[mythtv-users] looking for an hdhomerun
Tom Greer
trgreer at gmail.com
Wed Jan 9 19:29:34 UTC 2008
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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