HDTV, even in the Bathroom Front Page

Being a huge watcher of television, I’ve struggled with the concept of closed access to my TV shows. I don’t watch TV in just one room in my house during normal aired times. I like my TV to be available where ever I’m at. This is the reason why I don’t subscribe to the Nazi cable companies and instead opt for technologies like Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming services. But, why should you be limited to just these on-demand services. Watching shows online is great, but it definitely isn’t LIVE TV and not all of the shows are supported. That’s when it’s time for the HDHomeRun from SilconDust.

This amazing product takes a normal Over-the-Air HDTV signal and pools it over your existing Ethernet network for use with any PC on your network (wireless/wired). The best part is that it’s embedded with Two(2) physical HDTV tuners. So, you can watch one channel and record another.

I actually discovered this product when I was in search of an alternative to running coax cables to all of my TVs/HTPCs in my house. The longer I stretched this cable, the worse my signal strength got. Being I already ran Cat5e throughout my house, this just seemed to be a natural solution. Since this device sits only a few feet from my giant HDTV antenna in my attic, my signal strength is outstanding and is consistent from computer to computer. I’m even getting channels that I couldn’t tune into before.

Installation is easy from right out-of-the-box and only takes a few minutes to install. Simply hook your HDTV antenna to the two c0ax connections using a y-adapter and plug a standard RJ-45 Ethernet cable into your Wireless Router or Network Switch. The next step is to install the software. This product supports a variety of HTPC software, but I paired it with my Windows 7 HTPCs which use Windows Media Center.

The software is a simple wizard that walks you through the entire process. You can allocate each tuner to different applications and specify if you use either a standard antenna or have any unencrypted Cable connections. The software scans all of the available frequencies in your area and even reports their guide name.

Within Windows Media Center, you just setup your Live TV signal just your normally would. Both tuners will show up in the list. The other great advantage to this device is that it works with any existing tuners you’re using in your HTPC to provide even more channel flexibility. Alternatively, you can use more than one of these devices to have multiple channels available throughout your network.

The SiliconDust HDHomeRun dual HDTV tuner is a great addition to any home network. You now have the freedom to watch/record live TV from any computer in your house, including any laptops using a wireless connection. Since there isn’t the requirement of an internal TV Tuner card in your HTPC, you have a greater flexibility to the size and dimensions of your HTPC builds.

Compatible With:

• Windows Media Center:
  • MCE 2005
  • Vista WMC (32/64-bit)
  • Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
• Elgato EyeTV – DVR for Mac
• MythTV – DVR for Linux
• SnapStream BeyondTV – DVR for Windows
• SageTV – DVR for Windows/Linux/Mac
• MediaPortal – DVR for Windows
• GB-PVR – DVR for Windows
• VLC – Multi-platform media viewer
• TSReader – MPEG-2 transport stream analysis

Specifications:

• 8-VSB (ATSC over-the-air digital TV)
• QAM64/256 (unencrypted digital cable TV)
• 100baseTX high speed network
• 1 year warranty

Requirements:

• 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or better for HD playback
• 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
• 1-4 GB per 1/2 hour of DTV recording