[mythtv-users] looking for an hdhomerun

[Tom Greer]

On Jan 8, 2008 4:11 PM, William Munson <w.munson at comcast.net> wrote:

> Larry K wrote:
> > Well, that would be great if I could do that.  How can I tell what
> > channels will be available to the HDRD, before I go buy one?
> >
> That is the rub with the HDHR, you cannot even tell what channels you
> are receiving as there is no mapping of qam transport channels to actual
> channels. In fact you will have to manually figure out what each channel
> is and then manually enter the data into the database and then will have
> to look up what the xmltvid number is for that channel. I would strongly
> recommend that you spend the time getting a firewire stb set up.
> Although quirky its far far easier than setting up a hdhr. Here in
> Florida the cable company (comcast) has a nasty habit of moving channels
> around every few weeks which is completely transparent when using a stb
> but will cause you large amounts of frustration when all of a sudden you
> start recording garbage or nothing at all.
>
> I have three DCT-6xxx set-top boxes streaming over firewire and an
HDHomeRun, so I can comment from experience here.

Here is the advantages/disadvantages of each.  Your mileage may vary,
depending on your cable/satellite provider.

Firewire from set-top box:

Advantages:

   -  I get all of the analog, digital and HD channels to which I
   subscribe.

Disadvantages:

   - It works only 90% time.  Intermittently, the set-top boxes fail to
   change channels and/or stream video.


HDHomeRun:

Advantages:

   - Extremely reliable channel changes and streaming
   - Captures all unencrypted, digital QAM channels
   - Setting up the hardware and accessing from MythTV is easy.

Disadvantages:

   - Does not capture analog channels
   - Does not capture encrypted channels
   - My cable provider does not provide QAM versions of most analog
   channels and encrypts just about everything except a few HD channels and the
   std.def counterparts.
   - Figuring out which channel is which and then hand-setting the
   XMLTVID is a royal pain.

So, in a nutshell, I love the HDHomeRun now that I have configured all of
the channels.  The HDHomeRun tuners are set with a higher priority so they
get chosen first for recordings.  But I only get a subset of the channels
that we watch - so I have to use set-top boxes for now.

What I want for the future is for a CableCard-enabled device that works like
the HDHomeRun with multiple tuners that accepts cable coax as input and
streams MPEG out for all the channels to which I subscribe.  Oh, and while
we are at it, let me select the 20-30 channels that I actually watch and not
pay for the 500+ plus that I never tune.

Tom
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