HDHomeRun Prime and NPVR - Do I need Media Center OS?

[ga_mueller]

($99 @ newegg) is looking promising....

Same price at Amazon, much better return policy w/no restocking fee if it does not work out.

[HarryH3]

I spaced out the part that you WANT an HDHR Prime. :o

Be aware that Silicon Dust showed off a 6-tuner model at the recent show in Vegas and said it should be available in Q2 for $149. 6 tuners with a single cable card (they currently sell a 6-tuner model, but it's really just two 3-tuner models in one box, requiring 2 cable cards). 3 tuners sounds like enough, until you start dealing with lots of shows on a single night and still want to honor padding. It isn't a problem often, but some nights it seems that my wife wants to record every show that's on. If I realize what she's asking the system to do I can often rearrange the recordings to record some of the shows when they are repeated later the same night, after prime time ends.

[whurlston]

3 tuners sounds like enough, until you start dealing with lots of shows on a single night and still want to honor padding.

Good thing to keep in mind. Multi record is available with QAM tuners but it is not available with CableCard tuners. On CableCard tuners (that have a CableCard installed), you need one tuner for each program you want to record even if they are on the same physical channel frequency.

[soyrunner]

Here in rural Georgia I have NextPVR working with a HDHomeRun3-CC and it records just fine with a caveat - channel mapping is a farce with what schedulesdirect gets from Zap2it. Never the same after the war, that one back in the 1800's, for those of us who moved here from the north we blithely expected CBS, ABC, and NBC to be easily accessible, HA. I think hell will freeze over before regular NBC programming is to be had here. The HDHomeRun gets the channel data and those channels are mapped to the guide numbers without variation however the channel callsigns do not correspond with what schedulesdirect has in its getdata page. The result is a recording of Hart of Dixie, and the video says Hart of Dixie the first few minutes, is actually House M.D. There are two channels that actually work so far, listed shows getting recorded. It would be good if the mapped channels in /Silicondust/HDHomeRun/CableCARD.xml could be used to map NextPVR but I don't see how that would get the shows lineup. With the three tuners, NextPVR can record 3 shows at the same time if I'm not using the Samsung Smarthub HDHomeRun app.

[jrockow]

HarryH3,
Where can I find more info on the new Silicon Dust 6-tuner model?
A quick Google search only shows the dual-card model.
Thanx.

[HarryH3]

In typical SiliconDust fashion, there is almost no info available on their site. Their marketing department seems to be the least effective in the history of the world. A quick scan of their forums resulted in a discussion here: http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewto...44&t=17055

[JamesM]

I am using a Prime with NextPVR and some of my basic cable ABC/NBC/FOX primetime shows don't record. They do record OK in WMC. I get a 0 byte .ts file. I've been trying to figure out what's happening but some shows are probably copy protected for some reason. These same shows are available OTA. James

[whurlston]

Add firewall exceptions for NextPVR.exe, NRecord.exe and NDigitalHost.exe

[HarryH3]

James, go to the web page of your Prime (It's at http://<IP Address of Prime>/lineup.html ) and scroll through the list of channels. Any that have the "DRM" logo next to them can only be recorded with WMC.

[JamesM]

I have Charter and it appears that during prime time, most network channels (abc, NBC, CBS, etc) are protedted as I get a zero byte ts file when i try to record shows. The same shows record OK in Windows Media Center that i have set to also record during the same time slots.

However, in the HDPrime's status window, it shows "none" for protection yet the show will still not record.

I was excited to find NextPVR because i thought it would provide a solution to playing back recorded shows via SageTV which dos not support WTV files but does support the TS files that NextPVR records in. Comskip also works on these files. However, because of the copy protection that appears to be enabled during prime time, this is no longer a perfect solution. I am sooooo disappointed that Charter went all digital and now requires me to have a cablecard even for my basic channels which has totally made my TV show recording much more painful.

BTW, this isn't due to firewall rules, daytime shows record OK via NextPVR