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

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1. Glenn R. Howes says

   35 of 36 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 the 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 iPhone/iPad app I wrote, Signal GH, looking at how these three devices handle my hard to lock television stations.

   I hoped the tuner chipset in the Dual would improve upon the 5 year old chips in the original. And it did. The new tuner is more consistent then the original and a bit more consistent then the blue. Where the older model would swing over…

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    Comments (3)

   June 26, 2011, 9:38 pm

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