HDHomeRun Prime is the first CableCARD tuner to deliver live TV to DLNA Devices

Read more on Engadget’s web-site and the main PR here

Our favorite shows, anywhere, that’s all we really want. Of course that is asking too much but we’ll be closer to the dream now that Silicondust has announced its three tuner HDHomeRun Prime CableCARD is a certified DLNA Digital Media Server (DMS). While the options this opens are seemingly limitless, one specific use case is watching premium cable on a PS3. CableCARD tuners aren’t exactly known for their ease of setup, but once you do get this working with your cable company and on your network, it’ll show up like any other DLNA source to your PS3. From there you can browse the list of channels and watch any you happen to subscribe to.

The PS3 isn’t the only DLNA Digital Media Player (DMP) or Digital Media Renderer (DMR) that works with a DLNA DMS, and plays MPEG2 video. However, at this point it’s the only one we know of that also supports DTCP-IP, which is the DRM required to play premium content. A representative of Silicondust told us he’s confident more compatible devices are on the way, while even more devices will support the unprotected content. Keep an eye out for an official list of compatible hardware on its site some time after this update starts rolling out later this month. Finally, yes, you will be able to use your DLNA Digital Media Controller (DMC) to record content to your other Digital Media Servers — is that enough acronyms for you? If this interests you, then stay tuned for CES where Silicondust plans to announce phase 2, which is where we think things could really get interesting.

Elgato releases HDHomeRun for the MAC

A low-cost DVR for news

SilconDust’s HDHomeRun combined with Elgato’s EyeTV results in an HD news recorder and logger.

With HD here, finding a way to record programming from broadcast (both cable and antenna) has posed a problem.

Some cable companies and satellite providers either charge a significant amount or refuse to rent their HD PVR systems. Even when these PVRs are rented to broadcasters, often they are proprietary or just simply not the easiest to make compatible with our editing systems and servers.

The following is a solution I have found that worked incredibly well and provided extremely high-quality video. It uses consumer gear to stream HD across an IT network and records to commonly found Mac machines in the broadcast environment. With Final Cut Pro becoming so common place in the news environment and easily exported to servers, I found recording to a Mac G5 the easiest way to go.

The system consists of a SiliconDust HDHomeRun placed in a terminal room rack and fed an antenna input and a cable input. Elgato’s EyeTV software is loaded on a Mac. The Elgato software reaches across the network to the HDHomeRun and scans channels (both ATSC from antenna and Clear QAM from cable). Using TVGuide’s On-Line programming schedule, it recognized all possible recordable channels and loads their guide on the Elgato guide for recording. This allows a simple “click the box” to record onetime or on every showing. A manual record function is also possible.

When the recording activates, the Mac actually receives the streaming video over the network and records it.

Confidence monitoring is displayed if desired, and the software is intuitive enough that all programs to be recorded or already recorded are easy to see in the software GUI. Once recorded, the Elgato EyeTV software allows for semi-accurate (to the second, not frame) editing. This allows the file to remain native to the Elgato software and fast to render for Final Cut. The video can then be quickly “flipped” to your native editing format, cleaned up to the frame, and posted into your server quickly.

The typical one-hour Elgato-native file is about 5Mb per hour of HD video, and the quality of the video is nothing short of incredible. I found both the HDHomeRun hardware and EyeTV software to be rock-solid with no missed recordings during testing or actual use. The software allows for auto-purging (based on a pre-determinded number of days or shows recorded), and auto-compress to a tight archive format (like MP4, Quciktime or DivX) is possible from within the Elgato EyeTV software.

On a Mac G5 (setup as Final Cut Editor), there were ample resources to allow perfect recording of two channels simultaneously. Because the HDHomeRun has two tuners, you can record one off-air and one off-cable channel at the same time without killing machine resources. The result is great video with no lip-sync errors.

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Daniel Slentz is VP of technology & broadcast operations for KERA-TV/FM.