HDHomeRun - Dual ATSC or QAM to Ethernet Box - Page 18

Thanks to you both. I look forward to reporting my results!

David

I hooked up my HDHR this weekend. I only setup one tuner using QAM. I got a few odd ball channels that I'd never watch (total of about 6-8). The tuner only went up to 159 and then just stopped. Is that normal?
Also, I noticed that the unit got quite hot - is that also normal?

When I have some more time I'll try splitting my antenna feed and see if I can get over the air working. The whole point was to try and use QAM.

Anyone know a place to buy decent splitters?
I just installed the motorola signal booster on my cable line and it seems like it does the job but I can't find any place that sells their splitters.

My HDHR worked flawlessly for about a month but went dead this weekend. I've emailed the site and also posted on the forums about the issue. Awaiting a response.

I hope they can swap out this dead unit soon. I'm considering getting an additional one at some point.

see title..

any to get one or two of these running on MCE2005 without the need for an analog tuner??

I also will be getting one or two of these to play with.....

thanks

Cablecard, I doubt it... that's the OCUR option for now.

MCE2005 without analog - yes, sort of, you would need an analog card (USB) for setup and then you can remove it once everything is setup, but when you remove it, it prevents you from doing certain changes later, until it's replugged in.

My unit is warm, not hot. The cable connector is a little warmer. On the forum Silicondust said that's normal.

If you have the motorola signal booster at the beginning of your line, just use a radio shack 4 way splitter, that works fine. I have mine split 4 times then one is split 4 more times before going into the hdhomeruns...

QAM frequencies only go up to channel 159. The channels on your STB (like 904) are just remapped to a program stream of one of the QAM channels. Channel 908 on my STB is actually QAM channel 71, program 1.

Is it possible for a notebook that is on but closed be able to record while shut? I forgot to open it last night and heard a sound coming out of it. I didn't check to see if it was actually closed all the way or not before I opened it. My 2 shows did record. 24 and heroes. I guess I could test that out tonight.

Just a datapoint for this group: I have complained here about the lack of a simple recording program for HDHR. SageTV is great, but expensive and it does more than I need/want. MediaPortal is free but again overkill.

Well I've learned that GB-PVR is built such that you can turn-off most everything you don't want (features are implemented as check-able plugins). It seems VERY COOL, with an EPG and pre- and post-recording adding of minutes, etc. etc.

Anyone here who hasn't chosen their software yet should give this one a try.

What software did you use for recording?

By "closed," do you mean that the LCD was latched or that you shut down the system? When you close the LCD of most laptops, they go to a sleep mode. Some software like MediaPortal still record in sleep mode.

Laptops can wake from standby with the lid shut.

Question for those using HDHomerun for tuning in QAM are you receiving channels with neighbors viewing PayPerView or OnDemand? Can you record from these channels also?

Good question.

I'm not sure. I haven't set up for QAM tuning yet. However, the shows, the start times, and channels that they are available on are so random that it's almost pointless (IMO) to try and record anything. Most shows I catch halfway through or even I'm lucky enough to catch it at the beginning, the signal will get lost halfway through.

I can't see people getting much of a kick out of watching half a movie.

I was just curious. Thanks!!

He wants to watch porn that someone else ordered, so he doesn't have to pay!

Interesting question:

Anyone know if possible to use HDHomeRun with a Mac running Parallels/VMWare with MCE/GB-PVR/MythTV/etc???

I tried Vista MCE through parallels briefly, but didnt detect the HDHomerun.. plus MCE was really slow..

I have it working great with Vista MCA native on a Windows PC, but wanted to transistion to a Mac Pro.. i DON't want to use bootcamp..

I knew someone would say that soon. LOL Actually I seen someone watching the 4th season of The Wire I guess through ONDemand. I would have love to record a few episodes. Thats why I ask. HONESTLY!

If you can pick up the on-demand channels with a QAM tuner (for instance digital cable-ready HDTV) then you should be able to recording them with the HDHomerun although as another poster mentioned the programming is going to be so random as to make it an exercise in futility so I really don't see the point.

Pay-per-view channels are likely to be encrypted though.

Likely? yeah, and i'm likely to just have a couple of beers later tonight

Actually, on our cable system (Charter), the PPV channels are not encrypted. Most of the extended cable channels like ESPN, HGTV, Bravo, Discovery, Comedy Central, etc., etc., are encrypted.

Would somebody opine on the pros/cons of attaching the HDHR to a separate PCI 10/100 NIC versus to the gigabit switch?

I only need the software installed on one computer.

My limited knowlege is the con is needing to install a DHCP server. The pro is not adding any burden to the existing network.

Is it possible to have your laptop connected and in sleep mode with it closed? I setup a recording last night and then closed the lid. I noticed it did come on even though it was closed. I checked later and it didn't record. History in vista mce says channel not available or system error.

Has anyone else tried this?

Sure, I love to opine. In short, you have three factors to consider...

• Will the onboard NIC get saturated with other traffic to that computer?
• Will the gigabit switch backplane get saturated with other traffic between other devices?
• How much money and effort do you want to put into buying another NIC and setting up a DHCP server on that interface?

My advice would be to just use the gigabit switch first just for simplicity. If you're going to buy another NIC, I highly recommend the Intel Pro gigabit cards.

People are over thinking this way too much. There's no reason to put a separate nic for the HDHR. It works on a regular 10/100 switch which is in your home network router. If you have one of those, which you should if you connect to the internet, it already has DHCP on it. So just plug your HDHR into it and go with it.

From what I understand S3 is the best mode to use for putting a system to sleep and having MCE wake up to do the recording. The problem with a laptop is there is a physical switch that puts the laptop to sleep when the lid is closed and it's controlled by the power control panel icon. Not sure how that is taken into consideration.

i'm not completely familiar with the HDHR, but if you only have a 10, then you should at least upgrade to a 10/100, since a single HD channel should be about 19 mbps (which is greater than 10 i think )

Yes, you need at least 100 megs, I didn't think anyone had 10 megs. But 100 meg switches and nics are referred to as 10/100, just like gig switches are referred to as 10/100/1000.

But yes, 100 megs is plenty for 4 tuners and I believe all the home routers have a 10/100 switch in them.

Just be careful because many home routers just have a hub in them (which means, for those following along at home, that the bandwidth is shared between all the ports instead of each port having the full 100 Mbps available)

I'm not sure that's quite the true distinction between a hub and a switch. Hub uses broadcasting, so it affects all devices on the hub, while a switch uses MAC addresses to connect devices. Both decies share a backplane and if your backplane cant support the number of devices then you have a different issue (blocking). A switch is able to transfer data between two devices directly, while a hub will impact everyone on the hub. It's not that a hub only has 100 megs to share with everyone.

I tend to think of a switch as a smart hub. It knows who wants to talk to whom, but even a switch shares a backplane and can suffer from blocking. ie a 16 port switch, if all 16 ports were doing 100 megs at full duplex, that would require a 3.2 meg backplane, but most switches are not non-blocking.

That's what I understood... but yes, a switch is better.

I am. I just tried to keep it short and simple since there are beginners in this thread. But here's the longer explanation...

You're mixing terms here. Switches also use broadcasting when they need to (like when the HDHR makes a DHCP request). The real difference is that a hub is a single collision domain and yes, there is only 10 or 100mbps to share with every device connected to that collision domain. Dual-speed hubs are usually a 10Mbps hub and a 100Mbps hub connected with a two-port switch. Some hubs just fall back to the speed of the slowest device on the hub so you get only 10Mbps.

Because a switch can direct traffic between two ports directly, the other ports still have all the bandwidth on their port available to them. They still share the backplane between ports, as you mention. But even my cheapo (something like $20 after MIR) Netgear GS605 5-port Gigabit switch has a 10Gbps (non-blocking) backplane. Switches can also eliminate the collision domain entirely through full-duplex networking which means you really do have 1Gbps to send or receive on that port.