HD Homerun still the business?

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gjm

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Topic # 150154 13-Jul-2014 11:32

So just moved into a new place and am looking at setting up my intel nuc with media centre and a tv tuner device of some description. Have read a few threads here and elsewhere that suggest that the HD Homerun would suit my requirements however it seems like quite an old device (in tech terms at least). I have little to no experience with media type setups so am wondering if anyone in the know can tell me if the Homerun is still the way to go or should I look elsewhere? End result is that I would like to watch live tv on my laptop over wireless without a usb tuner attached to it. My nuc lives in a cupboard that has an aerial socket near it so can plug into aerial on roof. I could plug a usb tuner straight into the nuc but dont know if that is the way to go or not.

Any thoughts guys and girls?

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Yabanize

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Reply # 1088047 13-Jul-2014 12:54

Ive noticed all of the online stores, (playtech etc) seem to only sell USB ones now. I too have wondered about using a NUC for a media center

nigelj

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Reply # 1088051 13-Jul-2014 13:13

SiliconDust (the American company) are certainly still around and making them, and the NZ model is still around. Nicegear still has them in stock and I'd certainly recommend getting them from them as they have pretty good follow-up if something goes wrong (hads (the owner of Nicegear) sometimes hangs around here too). - http://nicegear.co.nz/htpc/silicondust-hdhomerun/

Edit: The wonderful thing about the HDHR is that it just works I've never really had to mess with any settings with it, just plug it in, ensure that it get a DHCP lease and MythTV/whatever can see it, then it's just a matter of feeding MythTV an EPG in the right format (but that is an issue no matter what tuner you go with). HDHR owner since April 2011 no faults.

N.B. If you were looking for the circa 2011/2012 distributor, they went balls up a long time ago.

sbiddle

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Reply # 1088052 13-Jul-2014 13:16

If you want a network tuner it's the best option around. The big question you need to answer if whether you want a network tuner.

gregb

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Reply # 1088053 13-Jul-2014 13:20

I find the network tuner aspect of them very good. The flexibility of it being a network based device means I can use it with a MythTV backend running in a VM. Buying them from Nicegear is really easy.

http://nicegear.co.nz/htpc/silicondust-hdhomerun/

nigelj

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Reply # 1088056 13-Jul-2014 13:23

sbiddle: If you want a network tuner it's the best option around. The big question you need to answer if whether you want a network tuner.

I'd never go for a non-network tuner after the HDHR, even though 99.999999% of the tuner use for recordings on a central PC, network tuner gives flexibility, made things much easier when I wanted to test newer versions of MythTV (upgrading etc) for instance in a VM (impossible/near impossible with hardware tuners), I've had the need to capture a test section of a stream, easy to do it on another machine with the HDHR tools. You can use the mobile apps while adjusting the antenna. The list goes on...

gjm

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Reply # 1088057 13-Jul-2014 13:36

ok great, thanks guys....looks like it is still the way to go. Just gotta find my credit card now....moving house is such a pita.

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freitasm

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Reply # 1088108 13-Jul-2014 16:25

HDHomeRun wound up winning the votes in the Five Best TV Tuner last week on Lifehacker. I have one and it is still the best option instead of bothering opening a PC and installing things (or using a USB adapter).

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nigelj

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Reply # 1088133 13-Jul-2014 17:45

freitasm: HDHomeRun wound up winning the votes in the Five Best TV Tuner last week on Lifehacker. I have one and it is still the best option instead of bothering opening a PC and installing things (or using a USB adapter).

Just a disclaimer (to anyone that sees the different features/price in the link above), that is the new American version that will not work in NZ (edit: for one, we don't even have ATSC transmissions ;)) don't import an HDHR from Amazon unless you are sure it's the NZ/EU DVB-T model.

There isn't an EU/AU/NZ DLNA/Transcode model yet which is a pity but oh well. Personally when it comes out I'm likely going to grab one, especially now we have 4 MUXes, and the live transcode/etc (c|w)ould be nice. Admittedly it's not as useful as it is in America where they really needed to implement it on their Prime device (CableCard) for Copy-Protected channels for iPad/Android viewing etc (as I understand).

mm1352000

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Reply # 1088269 13-Jul-2014 23:03

In America over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts (ATSC) and unencrypted cable TV still mostly use MPEG 2 for video and AC3 for audio. The transcode to h.264 can be useful in that context for saving space without visible loss of quality, and for compatibility with modern mobile devices. Our DVB-T broadcasts here use h.264 encoded video already so transcoding is not so useful. I'm not even sure that the new HDHR TC can do h.264 to h.264 transcoding...

nigelj

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Reply # 1088282 14-Jul-2014 00:29

mm1352000: In America over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts (ATSC) and unencrypted cable TV still mostly use MPEG 2 for video and AC3 for audio. The transcode to h.264 can be useful in that context for saving space without visible loss of quality, and for compatibility with modern mobile devices. Our DVB-T broadcasts here use h.264 encoded video already so transcoding is not so useful. I'm not even sure that the new HDHR TC can do h.264 to h.264 transcoding...

Talking informally in the past with the SiliconDust support guys they were planning one, but the priority has been on updating other devices first, it's the great thing about having a device 'that just works', some of the old/more detailed posts on their forums which had comments from S-D staff seem to have gone missing, but http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=17303 mentions at one point that DVB-T2 was going to be added (not much point here yet due to the way Igloo is run I think).