[mythtv-users] Myth/HDHR impressions & issues

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   Thanks to scte65scan (thanks Dennis!) I'm finally able to make
consistent use of the HDHR I bought 6 months ago. It pretty much sat
unused for 6 months because of the problems getting channels mapped
correctly. Now that's over and I can really look at what it does.
Overall I'm impressed, but there some issues I'd like to address if
possible.

   First, the good:

1) Small, low power & quiet.
2) Tunes more channels on Comcast than my PVR-150/250 cards.
3) Consistently less storage required than the 2.2GB/hour from the
PVRs, although it varies form show to show based on Comcast's
compression decisions.
4) Picture is clean from analog noise.
5) No obvious problems streaming SD material on my wireless network.
HD - no way.

   Now, the issues I'd like to address and improve/fix if possible:

1) Audio/video sync is not good. It's off enough (.2 to .5 seconds) to
be frustrating when you watch closely. I never noticed this with the
PVRs in 2-3 years of use.

2) Commercial flagging is really bad. Typically it goes to commercial
15-30 seconds early and says it's returned to the program 30-90
seconds early. The worst I saw with the PVRs was that it would miss a
program portion completely once in awhile, but it was seldom off like
the HDHRhas been.

3) It seems that sometimes there is something in the data stream that
causes the Windows-based MythTV Player to crash completely. I say it's
in the data stream because I can restart MythTV Player and it crashes
at the same location. It doesn't happen often, maybe 1 out of 10
programs so often enough. Since the Windows player development team
seems to be sort of dead this may just be the way it is, but since the
backend streams the data to me it seems maybe it could be addressed
somehow one of these days.

   I'm wondering if other HDHR users are seeing any of the problems
I'm seeing above? This is a new backend server so I've got the
complication of ensuring it isn't the root cause, but so far I don't
think it is.

   Ideas and comments appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark