SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black)

2 Responses to “SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black)”

1. Glenn R. Howes says:

   January 11, 2012 at 12:28 pm

   107 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

   
   The TV Tuner to Get, March 13, 2011

   By 

   Glenn R. Howes (Nashua, NH) –
   
     
   
     
   
     

   This review is from: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black) (Electronics)

   In my house, I have a Linux home theatre PC in the TV room attached to the plasma. I have a Linux media server attached to an older TV in the basement for recordings. My wife has a Windows 7 PC on her desk. I have a MacBook Pro which I carry about and is on the home wireless network. So 4 screens in the house. All of which can call upon the HDHomerun attached to the rooftop antenna for high definition broadcast television of excellent quality, and very good reliability. The ability to share and the ease of configuration are the strong points of this device. I would not encumber my laptop with a USB dongle and a stiff length of RG-6 cable, just to watch TV, not when I have 802.11n wireless networking capable of carrying multiple HD streams at once. Nor would I want to split my antenna feed to give each PC a line in the off chance I’d want to view on it. And I certainly don’t want to deal with indifferently supported USB drivers under Linux, or trying to find a home for my old PCI tuner in a house with no PCI slots.

   An ARM based tablet computer, like an iPad, will not have the horsepower to directly decode HD MPEG-2 data streams, but you can setup a computer to convert the video to H.264. For instance, I can leave EyeTV running on my MacBook allowing me to watch content on my iPad. I don’t do this because I don’t like leaving my MacBook running constantly, but I could; modern computers are capable of realtime video conversion.

   Even if you use this device with a digital cable system, you are likely to only receive local broadcast networks, so be aware. I combine my antenna based MythTV DVR with a Netflix subscription, giving me most of the programming I’ll actually want to watch for $8 a month plus electrical costs, supplemented by pay per view from Amazon and Apple, and if I didn’t have kids, that would be it for TV costs. As an added bonus, if your local broadcasters are not putting too many sub-channels on their frequency, the quality is unmatched by cable and nearly pristine. Unfortunately, some of my local networks put up to 4 sub-channels on their feeds, but most are reasonable and look great.

   And electricity costs should be included in your budget. My home theatre PC and my media server are using $3 each a month in electricity just being on waiting for their “free” content.

   Setting up an antenna starts with searching for the antennaweb organization’s website and finding out what stations are in your area, and how big an antenna you need. I ended up installing a really big antenna on my roof with a pre-amp, but once it was setup, it was setup and maintenance free for years. In my particular setup, I have my antenna split 3 ways, to this dual tuner, to a single tuner blue HDHomerun, and to the Panasonic plasma in the TV room, allowing me to record three programs while watching something live. This is much more than adequate, as it’s unusual for me to need more than two simultaneous tuners given the limitations of local broadcast content.

   Installation of an HDHomerun is simple, simpler in my experience than standard tuners directly attached to a PC. The package comes with one of those mini CDs hated by Macs and other slot loaders, so you should probably get your setup software from Silicondust’s website. They make prompt firmware updates as issues arise, and write high quality if spartan software. I was able to use their setup utility on Windows 7 to get Media Center to see and use the tuner. Also EyeTV on OS X saw and used the tuner, and it was very simple using MythTV to see and use the tuners on Linux. Use wired Ethernet for distribution if practical, if not do not use less then 802.11n wireless, as I’ve found that g wireless is not quite up to the task of streaming HD video. I generally use my MacBook with the MythTV frontend for “OS X” to watch recorded programming on the Linux media server, it’s free and works reasonably well, but I do own a license for EyeTV and have watched live TV with it.

   I have owned the previous incarnation of the dual tuner HDHomerun for many years and it still works, but I was eager to compare this device to the previous models, the original white one and the single tuner blue one. I’m interested in signal quality, so I spent a couple hours with an…

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2. TunaMan "Engineer Nerd" says:

   January 11, 2012 at 1:13 pm

   16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Installation can be non-trivial, April 21, 2011

   By 

   TunaMan “Engineer Nerd” (Georgia USA) –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/amazon-verified-purchase/185-4085478-7982439', ‘AmazonHelp’, ‘width=400,height=500,resizable=1,scrollbars=1,toolbar=0,status=1′);return false; “>What’s this?)

   This review is from: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black) (Electronics)

   The installation may be non-trivial if you already have another tuner on your PC. If you do not have a pre-existing tuner, then I would think the HDHR3 setup would be extremely easy.

   For my setup, I had to
   a) disable the Windows7 LAN firewall (until I got it working and specifically added firewall rules for the two programs involved (QuickTV and Windows Media Center)
   b) remove my other QAM tuner device and deleted all the old program guide data from Windows7 Media Center to get the HDHR3 channels to be seen inside Windows Media Center without manually adding them each, one-at-a-time. This involved more complexities than can be explained here.
   c) Every time I ran the HDHR3 setup program, the bad firewall settings are put back. I’m running the latest available windows software from 2 weeks ago. Be certain you get the latest available from the SiliconDust website.

   IP Addresses
   There is no way to set a static IP within the device. You’ll need a DHCP server on your network and if you want a static IP, then your DHCP server will need to provide that. This probably isn’t important to all but a very few users. If you don’t have DHCP then it gets more complicated since a 169.x.x.x address will be used by the device and you’ll need to set that up on your PC.

   Encrypted Cable
   More and more digital cable channels are being encrypted. A year ago, I received over 100 ClearQAM channels, then the cable company started encrypting them. Now we are down to about 15 useful channels (local broadcast + community access + lots of shopping). Channels above 30 are all encrypted by my cable provider and cannot be viewed through this device. Modern HDTVs have built in QAM tuners, so you can probably use that to see which channels will be viewable through the HDHR3 at your location. It does not have an analog cable channel tuner like the old “cable ready” VCRs or TVs, only ClearQAM.

   Multiple Sources
   Though it is a dual tuner, since there is only 1 coax input, you will need to choose either digital cable QAM or ATSC/OTA broadcast reception for both tuners. Don’t expect this model to support 1 tuner on ATSC and the other on QAM regardless of the ability to select one for each tuner in the GUI.

   Very Happy
   Besides those items, it works wonderfully and I wish I’d purchased it sooner. The recordings are beautiful and the integration with Windows7 Media Center is great, once it is setup. I haven’t tried MythTV or GB-PVR or XBMC or any other options for tuning, but suspect they will each work as expected.

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