HD Homerun: Is There a Difference Between the US and NZ Model

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › HD Homerun: Is There a Difference Between the US and NZ Model

JimmyH

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#255764 28-Aug-2019 11:09

I’m doing a bit of an upgrade to my network and media setup, but am a bit budget constrained.

One of the things I’m looking at doing is adding a networked TV tuner to the mix, so that I can view TV in rooms without an aerial connection and on tablets/phones etc.

The HD Homerun looks like a nice product for what I want to do. But the NZ pricing for the Quatro is about 65% more expensive than the bricks and mortar US retail pricing, and I will be in a part of the US where retailers stock it in a couple of weeks.

Does anyone know whether the hardware in the US version of the HD Homerun is different to the NZ version, or whether it’s just a case of flashing NZ firmware onto the US version to make it work with Freeview here?

I imagine that for the number of countries they sell it in they would install a tuner that is capable of working in most countries, and then deal with regional differences (ATSC c.f. our DVB-T) thorough firmware. But I’m not certain.

I’m curious whether anyone has successfully imported and used a US version HD Homerun in NZ? (and if so what needs to be done)

freitasm

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#2307193 28-Aug-2019 11:12

Yes, I think there's - mainly the DVB-T H.264 support which IIRC is non-existent in the US version.

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2307221 28-Aug-2019 12:02

No, the US version won't work here. Different hardware. You'll want one of the HDHR5-2DT/4DT variants. I got mine from Amazon.co.uk.

allan

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#2307255 28-Aug-2019 13:05

But a Plus 1 for the HD Homerun as a piece of kit. It works flawlessly.

mentalinc

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#2307351 28-Aug-2019 15:10

How do these compare to the "new" DishTV 1TB recorder? seems even at circa $250 these are over $200 cheaper...

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2307366 28-Aug-2019 15:16

mentalinc:

How do these compare to the "new" DishTV 1TB recorder? seems even at circa $250 these are over $200 cheaper...

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=83&topicid=243398

HDHomeRun provides TV tuners for your network. You aren't tied to the interface provided by one box, nor the limitations of same.

E.g. I have six tuners (dual and quad HDHomeRuns), allowing me to concurrently access up to six muxes - sufficient to watch/record every single Freeview channel at once if I (or connected clients) required.

In my case the HDHomeRun boxes are controlled by tvheadend, and TV is viewed via Kodi and the tvheadend Add-on.

mentalinc

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#2307385 28-Aug-2019 15:59

Do they have a GUI/ user interface to watch Live tv from or are they just presenting tuners for an HTPC to leverage over the network?

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2307392 28-Aug-2019 16:18

mentalinc:

Do they have a GUI/ user interface to watch Live tv from or are they just presenting tuners for an HTPC to leverage over the network?

They have a GUI but other than opening it up to confirm the HDHomeRun was working, I've never used it.

PANiCnz

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#2307421 28-Aug-2019 17:38

If you’re budget constraint you can effectively replicated the functionality of the Homerun with a raspberry pi, tvheadend and some USB tuners. Not as eloquent but it’ll work.

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2307425 28-Aug-2019 17:55

PANiCnz: If you’re budget constraint you can effectively replicated the functionality of the Homerun with a raspberry pi, tvheadend and some USB tuners. Not as eloquent but it’ll work.

I've seen open source projects which are designed for this purpose. Do you have any particular software you recommend?

I've got a few PCI-E tuners available from an earlier HTPC setup that I'd like to reuse.

mentalinc

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#2307509 28-Aug-2019 20:01

thanks all, not a in-law friendly solution at all (but great tech for the geek of course!)

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fe31nz

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#2307551 28-Aug-2019 22:09

freitasm:

Yes, I think there's - mainly the DVB-T H.264 support which IIRC is non-existent in the US version.

No, it has nothing to do with the encoding of the data in the TV streams. Both DVB-T and ATSC hardware will support H.264 or anything else in the video stream, as all that is done with the stream is copy it to disk from the tuner. The tuner does not touch the contents of the streams. The differences between ATSC and DVB-T are that they are different systems - related, but different enough that the hardware needs to be different, not just the firmware. I believe the ATSC standard has had H.264 added as a valid video stream at some point, but it has not been used much in real life until ATSC 3.0 broadcasts started.

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PANiCnz

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#2307761 29-Aug-2019 12:19

SirHumphreyAppleby:

PANiCnz: If you’re budget constraint you can effectively replicated the functionality of the Homerun with a raspberry pi, tvheadend and some USB tuners. Not as eloquent but it’ll work.

I've seen open source projects which are designed for this purpose. Do you have any particular software you recommend?

I've got a few PCI-E tuners available from an earlier HTPC setup that I'd like to reuse.

If you've already got TVHeadend installed can you not just plug the PCIe tuners into the same machine? As-long as they have Linux drivers TVH will detect them and away you go. If you want to put the tuner in a separate machine without TVH installed I would recommend Minisatip. I'm a fan of the Docker images provided by Linuxserver.io and they conveniently offer a Minisatip image.

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2308066 29-Aug-2019 19:51

PANiCnz:

If you've already got TVHeadend installed can you not just plug the PCIe tuners into the same machine? As-long as they have Linux drivers TVH will detect them and away you go. If you want to put the tuner in a separate machine without TVH installed I would recommend Minisatip. I'm a fan of the Docker images provided by Linuxserver.io and they conveniently offer a Minisatip image.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will look in to it. Part of the reason I am looking in to this is that I am currently tied to the HDHomeRun platform. For a while after their release the new HDHomeRun units weren't shipping internationally. I'm not assuming I can get a replacement immediately should one fail. While I really couldn't care if TV was unavailable for a few weeks, the rest of the family doesn't see it that way. Plan B is to use the cards I have on hand.

To make things a little more challenging, I run tvheadend on FreeBSD, which doesn't support anywhere near as many DVB cards as Linux. Currently this is a VM, but I hope to move to a jail when I next update my VM system (Due next year, or when a decent front-end for bhyve is available).

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#2308159 29-Aug-2019 22:23

JimmyH:

..., but am a bit budget constrained.

One of the things I’m looking at doing is adding a networked TV tuner to the mix, ...

Not really what you are looking for, but: If you are interested, I've got an NZ HDHomeRun CONNECT (HDHR4-2DT) available for $60 plus shipping. Warranty will expiry in Sep-2019. 🤪

Set up instructions available from http://my.hdhomerun.com/

mentalinc:

Do they have a GUI/ user interface to watch Live tv from or are they just presenting tuners for an HTPC to leverage over the network?

My HD Homerun Connect has a very basic web interface. A better bet is to use their app or some other front end that pulls the stream across the LAN from the HDHR.

HDHR home page

HDHR channel list

Accessing the HDHR via VLC

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JWR

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#2308185 30-Aug-2019 02:21

HD Homerun is such a great product!

I have had mine for a few years now.

I never look at it. I never have to reboot it or do any maintenance.

It just works!

That is extremely rare for any electronics product.