Thinking of cutting the cord and going OTA--tuner advice?

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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adam1991

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Thinking of cutting the cord and going OTA--tuner advice?

#1

Post by adam1991 » Fri Oct 03, 2014 11:59 pm

I have a Ceton 4 PCIe, which has run very well for the last 3.5 years. But I'm thinking of dropping cable TV service altogether.

I love having 4 tuners. It's wonderful.

What direction should I look for OTA tuners nowadays?

cwinfield

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#2

Post by cwinfield » Sat Oct 04, 2014 1:19 am

HDHR dual or plus seem pretty good unless you want to ditch WMC and get a Tivo Roamio OTA.

adam1991

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#3

Post by adam1991 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 1:21 am

Tivo is my plan B right now.

Is it me, or does Silicon Dust's web site suck?

Mike88

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#4

Post by Mike88 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 1:32 am

I use a pair of AverMedia Duet dual tuner cards for a total of 4 tuners. However it appears the company has stopped making them. I did pick one up from ebay but that was some time ago. That being said they have worked flawlessly.

3rob3

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#5

Post by 3rob3 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 2:37 am

Yeah, AverMedia Duet (A188 I believe) or Hauppauge 2250 are great for internal. Otherwise you are looking at HDhomeruns. I know everyone here loves HDhomeruns but I prefer everything in one box/off my network.

P.S. Very strongly considering doing the same. Now that we have two young kids we never really watch TV anymore and OTA/Netflix/Amazon Instant/Other( ;) ) would be good enough. Just need to convince the wife.

adam1991

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#6

Post by adam1991 » Sun Oct 05, 2014 2:03 am

For my physical layout, it looks like it'll be FAR easier to have network connected tuners stuck out of the way, upstairs. So HDHomerun it would be.

So, HDHR experts: Dual or Plus? Does the Plus have any different/better/newer tuner in it? I don't care about DLNA streaming to portable devices; this is purely for WMC duties, all watching to be through WMC.

I'd be buying two of them, so the $40 difference between the two is meaningful. But if the tuner performance is meaningful, I will make the proper investment in the right units.

volfan6415

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#7

Post by volfan6415 » Sun Oct 05, 2014 11:56 pm

Adam I am using the plus and it works great. One thing to remember, and I am sure you've already done this, is to make sure to check your signal strength at TVfool.com to make sure your reception will be adequate for waf.

adam1991

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#8

Post by adam1991 » Mon Oct 06, 2014 1:24 am

Even better: I picked up a cheap antenna to see what would happen. I get everything except for The CW, which is on the edge at 32 miles out. I don't think I watch anything on that channel, so it might not be an issue. I get all the other locals, plus a subchannel that isn't on the cable lineup.

So the investment would be a couple HDHR, another Roku, Hulu Plus, and maybe Amazon Prime.

volfan6415

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#9

Post by volfan6415 » Mon Oct 06, 2014 2:34 am

Also Adam make sure you're running the HD home runs off of dedicated switches and not just the switches inside of a wireless router. I had nothing but problems when attempting to use the switch inside my linksys routers. Switching to a dedicated consumer grade switch fixed all of the network problems.

cwinfield

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#10

Post by cwinfield » Mon Oct 06, 2014 1:02 pm

adam1991 wrote:For my physical layout, it looks like it'll be FAR easier to have network connected tuners stuck out of the way, upstairs. So HDHomerun it would be.

So, HDHR experts: Dual or Plus? Does the Plus have any different/better/newer tuner in it? I don't care about DLNA streaming to portable devices; this is purely for WMC duties, all watching to be through WMC.

I'd be buying two of them, so the $40 difference between the two is meaningful. But if the tuner performance is meaningful, I will make the proper investment in the right units.
As far as I can tell the main difference is that the plus has hardware conversion to H.264 AVC. So if your not interested is streaming quality as the dual supports streaming & DLNA then the dual will be fine regardless if using DLNA. Also if your using an extender that has issues handling h.264 then it is a feature that is undesireable.

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#11

Post by JTScribe » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:13 pm

Tagged for interest. Are there no quad-tuner ATSC cards? I know the HVR-2250 is EOL and the replacement, the HVR-2255, isn't highly regarded at places like AVS Forums.

aeblank

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#12

Post by aeblank » Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:14 am

I have two duals for my 6 OTA channels. Beats the crud out off $80/mo or more.

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