[mythtv-users] HDHR Prime Success

[Monkey Pet]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 6:47 AM, David Brieck Jr. <dbrieck at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thought I would pass this information along to help anyone who's on my
> cable system since I don't think there's that many of us doing
> homebrew PVR...
>

Thanks for your report.  I am also anxiously waiting for my HDHR Prime
order from Woot.  I already picked up my CableCard from the local comcast
office ($1.10 per month).  With comcast, I am wondering how many channels I
will be able to record.


>
> I bought the HDHR Prime on Woot recently for $130 in hopes of
> simplifying my MythTV setup. Before making the purchase I called
> support at Blue Ridge Cable in PA to ask them about CableCard support.
>
> I was mainly interested in finding out if they make the channels
> anything other than Copy-Freely. Turns out no one used the words
> copy-freely or access-controlled at all in our discussions. They
> simply said that they don't do anything to the channels and unless the
> network did "something" the CableCard would decrypt them just like a
> cable box would.
>
> Not exactly a vote of confidence, but at $130, it wasn't that big of a
> risk (I could resell it on Amazon if it didn't work out).
>
> I picked up the CableCard yesterday and they also gave me an SDV
> adapter. Silicon Dust calls it a USB Tuning Resolver, but Blue Ridge
> just called it a switching box. Pricing for an HD cable box (non-pvr)
> and the CableCard are the same, so on my bill this is a wash (but I
> get two more tuners).
>
> I asked the resident techie who came out to explain things if I could
> record on three tuners with their M-Card and he said they only do two.
> Again, not very encouraging, but considering they never heard of an HD
> HomeRun Prime and had only ever had them installed in Tivo's and
> "computers" I was skeptical that they knew what they were talking
> about.
>
> The Prime came yesterday as well so when I got home from work I
> started unpacking and getting things setup so I could call in and
> activate the CableCard. They only recently started allowing self
> installs, so I was planning on a lot of pain on the phone. As
> instructed I did NOT hookup the SDV adapter because they said it can
> sometimes interfere with the activation process. After waiting forever
> on hold it took about 10 minutes for the CSR to get the information
> needed to activate the card.
>
> Oddly, they wanted the MAC address of the CableCard in addition to the
> HostID and CardID. I'm guessing that was just so he could find it in
> their system, but it took some time to figure out where that was in
> the web app on the Prime.
>
> After hanging up it took about 10 minutes for the activation to go
> through. Initially I didn't bother to hookup the SDV adapter because I
> figured just the crappy channels were on SDV. Turns out more than just
> a few channels were inaccessible until hooking it up and that cost me
> some time figuring out what was wrong.
>
> After hooking up the adapter and waiting for it to initialize (about
> 10 minutes) I had to unplug/plug in the Prime because it seemed to
> lockup when tuning channels.
>
> But after that, success! I could tune all of my channels with MythTV
> and channels changes were really quick. I don't subscribe to any
> premium channels so I can't say if they are copy-freely or not, but
> everything else is great. All three tuners also worked without a
> problem.
>
> As a result I'm able to stop using a combination of PVR-250s, HDPVR,
> and an original HDHomeRun (with antenna). I'll also be able to
> re-purpose a slave backend and save the power bill from that as well.
>
> This is definitely the way to go if your cable company allows
> copy-freely on their channels.
>
> David
>
> P.S. If you're interested in any of my now unused equipment email me
> off list. I also have a brand new HDPVR Killer that I won't be needing
> now either.
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>
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