HDHomeRun - Dual ATSC or QAM to Ethernet Box - Page 10

HDHomeRun is not for DirecTv, it is for receiving OTA ATSC and cable QAM (unencrypted) streams.

There are people experimenting with capturing component video and HDMI streams (your DirecTv STB must not require HDCP with HDMI) - I'm not sure of the status of those projects.

Cards/devices here:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

USB device

I just received my HDHR yesterday and wanted to report it works perfectly with Verizon's FIOS-TV in the Howard/Anne Arundel - Baltimore Area. All of the channels that I could receive OTA are being distributed unencrypted ATSC/QAM256 over the COAX (inside the house). Also, the "music" channels are unencrypted as well as all those county/state access channels.

HD/SD/etc are all working with my MythTV .20 setup.

Got the tuner. Fairly plain looking box, and I was surprised by its size. It's SMALL!! I was expecting something bigger! (not that size matters in this case...)

Unpacked everything, plugged the tuner to an OTA antenna (for now), plugged it into my switch, installed the Beta MCE drivers, voila! 10 minutes and it is working perfectly! Very impressed.

The quality of the HD feeds is excellent. I see no difference between this and my MyHD 130 (but maybe that's just me). Perfect integration with MCE 2005, the iMon remote works perfectly with it (Now, if it only had a dedicated Guide button..instead of mapping the 9 key)...rewind fast word works great. Once they get the second tuner working on this in MCE, this is gonna be kickass. I'm happy for now.

Edit: This HTPC that I am testing is the bedroom one, it only has a 100MB LAN (motherboard). The HD feed works perfectly, with no jitters (it is hard wired, not wireless). The network usage under perfmon, stays around 25% with full 720P ABC HD running.

kapone you caught my eye! I have a couple of MDP-130s and occasionally screw-up wrt recordings (my fault 95% of the time ). Anyway I'm taking another look at this HDHomeRun thingie which looks to be VERY UNDERPRICED AFAICT.

Anyway maybe I need to "rush out in a buying frenzy" if HDHomeRun will record to, say, my Server box which is on 24/7 but doesn't have an MDP-130 installed.

Received my unit yesterday and it works perfectly decoding QAM over Comcast cable here in Seattle. Finally -- HD via QAM in MCE2005! My prayers have been answered!!!

How many HD and/or digital channels is it tuning for you? I am getting 91 total (pretty much all local HD's plus several SD digital channels)...?

I have it hooked up to my home network, and the MCE boxes very soon will be configured to store everything on the 2.5TB NAS that I am building (I started a separate thread on that as a journal), right now they are doing it to local hard drives.

Exactly what HD via QAM channels are you getting?

Here in Seattle using Comcast, I'm getting near 100 channels. We get all the local affiliates like ABC, NBC, CBS, CW, FOX plus there are about 8 or so PBS stations, then there are a bunch of oddball stations like ION, home shopping channels, Christan channels, foreign-language channels. On top of all that, there are about 50 digital music/radio stations.

Of course, MCE will only give me guide data for channels that are also broadcasted OTA so stations like ION are sort of useless. But just getting the major networks via QAM in MCE with the guide data is pretty terrific.

You can get guide data for any channel carried by your cable provider. The trick is to select Digital Cable for your provider during setup, then go back and deselect all the channels that you cannot actually get over analog cable. Then you can map the guide data for any channel to you HDHomeRun channels. I had to do this to get the guide data for HDNet, INHD, and UHD.

This device is a dream come true, it looks great streamed to my Xbox 360. I can't wait until they get the 2nd tuner working on MCE.

nice tip wyldtek, thanks!

This is a screen capture from the HDHomerun playing Grey's Anatomy using an OTA antenna. I'll try and post more later. I'm still amazed at the reception and quality of the HD it receives. wow. (Sorry, I kept it full screen to show the quality)

Edit: Right now, the HTPC is connected to my CRT monitor at 1280 x 1024, so this aint even the best quality. Wait till I connect it to the main display at 1080i

That's true. I should have mentioned, this is on a run of the mill mATX motherboard from a Sony Viao (That I disassembled and basically parted it out), 756MB RAM, Pentium 4 3.0 GHz processor, and a PNY Geforce 6200 256MB card, purevideo and the latest nVidia drivers. Right now, it's outputting to my testing monitor at 1280x1024, but the picture quality is great even on the Infocus IN72 and the Pioneer Elite TV. Still don't have my 9500LC installed yet, it's sitting in its crate in the basement, so haven't tested it at 1080p.

Nope. Runs liquid smooth.

Yeah I'm not sure the pic tells us much, but anyway I got my shipping confirmation from 9thtee yesterday so will be joining the ranks in due time!

I've been worried from the beginning that this is one of jafa's "hobbies" that might have some fatal hardware or software problems but I think it's been around long enough now that I'll take the chance (and I do again think the thing is underpriced if it does what it says!).

Last night, I remapped my QAM channels and got the HDHomeRun working with GBPVR. Took me about an hour to remap the HD and digital channels I was interested in. I did have one problem with my local CBS HD stream, apparently there is an issue with the bda driver. I posted the problem in the forum and the work-around was a simple one. Good support via the forum so far...

No timeshifting and access only to one tuner in GBPVR, but it is working well.....

I also have BTV, but I have not set that up yet.. the process with the BTV plugin will take more time than it took with GBPVR...

While GBPVR is using one tuner, I can use the other tuner to stream to any wireless client (with VLC) in my network. Both the HDHomeRun and my GBPVR/BTW server are connected directly to my WRTSL54GS (running Thibor 16b) via Fast Ethernet...

Channel changes are faster than my usb Fusion...

Very cool...

now... if we only had a source for a really cheap Wireless "A" access point we could box them up in a weatherproof enclosure and mount it right at the outside antenna....

I've been eyeing this device for the past few days. Can each tuner be controlled from a different computer (i.e stream one program to say an HTPC and then another to say a laptop) or do both need to be controlled by one machine.

If it's just one computer at a time, is it easy to switch control back and forth? I'd like to have it connect to MCE but occasionally would want to use my laptop.

"Can each tuner be controlled from a different computer (i.e stream one program to say an HTPC and then another to say a laptop) or do both need to be controlled by one machine."

YES - I do it all the time.

you'll still need a cable for power

Better yet would be a "hdgrandslam" that has four tuners in a waterproof enclosure and supported gigabit w/ POE so you could just run a single Cat5e cable to the antenna on the roof. It would also be nice if TVs had native IPTV support or the 360 could tune directly from the hdgrandslam :drool:

well, sure.... but bell wire is cheap and doesn't deteriorate as fast as coax

I received the HDHomeRun about a week ago, I am using it with Media Center on Windows Vista, and all I can say is WOW. The software is only beta, and it worked exactly as advertised out of the box (downloaded from the forum). While the installation is not polished, the instructions were excellent. The only issues I ran into were the Vista firewall, and UAC. Right now I have both off, but I expect they will publish a recipe for HDHomeRun to play nice with these features. I used HDHomeRun to watch and record the Super Bowl yesterday with absolutely no problems.

This is my third PC HDTV tuner, and none of them have been this flawless. The next best was the AverMedia product, but it fell apart with Vista so far.

Bryan

has hdhr been working with mce 05 (qam) with both tuners yet? ive been reading about this and think im just gonna go ahead and get it. qam on mce is the one thing i desperately need!

Only one tuner still.. that doesn't stop you from using the 2nd tuner on another computer... He just released another beta version on the 4th, development is progressing..

Just get it, you won't be sorry. IMO, this is the best HD tuner solution - even in the current beta state of the hardware/software!!

I'm going to be selling my Fusion's next..

ya i ordered it, should be here tomorrow according to UPS. im only using one hd tuner now, so i won't be missing much. hopefully it works the way I think it is, i'd be happy as hell

even though both tuners doesn't work with qam, can i have 1 tuner for qam and another for OTA w/ hdhr?

hmmmm I misunderstood you I think. The current BDA driver has support for only one tuner at this time (either OTA or QAM). I think he said they are releasing a new driver version in a week to support both tuners.

Will be: QAM/QAM, OTA/OTA, OTA/QAM, QAM/OTA - your choice...

I just got mine yesterday. Tried to get to it and running but after replacing my motherboard and installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Media Center on my PC after work I was worn out.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to play with it today.