Hd Homerun or a onboard Tuner?

It may be easier for you to record using an a PCI-e Tuner, such as the Avermedia Duet, also is a dual digital tuner. There MIGHT be a solution to record from the Homerun, but not sure what that solution is.

I have four tiny/low power USB OTA tuners on my server. Works great. Noticed you didn't consider that option.... and it has its advantages.

I too have been trying to figure out which way to go. Fry's has the HD Homerun for $69.99 and both Amazon & Walmart have the Avermedia Duet dual tuner card for $65. There is also the Hauppage 2250 dual tuner card for about $110-$120.

It appears that with the Homerun you would need an ethernet connection to both the Homerun & the PC, presuming you would want to access Internet content such as Hulu with your PC. At least that's how it looks to me. IOW you would need two available router ports or an ethernet switch. In my case I would need to buy a switch and then someplace to put it along with the Homerun unit. People seem to like the Homerun, but having more components, more cables & more power cords is kind of making me favor the internal Duet card.

The Hauppage seems to get slightly better reviews than the Duet, but the Duet seems to have a more sensitive tuner. At the moment I'm thinking of getting the Duet from Walmart with free shipping to the store. If does not work properly at least it would be easy to return.

I did think about USB tuners, but figured there was no cost savings compared to an internal card. And I would need a hub in order to accommodate them.

What are the advantages of USB tuners?

I tried a USB tuner a while ago and it was much slower changing channels that my internal tuners or my hdhomerun. That could have just been my particular model though.

The big advantage of the HDHomerun is that it allows your DVR to be tiny. You can get a small ITX box and record onto that for example. The other advantage of the HDHomerun is that it allows multiple computers to share the tuners. If neither of those are appealing then a USB or PCI tuner would work just fine.

Two reasons why I chose the HDHomeRun:

1) I didn't have a good way to run the antenna cable to where the HTPC and TV are located. But running the cable to the HDHomeRuns in the basement was very easy.

2) Though the HDHomeRuns are small, my den is small with limited electrical sources. So putting the two of them with my network equipment in the basement helps keep things a little neater.

Would I still need another ethernet cable going to the HTPC, which is located near the HDTV, in order to watch Hulu? Or does the Homerun somehow have a pass-through feature?

My router is by my desktop in a different room than the HDTV. However I ran Cat5e cable to the HDTV location. And the antenna coax is near the HDTV. It seems like I would need ethernet cable to the Homerun in order to watch/record OTA HDTV, and another ethernet cable to HDTV in order to watch Hulu or share photos, etc with my main desktop. Does that sound right?

The HDHR needs to be connected to your network. Either to you router if you have a free port or you'll need to add an Ethernet switch. It also needs to connected to the antenna.
HDHR has nothing to do with Hulu. That "signal" comes over the Internet. Your PC will get the "signal" from the HDHR over your network as well. Hope this clarifies things.

If you are a cable subscriber the HDHR will not pick up the lower channels such as ESPN, SYFY. It will only pick up the QAM clear channels. If you are not a cable subscriber then either will work. I have both I use the HDHR to watch TV on my laptops and to provide a couple extra tuners to record from.

The HD Homerun makes sense to me as an Ethernet device that can be shared. If not sharing, dedicating to one PC, I, personally, would prefer the in-PC PCI/e card, or the external USB.

However, I don't have room on the inside of my server for two dual-tuner cards, as I already need (2) Firewire cards for direct-STB recording. Also, I do plan to make a minimal recording DVR HTPC mini-ITX, and this would be problematic.

I have a small 4-way antenna splitter with four USB tuners (Hauppauge 950's) directly mounted right on splitter....very small/very cool. I have very short usb cables that feed a small usb hub (if you don't have four ports on your HTPC).

Works great.....I can record over these four OTA's plus three firewire STB channels simultaneously.

Think only downside is cost. HD Homerun at $69 is incredible. The Hauppauge USB's are a bit pricey now....I bought them new off eBay for about $55 each, and today these are a bit more expensive. There are others that are cheaper. With the HD Homerun, if you cannot get to an Ethernet switch, and need to buy one, the economics may change.

I struggle to believe that the HD Homerun connected to the same Switch as the "reading" HTPC could create any network problems. Traffic should be routed between the HTPC and HD Homerun across the Switch backplane...port to port and not affect anything else on that switch or on your home network.

Also, as far as quality of "picture," remember that this is digital. All these solutions are transferring data. Either you have a strong enough signal to lock on without drop-outs(and don't have excessive mutlipath), or you don't. There are not shades of grey for picture quality.....so again, I question the Amazon reports on the HDHR

http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1120...220107&sr=1-71

In my case, I use powerline adapters instead of traditional ethernet cabling. It works for me. Specifically, I use Western Digitals LiveWire. Each adapter has 4 ethernet ports so I can have my HTPC, media streamer, TiVo and NAS all sitting together.

You may not be happy connecting your HTPC over WiFi. A 1080i program takes about 15 mbs. While WiFi is typically faster than that network traffic and other issues can mess up the HD streaming. Remember you are streaming from the tuner to the HTPC. Recording two HD programs requires sustained uninterrupted throughput of around 30mbs. Most networks can't do this. We can watch ONE program in HD on our notebooks over WiFi. Two-- forget it. If you can, go gigabit Ethernet. You won't be sorry.

+1 on that.

That switch will work fine, but you can just plug the HDHR directly into you HTPC if the network port is free. If it's not then the switch you linked will be needed.

So I need a switch plugged into my router and then my HTPC and HDHomerun plugged into the switch right? Does it really matter if it's gigabit or not?

Go GBif you have to buy. If you have 100MB already try it first. Wireless didn't work for me.

When I look at a picture of the HDHR there is only one ethernet port. How does the HTPC get the Internet "signal" from the HDHR in order to watch Hulu or browse, etc?

You have a router connected to the internet. The PC and HDHR will plug either directly into a router port for each one or a separate switch connected to the router with a patch cable.

The HDHR has nothing to do with Hulu and the like. All the HDHR does is tune in the cable channels.

It doesnt. The HDHR plugs into your router or switch. Your HTPC plugs into your router or switch. So nothing changes on your HTPC, except now you can also access your HDHR through your network.

Forget about wireless for streaming video. There are just too many problems with it to mention. Go gigabit hard wired if at all possible. Powerline adapters are also an option, but can get a bit pricey if you need multiple connections. Installing hardwired ethernet can't hurt the resale value of your home either so it's more than worthwhile to install it.

Tuner recommendations:

1. Pros and cons for the HDHomeRun have mostly been mentioned previously. There should be no problems with using it on your network.

2. PCI-e tuner. If you don't plan on sharing tuners with other PCs then this might be preferable, as long as you can connect it to an antenna.

3. USB tuners. I used to be a huge supporter of these, until they decided to start dropping off my USB interface at random. I tried numerous hubs, different tuners, and different PCs and the tuners would eventually disconnect themselves at some point, forcing me to rerun setup each time. However, I can definitely see using one or two of them to supplement any other tuners you currently have or will have. The HP USB QAM/ATSC tuner is my favorite and can usually be found for about $50 or less. It's basically a rebadged Hauppauge 950Q and it comes with it's own Media Center remote

I currently have a PC with a Ceton InfiniTV4 cablecard quad tuner and a pair of Hauppauge 2250 dual QAM/ATSC tuners. In addition, I have a HD HomeRun Prime cablecard triple tuner and a standard HDHomeRun dual QAM/ATSC tuner shared across the network with three PCs. I see no difference in picture quality between the PCI-e or networked tuners. I also do not experience any slowdown in my network when any of the tuners are in use.

I have the 8-port version of this switch. I bought it a couple of months ago to replace a brand "D" switch that died. So far it has been working perfectly.

Correct and the HDHR dual tuner is not really a good cable tuner. It is meant for over the air. You need the HDHR prime which uses a cable card to get a "real" cable tuner. I have no experiance with that one. Just OTA. We use DirecTV for "cable" channels. It is independent from the OTA Media Center DVR.