[mythtvnz] Part 1 of a HDHomeRun Review

[Steven Ellis]

On 19/03/2009, at 5:56 PM, Andrew Gordon wrote:

> Steven Ellis wrote:
>> I've been send a review unit of the DVB-T compatible HDHomeRun and  
>> the
>> first part of my review is now online.
>>
>> http://www.mythtv.co.nz/mythtv/2009/03/18/hdhomerun-review-part-1/
>

Hi Andrew.

Nice to hear from another user

> Mine (my own purchased one) arrived nearly a couple of weeks ago now.
>
> I tried it with Windows first, which worked fine.  The basic PVR
> software it downloaded/installed worked as well as it could with my  
> old
> hardware.  Including sound, video and EPG (more than just now/next, it
> included past and future programs as well).
>
> My Mac experience went I bit better than yours.  GTK downloaded and
> installed without a hitch.  I also downloaded the latest VLC replacing
> an older one in the Applications folder so I didn't have the same path
> issue you did.  No where near as featured as the provided windows
> software, but I I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find all  
> channels
> working fine with VLC.  Although the HD channels where a little bit  
> too
> much for my little Mac laptop to keep up with quite a bit of the time.
> Yes, passing more stuff through to VLC would be good.  When you  
> access a
> DVB-T tuner directly with VLC it can display channel names and the  
> name
> of the current program so having that working with the HDHomeRun
> shouldn't be totally out of the question.  HDHomeRun support built
> straight into VLC would be even better.


Yes better VNC support would be nice. My GTK install problems are  
probably rare, but needed mentioning as the installer didn't recover  
and the application then refused to work without some serious messing  
about.

Same as yourself the 1080i channels struggled, but 720p played fine on  
my 2.4 GHz macbook.


>
>
> Getting it going with MythTV hasn't been so good.  The version of  
> MythTV
> I had installed (what ever version it is you get with Ubuntu 8.10)
> doesn't support the DVB-T version of the HDHomeRun at all (more or
> less).  I've spent hours trying different versions and stuff.  Not  
> that
> long in I managed to get it to do a scan and find all the channels (by
> picking the UK as the country), but I haven't got it actually tuning  
> in
> and recording anything.  The error I get is "Error: dtv_multiplex data
> is required for tuning".  For my reading on the Silicon Dust forums it
> looks like this should be fixed with MythTV SVN/trunk/whatever version
> 20221.  I don't know how that relates to the version "20227" that I
> "svn"ed, but I still get the error.  Might have to try a brand new  
> from
> scratch database.  "Multirec" support is also still in development by
> the looks of it.

Yes I've been reading a couple of threads about this, but I'm away  
this weekend so I won't have a chance to play.

Part 2 will cover basic Linux support including command line, the new  
gui, and VLC. Part 3 will be MythTV by which point we might have the  
DVB-T niggles sorted.


>
>
> All in all a promising little device.  Will be quite good when it is  
> all
> working fully, including multirec.  Versions that support DVB-S(2) and
> the encrypted streams on TelstraClear cable would make a perfect set
> :-).  Currently (when I'm not trying to get it going with Myth) I'm
> mostly just using mine with VLC on my laptop to watch Futurama :-).
>

Agreed. Multirec would be a killer, although I'd love to see the  
network bandwidth for more than a couple of HD channels.

DVB-S(2) would be lovely as well, but I don't know their plans.

Steve



Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited
email   - steven at openmedia.co.nz
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/mythtvnz/attachments/20090320/9cf48cf3/attachment.htm