SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime (3 Tuners)

Then I guess ? this is not what I want. I want something that interacts with any network device, smart tv’s included. The specs say that it does interact with tv’s, but someone else left a comment that the wireless did not always work. I don’t understand why there are not some easy to find devices out there to make all my smart tv’s and pc’s communicate which will let me watch anywhere I go in the house. I cannot believe they don’t exist and are not easier to find.

Really not sure if I need this.

I do have Comcast lots of cable, but they don’t deserve it.

I have DVR and set top.

Good tuner but the price is still a little high here. I can order it new from Amazon.com for $78.49 and that includes FREE shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004HO58SO

Yes, my first one was from Woot a while back…

[MOD: That’s the Dual, not the PRIME.]

Sorry, the moderator was correct I looked up the dual tuner by mistake.

I wouldn’t go for this tuner as SiliconDust should be releasing a new version soon with built in h.264 encoding which will allow a lot of dlna players to decode on hardware. Tablets and other small devices will benefit greatly from this.

Yes, this does work with Win 8 Home, but as you say you’ll need to purchase Win 8 “Pro Pak” You should note that the “Pro Pak” upgrade cost is not trivial . . . it’s $94.99 to buy the unlocking code from Amazon or $99.99 to buy it from Microsoft.

We have this tuner and it generally works great. We use it with two Windows 7 cheapie notebooks and one Windows 8 cheapie notebook. Only drawback we’ve observed is that if we try to watch or record HD on more than one tuner, we get pixelation and “weak signal” error message. This might have to do with our house WiFi speed, although I’ve switched one PC to powerline adapter data speed and have seen only modest improvement when trying to watch or record more than one HD channel at a time

Yes, it has a usb port to connect to the tuning adapter.

If Windows Media Center can see the NAS it can record to it.

It works fine with windows 8 Pro if you have the Media Center add on.

If you’re using WMC, you don’t need to purchase any kind of guide subscription.

For those of you looking to purchase multiple to use with the same WMC based HTPC, be aware that WMC has a “hard” limit of 4 tuners per source type (cable card, OTA, etc.)

You can get an add-on called TunerSalad (TunerSalad - My Channel Logos) that will increase this limit to 32.

I had a SiliconDdust HDHomeRun (dual QAM tuners) and it worked great. I jumped on the Media Center cable-card thing early with Ceton, and recently upgraded to their 6-tuner external ethernet device. Similar in theory and works great… one cablecard and ability to record 6 channels at once!

If you’re simultaneous-record needs are less than my own, this is a great product at this price.

YES!

Through your LAN or wireless.

Yes, but other wireless DLNA devices can deliver content to your TV, for example a PS4/4. If your DVD player has WiFi, it may have DLNA capability (check your specs)

Just add a simple DLNA server app to your PC, KooKaRoo has a free one.

While you’re correct on the benefits, the new model is not able to use a cable card, which means OTA and unencrypted cable only. That should be good for 3 or 4 channels for most people…

I’ve had these for years and have never paid for any schedule program. I just search for what I want to watch.

I use a program to remove commercials, but I had to buy it.

If you have one or two “TVs” (I used a projector), and can put a computer near each TV, then they are great. If you have more than two TVs, using these becomes expensive, as each TV needs a computer or a so-called “extender”. Also, note that if a TV show is copy protected, you have to watch it using the same computer as you recorded it.

With these caveats, the device is great.

Another caveat is that Windows Media Center has some quirks. I’ve had many different computers and TVs, and all the systems develop a “black screen of death” where the system simply refuses to respond. You have to perform a hard boot. Also, I’ve yet to figure out how to get my computer to sleep and wake up only to record, then go back to sleep. And I’ve had the system for years. I’d like to save some power, but I haven’t figured out yet how to do it.

Even if the system doesn’t develop the “black screen of death”, you do have to reboot periodically, every few days usually, else things go awry.

Yes it does, there’s a USB port on the back for one. TWC will give you one without a fee.

OK, I’m not sure I understand yet, but will this work with satellite TV provides like Dish or DirectTV? I have Dish.

This will work on TWC, however your local CSR will know absolutely nothing about how to get it to work.

I’ve owned one for over a year and have used it quite successfully to help keep my Time Warner Cable bill down in a 3 TV household. It’s actually pretty foolproof once you get it up and running. It’s the getting it up and running that’s full of fools.

If you’re on TWC, when you call your rep tell them you need a cable card AND digital tuning adapter. If you call and tell them what you’re using and ask them how to get it to work they’ll only send you cable card and then when you try to activate you’ll get nothing and the 2 reps in the activation center who actually know what they’re doing will spend hours trying to figure out the problem until they realize you don’t have all the hardware you need.

The tuning adapter is the size of a cable box and adds a jumble of wires as the cable comes into the tuning adapter, back out to the HD HomeRun, and then also has a USB cable that goes from itself to the HDHR. Two power cables, plus the ethernet cable from the HDHR and you see how things quickly get messy. Find a place to hide it, but make sure you plug it into a power strip so you can reboot it the first few times you have to mess with it all.

I have mine fed into a net-top computer I use as a home server running Windows 7 with media center. Everything is hard-wired in my house via cat6, so I have 2 xbox (one for me, one for my BIL who was living with us) set up as media center extenders. What is the plural of xbox anyway? Xboxes? Xbii? That’s 2 cable boxes I don’t have to pay a monthly fee for, and it saves even more money as you can set any show to record via the xbox to the net-top (I have a 2tb drive hooked up) so I don’t have to pay for extra DVR boxes or “whole home” DVR.

I envisioned game systems on all 3 TV’s and no cable boxes at all, but realized that’s too much to ask of the wife, and I’d never get to play whatever I hooked up to the main TV. I can also tap into it via the wireless on my laptop anywhere in the house should I want to watch hockey in the living room while the woman watches Criminal Minds on the actual cable box.

I’ve never had this problem in over a year of owning my Prime hooked up to a Win7 Media Center machine. The only time I reboot the computer is when I run windows updates every couple of months, and the Prime hasn’t been rebooted since I moved 10 months ago.

PS3/4? Anybody here use it with their PS3?