SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME - Owner's Thread

Ask about SiliconDusts HomeRun tuners here.
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UCBearcat

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#41

Post by UCBearcat » Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:26 pm

Thank you for the info Scallica. Unfortunately, I didn't notice if it was still held by the PC or streaming. I'll start looking for that.
Whenever I get a new "toy" like this, I like to know exactly how it 'should' work. I was receiving some Viewing or LIstening Confilicts, and I'm sure it was because I closed out without stoping.
Not to go completely off topic, but... Does the InfiniTV react the same? Just wondering if it reacts different since it is an internal PCIe device as oposed to a network devce.

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Scallica

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#42

Post by Scallica » Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:30 pm

To all owners - there is an interesting discussion on the SD forums about accessing live TV remotely using a VPN. With a little bit of networking expertise, you can turn your HDHR into a Slingbox.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11540
HTPC Enthusiast / Forum Moderator - TGB.tv Code of Conduct

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UCBearcat

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#43

Post by UCBearcat » Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:13 pm

Scallica wrote:To all owners - there is an interesting discussion on the SD forums about accessing live TV remotely using a VPN. With a little bit of networking expertise, you can turn your HDHR into a Slingbox.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11540
I took a quick look at that thread. Pretty cool idea and implementation. I think the trouble a lot of people (at least in the US) will have are the bandwidth requirements. If I"m thinking it through properly, a regular HD stream is probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 20Mbit/s.
Most DSL and Cable providers (to my knowledge) don't offer much more than a 512Kbit/s to 768Kbit/s upload. Throw in some overhead for VPN encryption, and that doesn't leave us with a whole lot of bandwidth. Of course, people rockin' a nice fiber internet connection don't have such limitations.
Don't get me wrong... I"m not trying to rain on the parade here. This is totally cool. I felt it should be pointed out that this might not pan out for a lot of us with weak upload speeds.

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#44

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:38 pm

UCBearcat wrote:
Scallica wrote:To all owners - there is an interesting discussion on the SD forums about accessing live TV remotely using a VPN. With a little bit of networking expertise, you can turn your HDHR into a Slingbox.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11540
I took a quick look at that thread. Pretty cool idea and implementation. I think the trouble a lot of people (at least in the US) will have are the bandwidth requirements. If I"m thinking it through properly, a regular HD stream is probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 20Mbit/s.
Most DSL and Cable providers (to my knowledge) don't offer much more than a 512Kbit/s to 768Kbit/s upload. Throw in some overhead for VPN encryption, and that doesn't leave us with a whole lot of bandwidth. Of course, people rockin' a nice fiber internet connection don't have such limitations.
Don't get me wrong... I"m not trying to rain on the parade here. This is totally cool. I felt it should be pointed out that this might not pan out for a lot of us with weak upload speeds.
I know I'm in the 768Kbps upload boat.

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#45

Post by cnewsgrp » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:35 am

Does anyone know if the ethernet port in HDHR Prime is Gigabit? My switch (Trendnet TEG-S8G) connects to it at 100M speeds? is this normal?

Nevermind: Specs say its Gigabit and its connection is also green (gigabit)
http://www.silicondust.com/images/hdhom ... _guide.pdf

Stngray

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#46

Post by Stngray » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:53 am

I have just installed two hdhr3ccs, and am tickled pink. Replaced two old ATI DCT's. Tuning is much faster, and it also pulls in ALL channels available to me. The DCT's didn't do that on four or five channels. This is the first time in ten years of working with MCE that I am totally happy with the performance of the whole system. Something else that I can't explain is the guide is faster. There is no delay when fast scrolling the guide. I don't understand why changing my tuners affected this. Anyone with any insight?

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Scallica

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#47

Post by Scallica » Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:52 pm

HTPC Enthusiast / Forum Moderator - TGB.tv Code of Conduct

cnewsgrp

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#48

Post by cnewsgrp » Fri Apr 13, 2012 4:05 pm

Scallica wrote:New firmware released:

http://download.silicondust.com/hdhomer ... 120405.exe
I guess its good news when there is a new firmware and there is not a single discussion post. FWIW I installed the update on April 9th and I don't see any issues. Good job HDHR!!

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#49

Post by slowbiscuit » Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:53 pm

The only issue I've seen on the older Jan. firmware is a rare 'no tuners available' problem which I think is a WMC bug. Rebooting fixes it.

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#50

Post by tcc » Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:22 pm

cnewsgrp wrote:
Scallica wrote:New firmware released:

http://download.silicondust.com/hdhomer ... 120405.exe
I guess its good news when there is a new firmware and there is not a single discussion post. FWIW I installed the update on April 9th and I don't see any issues. Good job HDHR!!
+1

Zero issues here using in a multi-TV, whole home configuration.

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JazJon

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#51

Post by JazJon » Thu May 24, 2012 9:03 am

Woot has the prime on sale for $129 today (that's pretty F'n cheap)

barnabas1969

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#52

Post by barnabas1969 » Thu May 24, 2012 7:30 pm

^ I bought one on Woot. After purchase, I was curious about Woot... so I was reading a little. I found that people can post comments about the product. It's really amazing how little people know about Windows Media Center, CableCARD, ATSC, QAM, and other TV stuff in general.

I guess people just assume that TV works like FM - F'ing Magic, that is.

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#53

Post by sccrgoalie1 » Thu May 31, 2012 5:40 pm

Just got my PRIME tuners last night and got them paired up. Working perfect so far and much faster channel changing then the Ceton cards I got rid of. Hoping it solves my issues I was having with the Ceton tuners, I've had great luck with HDHomerun in the past.

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#54

Post by swampfire » Tue Jul 31, 2012 2:21 am

Hello all, first post here.

I finally got the MOT CableCARD working in my HDHR-3-CC, all the channels to both PCs! I'm guessing the XBOX 360 4GB is the best route for getting content to my projector and TV? I used to have a DMA2100, sold it - terrible performance.

I can't wait to return the MOT DVR to the cable office!

John

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#55

Post by fventura03 » Fri Aug 10, 2012 11:29 am

I have two, works great.

pulled out of a box my old DMA2100 that I used back in 2008 when it was "new" and it worked but it was horribly slow. after every button press on remote, I had to wait from 3-5 seconds. so it's going back into the box or maybe on ebay since I see them going for $80-100.

I have an xbox 360 pro (white, old version) and it works nice but sometimes disconnects and wont reconnect until I reboot both my win7 machine and xbox 360. unsure if it's a windows issue.

but on all my windows 7 machines, WMC is working great with my HDHomerun Prime's.

I have yet to get it working on my laptop that runs linux (crunchbang linux)

slowbiscuit

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#56

Post by slowbiscuit » Fri Aug 10, 2012 11:56 am

I wouldn't call the DMA2100 slow once you turn off menu transitions, it works good enough. Does have to be restarted every once in a while due to lockups etc. but generally works well. It's only good for live and recorded TV though, and the Xbox works much better overall both as an extender and as a video streamer plus you get all the apps if you pay for Live.

barnabas1969

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#57

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Aug 10, 2012 12:56 pm

The only thing slow about my Linksys and HP extenders is boot-up. Everything else is almost as fast as it is directly on the PC. I think extender performance has a direct correlation to CPU and RAM in your PC.

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#58

Post by lgspencer » Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:57 am

Upgrades
OK, so I've had a reasonably stable Sony XL3 HTPC for years, my setup was "still" VMC with upgraded Video Card, additional RAM, ATI Digital Wonder CableCard (FiOS), HDHomeRun Dual (Qam Tuner), 1 Xbox and 2 Linksys Extenders, DVD Changer, and so on.

Saw the prices on the SD HD Homerun Prime drop to $130 on Amazon, so decided to add that to get more possibities to record more cable channels simultaneously.

Was able to add to my system, but VMC restricts the number of CableCard tuners to 2 (2 of each type of tuner), TV Setup in VMC found two of the three new CableCard tuners, but now ignores the ATI card. Still have the use of the other 2 Qam tuners. The XL3 must still have the DRM set to the old ATI card, so while I can view DRM recordings from "the past", I cannot tune into the channels with DRM (HBO, etc.) with the Prime. Read thru various forums, and the details on the Prime about DRM with Vista are sketchy most documentation points to Windows7.

So, now I am contemplating my long-awaited upgrade to 7MC to fully leverage my tuners, but not sure if I should just wait for Windows 8. Based on MS's attractive pricing for 8 upgrades, i am inclined to wait for Windows 8.

So, anybody out there have suggestions? Specifically, (1) Is it possible to adjust the DRM to the Prime so I can see the protected channels on Vista? and (2) Upgrade to Windows 7 or Wait for Windows 8?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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#59

Post by fventura03 » Fri Sep 28, 2012 2:26 am

get TunerSalad. it'll un-restrict the amount of each tuner you can have from 4 to 12.

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#60

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:29 pm

I would recommend Win7. There are some unattractive things about Win8... specifically the Metro interface. Nobody has detailed how to disable that and boot directly into Media Center yet. There are plenty of ways to run Media Center at startup, but the Metro interface would be a concern for me. Also, there have been reports that non-XBox extenders don't work with Win8... and that even the XBox won't play H.264 video under Win8. We'll have to wait until the final release of Win8 to see what happens with extenders.

I don't know what to tell you about getting the Prime to work with Vista. You should contact SiliconDust support for that question.

I agree with fventura03's suggestion about TunerSalad... but I don't know if it will work with Vista. I suggest ditching the ATI tuner. If you're going to pay to rent two CableCARD's, I would recommend buying a 2nd Prime instead of wasting one of the CableCARD's on a single-tuner ATI.

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