Wishlist for next generation

wsuetholz · Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Posts: 2

Hello,
I have a HDHomeRun that I've been using with MythTV. There are a few things that I'd like to see in order to make the device even better...

1) IR Transmitter(s). If multiple, individually addressable.
2) Along the same line.. IR Intelligence onboard, with the ability to learn
3) Having more tuners built in, maybe expandable via a daughter card? Allow the tuners to process HD Radio signals as well. I'd like to at least double the present number of tuners.
4) Some kind of detection capability to determine if an cable is plugged into the Antenna ports and route signal from antenna(s) based upon plugged in antenna's and some kind of configuration parameters. This would have the side affect of letting you have more tuners then external antenna connections. That way I personally could get by with one antenna connection.

Thank you for a very nice product.

spalVl · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Philadelphia PA

wsuetholz · Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Posts: 2

Forgot to mention Power over Ethernet capabilities. I'd like to put this in a box next/on the antenna mast to get the cleanest signal possible.

akg · Joined: 28 Dec 2007 Posts: 19

True multicast support. We've heard that there is a Pro/Rack version (with more than two tuners) on Mon Mar 26th (http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5103&highlight=), but haven't seen any shipping product.

Still interested in true multicast, high density HDHomeRun.

bobp · Joined: 20 Jul 2007 Posts: 106

Tru2Way

bobp · Joined: 20 Jul 2007 Posts: 106

or a networked product like the Hava or HD-PVR 1212 - that would accept component input from a cable or satellite box, control those devices by IR, convert the video to a format supported by Vista Media Center (DVRMS today) - and use a virtual tuner interface, so that it can be used in VMC (and other DVR applications) - with the same network sharing features available with the HDHR today.

armyb77 · Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Posts: 9

I just want the same exact product but with NTSC/PAL Analog capabilities. That way I can put everything in my basement, and keep a nice streamlined PC with very limited wires. Right now I have 2 HDhomeruns, and 6 analog tuners. The HD's are in the basement with my routers and switch, but the analog tuners are inside my PC (3 dual tuners) so that is 6 coaxial cables that are all behind my TV what a nightmare, and eyesore. I would much rather have all of that in my basement and only have 3 HDhomeruns that would be capable of recorder Analog or Clear QAM. Which would give me the same capabilities that I have now but with less of a mess.

That's my 2 cents. Keep it Ethernet as that is the best thing to ever happen to tuners.

Skyeclad · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 16

*Improved OTA tuning support. The second generation was a little bit better than the first but still lags behind some stand-alone digital tuning boxes.
*4 Tuners
*HD Radio

djp952 · Joined: 02 Oct 2008 Posts: 136

- Mounting holes in the bottom of the unit so it can be mounted vertically

- Make the devices horizontally stackable with little feet or at least something that you can put inbetween them to maintain an acceptable distance

- A 4 tuner unit with gigabit ethernet would be great (megabit is fine for the dual-tuners imo)

- FM/HD Radio, but only as a separate coax input. If the radio could be configured to just stream as if it was an Internet radio station, I think there would be a lot of 'already out there' support for it, for example Roku Soundbridges and the like. Many people can just hook their VHF TV antenna to this port and get decent FM, it seems like a great feature.

- Ability to assign each unit a static IP address, IPv6 support would be nice too.

- Not sure how many platforms this could be applied to, but I think it could be done for Media Center ... implement some kind of 'lock' in the BDA drivers/hardware that indicates the tuner is actually in use by a PC and would be reported as unavailable. This way people (like me) could share a pool of HDHomeRun devices amongst multiple PCs. For example, I need 4 HDHomeRuns to provide guaranteed view+record access to both of my antennas from 2 PCs, but in reality I should be able to do it with 2 in most circumstances, 3 in almost all cases. It would save me $$, so I imagine it would save others $$ as well. To save that much cash, and to switch out the 4-way splitters with 2-way splitters and improve my signal strength by 3.5dB as a result, I would gladly deal with the occasional "tuner in use" message on the bedroom system when the living room one is actually using both tuners.

But don't get me wrong .. I *love* these devices, even if they stay the same forever. I just wish I knew about them a year sooner, it would have saved me a LOT of time trying to build a single antenna system that could reliably get multiple cities at the same time. Brilliant just as they are!!!

Esth77 · Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 1

1. 3 tuner slots for different DVB-Tuner-Cards like DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C, DVB-T etc. Using Twin-Cards you can acceive 6 online tuners!
2. gigabit ethernet
3. IPv6 support

solomalee · Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 7

Just DVB-S2 and I'm a happy bunny.

chrismc · Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 11

CableCARD support would be awesome. If you could produce a HDHR box that supported CableCARDs for decryption of content, that would open a world of opportunities. Since its somewhat of a "closed-box" system, it seems that it may be possible to convince the cable-company-powers-that-be...

edros · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1

Would be great to have a component and digital audio input and make it tuner # 3 channel 1.

PVR4Me · Joined: 04 Oct 2006 Posts: 81

bobp · Joined: 20 Jul 2007 Posts: 106

Here's my wishlist...

I posted some specific product suggestions earlier, but it may be better to identify potential problems that SiliconDust could solve in new products.

While the current HDHR provides us the clearQAM or OTA SD/HD channels, that only solves part of the problems we have in converting to an 'all digital', HTPC-served environment.

To have a fully digital home, the major problems we have are:

The current HDHR product fully supports #2 and #4, but only provides partial support for #1 & #3 - since it doesn't provide access to the encrypted OTA/cable channels and doesn't provide any support for non-QAM/OTA sources like satellite.

PC tuners that implement the CableCard standard (i.e., ATI's Digital Cable Tuner) have a huge restriction (#2) in that they can only be installed into special CableLabs-certified PCs.

The Hauppauge HD-PVR digitizes component output from an STB into H.264 and suffers from two major limitations - it isn't currently supported in Media Center and it uses USB, preventing sharing between PCs.

Hava's products are network based, so they could theoretically be shared between PCs, but their current products only provide 480 resolution. Since the beginning of the year, they've claimed they will release a 720p/1080i product - but that hasn't happened.

#5 and #6 can be solved by outputting video/audio streams to unused QAM channels, like ZeeVee's ZvBox. Their product takes the VGA output from a PC and hijacks the audio output via USB and retransmits it over QAM. This essentially adds a new channel viewable by all TVs - for the output of the PC. The major flaw with this product is that it impacts the connection of the HTPC to it's attached PC. It forces downgrading from HDMI/DVI to VGA for the video - and when the ZvBox is transmitting, audio is lost on the HTPC's attached TV.

There is potentially a huge market for products solving these problems.

ONE new product might get us very, very close. This product would:

With driver support, this product could extend the HDHR's access to encrypted channels. This box could do the tuning - and the HDHR could capture the QAM channel and send the data back to the HTPC for live viewing or recording.

And since this product would be transmitting clearQAM - it could even be used without an HTPC - anyone with mulitple HDTVs would be able use this to share an STB across all of their TVs.

One caveat though... The future of component output may not be assured. The industry is shifting to HDMI/HDCP - and future STBs might not have component output OR might not transmit HD over component. An HDMI-based solution (that would pass through the copy protection flag to the transmitted QAM channel) might have a longer lifetime...