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I have multiple ocmputers, so spending more on the dual tuner external box made sense and cents for me. Plus, I didn't have to pull towers out of cabinets and see all the dust.I now have the ability to put a second antenna pointed at towers in a completely different direction without messing with a rotor.Using with GBPVR. Works great now. I had difficulties getting GBPVR to work, but it was unrelated to the HomeRun.
This product is really very simple. I use this on an Acer Aspire Revo 3610 (which is itself a very nice, small machine) and it works flawlessly with Windows Media Center. It will take a coaxial cable connection from an off-air antenna, and give every computer on your network access to two HD TV Tuners. If you have a Windows 7 computer, the computer can record and play-back off-air HD TV shows, using this device.All you have to do is connect this device to your network, hook up a coaxial TV antenna on the device, plug in the power supply, and install the drivers. If your computer supports HDMI (which the AR3610 does), you can connect the machine directly to your TV and basically use the machine as a TIVO-like device.The device has two coaxial connectors and can theoretically get inputs from two separate HD sources, such as an off air antenna and a cable connection, or two off-air antennas pointing in different directions. In most cases, you'll be using the same source to feed both coaxial connectors, so be sure to buy a coaxial cable splitter and two 6-inch cables.
Use the digital tuner with an antenna to receive OTA HD channels and the analog behind either your set top box or DTA (see comcast) using a IR Blaster to control channel selection.I returned my HDHomerun the day after I received it. It is a tuner, not a decoder.
It's nice to have a tuner that is network based and not a card in my machine. The product is a great idea and implementation.
If they encrypt any of the digital channels in your lineup then this product is relatively useless. Easy to setup.
Channel lineups can be confusing and take time to sort out.BUYER BEWARE:Check with your cable provider. Either wait for a CableCard digital tuner, use the HDHomerun for OTA HD and local unencrypted digital channels only or buy a simple card (Hauppauge) with an both analog and digital tuners.
I'm going with a card until CableCard tuners are released, have come down in price and have been proven to work.
Follow the instructions on SiliconDust's web site. This is the second HDHomerun I purchased and makes four tuners on my network which any PC in the house can use. Works great for over the air (OTA) ASTC signals I get from my antenna. Windows 7 Media Center (MC) supports up to eight (I heard) tuners and now supports Clear QAM (non encrypted digital cable) signals. Works great with Comcast Digital cable after you scan and use the MC setup for TV - Guide - Edit Listings. Windows MC TV guide only supports OTA or QAM at a time but not both together. Silicon Dust has just introduced a CableCard version for encrypted cable signals - can't wait to hear about that one.
I read the reviews about digital HD channels but I didn't quite understand it until I got it and hooked it up. It's a Windows XP computer so I will use the HDHomeRun QuickTV on that computer. Apparently it is a known problem as it is reported on the SilconDust forums.If you are expecting to stream ALL cable TV to any computer on your network, think again and plan accordingly because it doesn't provide this. Go to the SilconDust website then Resources, TV Channels, Type in your zipcode and you will see pretty close what channels this device will provide you.Lucky I kept my Hauppauge 1600 MCE card in my computer so I can watch all my cable channels. It takes quite a bit of time. My cable provider already had these channels in HD so this device wasn't that great for me. This is the easier way to explain it. BTW: The QuickTV does not work on Windows 7 unless you install the AC3Filter v1.63b from the AC3Filter dot net website.
It does come in better then what the Hauppauge card is doing so I will keep it. Plus I have one computer that doesn't have a TV cable outlet by it, so this will come in handy. It only provides those few HD channels, as in for me, it was less than 20 and of those 20 about 6 are worth watching.Setup was fairly easy except I didn't quite like that each computer has to scan the channels in setup each time. I would of liked if you did it once and all the other computers took those settings.
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