Comments on: Review: HDHomeRun, a networked (QAM and OTA) dual HD tuner

By: colinnwn

colinnwn — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:26:44 +0000

@monica,
To expand, it sounds like you may not understand what QAM is. QAM is the digital encoding protocol for cable tv only. From my limited knowledge FIOS sends television to you as light, then converts it into something that looks like cable to your television. I thought FIOS would carry most channels in most major markets. But maybe you are saying FIOS charges you per TV, and you don’t want to pay that on your extra TVs in the house, so you want to use an indoor or outdoor antenna on those TVs to capture some of the local digital telvision signals? Then you need a converter box as James mentioned above. Digital over the air television is transmitted in ATSC protocol rather than QAM.

By: James Rintamaki

James Rintamaki — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:50:38 +0000

@monica, it sounds like you are just looking for a regular sd tuner, which would be the tuners that you can get the $40 gov’t coupons for. The HDHomeRun needs a computer to work off of, though it does do SD/Digital over-the-air.

The normal boxes can be bought all over the place, for good prices — https://www.dtv2009.gov/VendorSearch.aspx

However, if you want a QAM tuner, I’m not sure if any of the “digital converter” tuners has that….thought they might if you don’t get the ones that are free after coupon

By: monica

monica — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:47:33 +0000

I’m not very Digital TV and computer savvy, so I need your help.

If I just want to see local SD channels on a regular non-HD TV, without using this as a DVR, can I just hook this Homerun product to the TV without having to use a computer?

I currently have Verizon Fios and I need a QAM Tuner to be able to view local SD channels and I do not want to pay the $4.99 a month on the TV’s that I hardly use.

Thanks,

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:57:26 +0000

Thank you for the very informative post Colin! This is exactly the information I was looking for. I will buy with confidence now. Much appreciated!!

By: colinnwn

colinnwn — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:52:38 +0000

On some cable networks, some expanded basic channels are broadcast without encryption. I get Discovery HD and HGTV digital in clearQAM on my TV, but I have yet to find SciFi which is also an expanded basic digital channel on my cable system.

@Justin,
I can’t find it on the internet right now, but when I was researching these I remember reading that if you open a streaming feed on a tuner, anyone can watch that stream with you. But you can’t change the channel unless your computer is the last one with an open feed. On this product, changing the channel really amounts to closing your current stream then opening a new one. When you went to open the new stream if another computer was still watching the old stream, the software would report “tuner in use”. So you could never accidentally step on an in progress MythTV recording.

If you set both tuners up in MythTV and only ever connect to one tuner with another computer, Myth would always be able to record or view at least 1 program, and it might be able to use both tuners if you weren’t viewing something on the other tuner with another computer. The only way this could bite you is if you have 2 concurrent Myth programs scheduled to record, Myth wouldn’t know to warn you of a conflict on the lesser priority 2nd recording because it wouldn’t know in advance whether you would be using the 2nd tuner on the other computer. The 2 choices to prevent this are to either never allow concurrent scheduled Myth recordings, or only set up one tuner in Myth and never connect to that tuner on another computer.

By: James Rintamaki

James Rintamaki — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:24:03 +0000

@ justin – thats a very good question, and you happen to be in luck because had have since sold my hdhr but just bought another one during the black friday sale at newegg for !120. I plan to set it up in the next few days, and I’ll try it out and let you know the results (I am suprised I didn’t have that question myself!)

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:35:05 +0000

Hey thanks for the great review on the HDHomeRun. I am seriously considering picking one up now. I do have one question though that perhaps you can answer. I am wondering if you can control which devices (computers on your network) have the ability to change the channel. My concern is what would happen if I set up a dedicated DVR box running MythTV or something similar that would drive the HDHomeRun, then I wanted to watch tv on some of the other PCs on my home network. What would happen if one of these other PC’s wanted to change the channel while I was recording some shows on the DVR box? Basically I’m concerned that another PC on my net could screw up my DVR box’s recording by changing the channel during the middle of a show. Is there a way to ensure something like this doesn’t happen?

By: Peekaboo2k

Peekaboo2k — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:11:31 +0000

Thanks fort Review HDHomeRun, a networked (QAM and OTA) dual HD tuner it help finally decided to get it i was very skeptical and since you did all the hard work it should be easier for me to set it up lol i appreciate this a lot i might even get the signal booster even tho i live in a house