down and ordered through J&R via Amazon for 199 w/ free shipping. It'll be here tomorrow.

Frys have it for $179.99 this week

I have to say I'm really impressed with Prime so far. Aside from the 1st day were I was receiving a "Network Issue" on occasion, it's been rock solid. I've been doing a little load testing to see how my network and PC handle all the data, and so far no hiccups. I tested 2 extenders and the PC itself with live TV for hours and it worked great. Once I finish the RROD fix on my 3rd Xbox, I plan to record 3 channels, while streaming 3 different recorded shows to the extenders. I think this should give me a good idea how well the network and PC handle everything. If all goes as planned, I'll be dumping my 2 Comcast DVRs within the next week.

I've been using my Prime on Time Warner since about November and it's working great, more or less.

I'm thinking of setting one up for my mom and sister, who are moving to a Charter Cable area. for my sister, I guess I would have to look for a used Xbox to use as an extender.

Any advice on where to look for a used Xbox? I assume Ebay, but I know there are several versions. Which version is likely to be found at the lowest price and still be compatable?

Is it feasible to use the Xbox as a wireless extender? I thought that was a main reason for using one, but I saw one or two posts here where someone was having problems (though if I remember, he was connected by ethernet).

Also, can the Xbox be used to schedulerecordings as well?

If all you need is an extender, any Xbox that boots will work. Banned Xbox Slims on craigslist would be perfect, or ones with broken DVD drives - should be able to get one of those for less than $100. All Xbox360 models will work as extenders but the Slims are the ones to get because they are quieter and have less power draw.

Don't go wireless, way too many variables. Some get it working good all the time, others don't. Go with MoCA or powerline adapters if you can't run ethernet.

Using an Xbox is just like sitting in front of your HTPC, you can schedule recordings, watch live or recorded, see the guide, etc.

Thank you. I think you meant to say "all xbox 360's" can be used. I have an original xbox (not a 360), and I've read they cannot be used.

Now to research what a MoCA is!

I could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure a banned Xbox won't work for WMC. You should be able to stream recorded TV but you will run into issue trying to stream downloaded videos (AVI, MKV, etc.) since it can't go onto LIVE to get updates and such.

correct. WMC live and recorded tv will work. But there will be issues with downloaded videos

That's fine. My sister has no interest in downloading videos. But would a "banned" Xbox 360 be able to play purchased games from a disc?

Yes but some games have updates after they are purchased. Most are for the online portion of the game but some affect standard game play as well. If there were any glitches discovered after the game was printed then you may get glitches. I had one game years ago that would freeze at a certain place late in the game AND erase my game progress so I had to start over again. This was on one of the original Xbox consoles that was banned. So, it can play games but there may be some issues.

Another Xbox question: How do I make sure to avoid a "banned" unit?

You don't. That's the risk you take buying used since you're going off of the sellers word.

04/22/12
SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime $149.99

http://sellout.woot.com/

That's a smokin deal so anyone on the fence about one of these should jump in before they sell out.
Last best price was about 20 more on Black Friday.

Yep, best price so far but a bad sign for us users that these are already showing up on woot, a blowout sale site. Maybe they just made too many in the current run.

I jumped in for one from Woot. I won't be in the new house with FiOS for a couple months, but I don't imagine I'll find it cheaper anytime soon.

Had to work this morning and they are sold out by noon PST, so those who got one did well.

Leebo - MoCA Multimedia over Coax Alliance, a standard for network communication over coax, 1.0,1.1, and now 2.0; for HD streaming over coax you want a 1.1 based unit or 2.0 (very hard to find and pricey but extremely high speed). With the 2.0 devices coming on the market there is some pressure on the older devices. I had been recommending the "NETGEAR MCAB1001 MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapter Kit" through amazon at $80 but they have sold out and netgear does not list the device any longer. You may need to upgrade splitters to better than 1Ghz types to have MoCA work properly. CES this year reviewed a very neat MoCA system (award winner) but did not see pricing back then. I currently use the Actiontec Mega Plug 200 mbps BPL adapters ($71 amazon), a minimum type needed to stream HD TV (it is actually 100 per direction). They sell a version for $80 that has a hub on one end - "Actiontec MegaPlug 200 Mbps AV Powerline Ethernet Adapter and 4-Port Hub Kit" but would rather have a giga port myself (as I do).

FWIW I have no problems caused by a wireless bridge I have the xbox 360 connected to. If you decide to try wireless, this is better than the xbox built in wireless because you have the option of using the 5ghz band (less crowded, more channels, better chance for full 300mbps, less interference from other household items) as long as you buy the right hardware.

Specifically, I have 2 netgear WNDR3400s running dd-wrt, one as AP and one as client bridge, running on the 5ghz band. I've measured real-world throughput at about 80-90mbps over this link.

I, too, have had excellent results with a 5GHz bridge. My Prime is directly connected to my main router/access point (DIR-825) on the second floor. My WMC7 HTPC is on the first floor at the other end of 5GHz bridge (DAP-1522). I see absolutely no degradation while simultanously recording 3 HD channels on the HTPC while also streaming a recorded program out of the HTPC upstream on the same 5GHz link, which is then turned around in the DIR-825 to my notebook pc via 2.4GHz.

I was hoping to stream a Homerun Prime recorded program from my computer back to my DLNA TV using a server program. I heard the programs are stored as a .wtv file on the computer. I found one small wtv file on my Windows 7 computer that streamed just fine to my TV.

Anyone know where I can get a test sample of a copy protected .wtv file like something recorded from a Homerun Prime via cable card?

Win7 can transcode/stream .wtv files on the fly to serve DLNA clients. However, copy-protected .wtv file won't work this way (otherwise, it defeats the purpose of DRM in the first place) because there is no DRM protection on DLNA. streaming (at least in the current implementations). Also, it depends on what video formats your DLNA client (TV) supports. If transcoding is required (as it is in my test case using Panasonic Plasma TV or BD player), the quality is really unacceptable.

Not all file HDHR Prime recorded are copy-protected. Only the programs marked as copy-once will be recorded as copy-protected.

I am just curious what others do about watching cable TV on their other TV's in the house if they record and watch recordings from their computer using a Homerun Prime with it's cable card. My house is wired with cat 5 to a central box in a closet. My Computer is located in my home office but a large screen Samsung TV is in my family room. I can stream video from my computer to my TV via Ethernet cable. How do you watch live TV on a TV. Preferably not just a built-in QAM tuner on the TV that is missing many cable channels.

Computer at each TV or XBOX as an extender are probably the most common options.

/Anders

Xbox360 or any other Media Center extender is your best options. In fact I don't even use any PCs on my TVs. XBox 360 exclusively.

Just a quick report back on my experience on replacing an ATI-DCT with the HDHomerun Prime. I have to say there isn't anything to complain about! Switching to the Prime eliminated network issues and has provided a seamless solution. Makes me wonder if the network issues on the USB solutions were actually network issues or USB related! There were no hiccups switching Media Center to the new tuners.

The included quick TV app for windows works great for watching SD/HD material on non-media center PC's. Using their drivers and VLC, I get a similar experience on the Mac. Way to go!

Trying to decide between the HD Homerun Prime and the Ceton card. And right now I'm leaning towards the HD Homerun because there appears to be less problems. But one thing I want to know, can the recordings be sent to a networked hard drive, or does it need to be internal to the main computer or a NAS box. I am using Freenas(old Dell 8600) and an iOmega iConnect unit. All the movies I stream in my home (XBox and Appletv) come from the iConnect with no problems. So can I point the recordings to go there? I will need to add storage so the answer will let me know whether I should purchase an internal drive or if I can go with an external connected to the iConnect or NAS box (internal full). Thanks.

You need to have at least one instance of Windows 7 running to get the full experience. You can use MythTV on OSX / Linux for content marked copy freely. There is not a way to stream directly to an Xbox or Apple TV. However, you can redirect the recording directory to a network location using the registry in Windows 7.

How do you do that?

I think you can point WMC to any drive that your PC can see in win 7 but the drives I use are installed in my box so I haven't tried it myself.
I'd bet any shared drive on your network that's on 24/7 would work too as that's what I do with the two that my WDTV live media player has hooked up. Any time windows is on those two show up as shared drives with a drive letter and everything as long as they are online on the network. I don't know if I'd trust them as sometimes they drop off and I'd hate to loose a critical recording but if your network and shares are stable I'd bet it'll work.