HD Homerun LAN tuner

[redwudz]

I've had this device for about four days and it works very well. It plugs into your router and distributes HDTV to any computer connected to the LAN. It has two tuners, so you can have OTA HDTV on one and cable/satellite HDTV on the other. http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun



Size is about 7"W X 4"D X 1.5" H

Two downsides are it doesn't receive SD TV and only one computer can use each tuner at a time But you can set both tuners as OTA or cable as both can be used independently, so one way to get around that. Or buy a second unit.

It also allows you to use quite a few different programs for viewing, including MCE and VLC player. Very easy to set up, just plug in the antenna leads, power supply and run a LAN cable to your router. I gave it a address of 192.168.1.10, along with the MAC address and it showed up on the LAN.

Comodo firewall gave me some problems, but setting the software as 'Trusted Applications' solved that. I'm watching the Olympics in HD at the moment. I haven't tried recording, but that should also work, depending on the programs used.

I got it from NewEgg. A bit pricey at ~$170US, but I paid more for my MyHD HDTV card. One big bonus is that it works with any computer connected to the LAN, even wireless, if your adapter and CPU is fast enough. My laptop with a onboard wireless G adapter and a 1.9Ghz CPU works fine. It uses about 50% CPU and about 25Mbps or 50% of the G adapters wireless bandwidth. Uses about 20% CPU on my quad core HTPC and about 2% of the Gigabit LAN bandwidth.

Now I just need a better OTA antenna as there are about 23 HDTV channels available locally. My cable only has 6.

[Soopafresh]

Cool! Thanks for the review. I've seen that device before; it's good to know it actually works well.

[redwudz]

I was having a lot of headaches with my MYHD MDP-130 PCI tuner and Vista HTPC, so I wanted to try something different. MYHD doesn't have Vista drivers available, so I had to run it in XP SP2 compatibility mode. The IR receiver won't work at all. And the drivers crash fairly often.

The HDHR device would be a bit better for me if it received SD. But SD looks terrible on my projector screen and not much better on my computer monitor. I don't have a TV. The HDHR is somewhat platform independent if the correct drivers are available, so more flexible in that way.

[Soopafresh]

That's unfortunate about the MDP130. I have the MDP120 on XP and it runs quite stable.

[redwudz]

Yes, it's a shame they haven't created compliant Vista drivers for the MDP-130. I like the card, but I like Vista for the HTPC more. One problem seems to be the IR receiver drivers not working at all. Also, if the XP card drivers are installed, Vista will not awake from sleep mode without a BSOD and reboot.

I also have a damaged Fusion HDTV card. I hooked a cable on it and broke off a small capacitor about a year ago. Still have the part, but it's surface mounted and very difficult to put back in place. I liked it a bit better than the MDP-130.