Is an HD Homerun better than HVR 1600?

Does the 1600 work w/ QAM in MCE?

Since the HD Homerun is external there is no additional heat being dumped into the case.

Just get a crossover cable and plug the homerun directly into the PC.

I'm interested in this also, largely because I'm not satisfied with the performance of my hvr1600. Both of these cards are QAM tuners, but BeyondTV only supports QAM through HDHR for some reason, so that's another thing which is tempting me.

I'm interested to know if the quality of the tuner is generally better or worse than the 1600.

have not tried the hvr1600 but i can attest to the quality of the picture from my HD Homerun. very good quality recordings for me without a hiccup. I have mine running on the network via my Zyxel MiMo x-550 Router.

Unless you have a dedicated T1 or T3 line, your cable/DSL modem probably isn't even saturating a 10M, let alone a 100M connexion, so you probably don't need a Gigabit network. Unless you get a few HDHR or those torrents are really within the network rather than through the modem...

The HDHr only has a 10/100 Mb port on it, so setting up Gig-E will not make any difference. However, unless you are using multiple HDHr boxes, it is unlikely that the network utilization will be a problem. I read somewhere that even if using both tuners in QAM mode, both pulling in a full stream, including sub-channels, your HDHr would never be at more than 80 Mbps. Keep in mind that that is an absolute top out number, not a constant usage.

But a gigabit network still gives you a lot more headroom for other activities. Let's say you have a gigabit switch, two gigabit PCs, and a gateway/router and an HDHR running at 100mbps. The gateway/router and the HDHR will only use a fraction of the bandwidth provided by the switch and two PCs, so you will have a lot of bandwidth left to move data between the PCs.

On the other hand, if you want to record two full QAM streams to a single PC and you don't have a gigabit switch, the HDHR will take 80% of the bandwidth from that PCs. Actually, it will be worse because you probably can't get 100% of the bandwidth in a 100mbps network anyway.

-Dave

Yup, very true. Even though you don't technically "need" gigabit, if you are running multiple media machines in your house OR have a single media PC with a boatload of tuners AND are recording to a network location, you need gigabit. Live tv streams can hit 40mbps, and that's ONE way, for display only, try writing that same stream to a network location at the SAME time, without stuttering, and you'll realize 100mb just aint gonna cut it.

I run hard wired gigabit throughtout the house, with good gigabit switches (mostly Netgear pro stuff), and can stream 5 HD streams to my HTPCs AND write 2 of them at the same time with no degradation of the network or the machines. As soon as I try to initiate a third stream for writing, the network pretty much comes to a grinding halt and I start getting stutters all over the place. All this writing is to my WHS array btw, no RAID.

When you're talking about recording HD whether it's OTA or QAM no device has or can have any better recording quality than another. It either gets the bitstream or it doesn't and that's that. The only thing different in recording would be a tuners sensitivity for OTA and it's ability to handle multipath problems.

Display is another story but that only would apply to a myhd hardware display device. By what amount I don't know, and pc's have come a long way, but every myhd owner claims nothing beats the display from them directly as opposed to pc decode and video card display. (myhd bypasses the pc)

Still I'd choose a hdhomerun over anything else, if only I had the cash. I prefer MCE and nothing else does QAM in MCE period.

As far as worrying about network bandwidth for a hdhr that's really a non issue as has been discussed already. Run gigabit, or run the hdhr off of a seperate nic of it's own with a crossover directly to the pc you want it on.

If you've ever read the threads of problems with the hvr1600 you really wouldn't buy one, at least not until a lot of bugs are straightened out, and still they're not ever going to give QAM in MCE.

Troy

i have 2 1600's and I tested out the HDHR and I highly recommend it over the 1600. When I use the 1600, it finds a few channels but they are unwatchable while the HDHR come in perfectly.

Next to the ATI HD Blunder, the 1600 is one of the worst HD cards on the market.

HVR-1600: Great for ATSC, iffy QAM. Analog support. Cheap (~$65). Internal. Single digital + single analog.

HDHR: Great for ATSC and QAM. No Analog. Pricey (~$170). External. Dual digital.


Not unlike the HDTV Wonder, since the HVR-1600's being sold to the general public (including less saavy users) and with tons of cards out on the market, you'll naturally have a greater number of people chiming in with their complaints. If you just need a single OTA tuner, it's a steal. If you want dual QAM capable tuners and can afford it, HDHR is a much better choice.

I'd like to add that the HDHR has been rock solid for me. I've never had a missed QAM or OTA recording. Their tech support is very reliable too.

It is also very broadly supported (mythtv, gbpvr, sagetv, mediaportal) so if at some point down the line you want to use a different htpc package you're set.

It is however much more expensive and does not do analog capture.

It's my understanding that the device actually strips out the subchannels before sending the packets on, so you're only receiving 15-20 megabits per second. I seem to remember that they've been able to get three of these things (six streams) working simultaneously on a single 100mbit network. I just can't think of anything that he's doing that could cause one to have problems.

I was just giving a worst case example. You are right, you can strip the subchannels. However, you can also record the whole transport stream, depending on what software you are using. You might want to record the whole stream if there are two programs that you want in the stream. For example, I get FOX and CBS in the same stream.

-Dave

Can I assume that the HDHR is providing an OTA HD picture that is equal in quality to what I would get if the antenna were plugged directly into my television? Since it is a digital stream I would expect that the HDHR is just breaking it into ethernet packets and sending it to the computer, so the only degradation would be if the CPU in the receiving PC can't handle the unpacking and MPEG2 decoding?

I am looking at some options for adding OTA tuners to something with built-in CableCard tuners, so the HDHR is potentially enticing. One thought I had on not having the HDHR impact other traffic on my LAN is to insert a router behind the HTPC that hosts the HDHR, the HTPC, and links back to the main LAN router. This would confine HDHR traffic to only this small subnet while still allow passthrough to the larger network. BTW, I already have 3 routers in my home LAN configuration

Yes, it is the same digital stream, so the picture quality is the same. You are also right when you state that you need some way to decode the stream. A front-end, such as MCE, will work great.

If you already have a network coupled by 100mbps routers, then your network plan makes a lot of sense. Assuming your HTPC has a gigabit NIC, you could connect a gigabit switch to the HTPC, and then connect the HDHR and your 100mbps LAN uplink to the switch. The rest of your network would not see any of the HDHR traffic, and the gigabit NIC on your HTPC would easily handle all the traffic from the HDHR and the rest of your LAN.

If you LAN is already gigabit, I don't think the extra switch is necessary.

-Dave