HDHomerun Quality Poll

[fmharr]

I have 2 HDHomeruns. They have always performed poorly. I have had the COX cable service tech out and he replaced the cable to my house and added an amp.

This did not fix the problem. I just assumed that the signal from them was not good enough.

Now I have a PVR-2250 and a PVR-1950 and both function perfectly with out any quality issues at all (Have not had any bad recordings).

About 50% of my HDHomerun recordings are corrupted to the point that they are not viewable. I have taken to also recording the SD version of each so that I have a backup.

[SnakeDoctor]

I voted none because I have never had a recording that was so corrupt that I could not finish the show. Almost all of my recordings have a few drop-outs but I don't think this is the fault of the HDHR. It is more likely that it is an OTA reception issue.

Have you checked the power supplies for your HDHRs? When mine went bad, the performance degraded slowly. Silicondust replaced them free of charge.

[Nick Burns]

I voted none, but I'm also strictly OTA. All the HDHRs outperform my HVR-1600.

[fmharr]

Originally Posted by SnakeDoctor

I voted none because I have never had a recording that was so corrupt that I could not finish the show. Almost all of my recordings have a few drop-outs but I don't think this is the fault of the HDHR. It is more likely that it is an OTA reception issue.

Have you checked the power supplies for your HDHRs? When mine went bad, the performance degraded slowly. Silicondust replaced them free of charge.

I have checked the power and both are good. Silicondust sent me a replacement for one that they said could be a problem but it made no differance. (This was not in response to this issue, but I saw a notice on their site when I was downloading a driver).

Mine has been this way from day one.

The first unit was purchased on 7/03/2007 and the second on 2/05/2008.
They both have the same problem and have always had this issue.

I am going to submit a trouble ticket on their site. Can't believe it has taken this long. But until now, I was not sure it was a tuner issue.

Mike

[fmharr]

Originally Posted by Nick Burns

I voted none, but I'm also strictly OTA. All the HDHRs outperform my HVR-1600.

When I don't have problems, the HDHomerun is every bit as good as the 2250 and 1950 but they are unreliable.

It may be that my cable signal is not that good but the 1950/2250's handle it much better then the HDHomeruns.

I forgot to mention that I only do QAM.

My Sony TV does not have quality issues either.

Mike

[jafa]

Hi,

Picture breakup is usually caused by reception problems, Vista network throttling, or the NIC interrupt mitigation settings of your PC.

Please file a trouble ticket - support will run some tests and walk you through the troubleshooting process:
http://www.silicondust.com/tickets

Test for reception errors or network packet loss:
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5877

Nick

[fmharr]

Originally Posted by jafa

Hi,

Picture breakup is usually caused by reception problems, Vista network throttling, or the NIC interrupt mitigation settings of your PC.

Please file a trouble ticket - support will run some tests and walk you through the troubleshooting process:
http://www.silicondust.com/tickets

Test for reception errors or network packet loss:
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5877

Nick

I just checked my NIC settings as per the troubleshooting guide.

I have the nVida Gigabit nic listed. I have made the suggested change and have run 2 tests and they have been good.

I was getting bad errors on ABC just before the change and right after there has been no errors for the past hour.

It is too early to declare the problem fixed but I am hoping that this has fixed my problem.

Mike

[mayhem70]

I had issues with QAM signal around 84% when I first got it. But I added one of those RadioShack powered four splitter amps and it hasn't had one issue and signal strength around 94%. I live in an older apartment and the cable wiring sucked...so many splitters in the main box..ugh.

[vidiot1985]

Originally Posted by jafa

Hi,

Picture breakup is usually caused by reception problems, Vista network throttling, or the NIC interrupt mitigation settings of your PC.

...

Nick

And maybe firewall performance, right? I vaguely recall having to give up Zone Alarm and use Windows Firewall when I got my HDHR.

[mayhem70]

Originally Posted by vidiot1985

And maybe firewall performance, right? I vaguely recall having to give up Zone Alarm and use Windows Firewall when I got my HDHR.

Oh, good call. I did have to create a rule in Comodo Firewall because it thought the HDHR was causing a network attack.

[Banjo H]

I have had corrupt recordings of Lost and Bones lately. Originally, I thought it was do many recordings at once (load). But, last night Lost was junk and it was the only recording at the time.

About 80% of my recordings are on the HDHR, but only a few are corrupt. I am suspecting the on-the-fly streamsnip. I am thinking of backrev'ing to 4.7.1.

Any other thoughts from you'll?

[Nick Burns]

The HDHR actually does "streamsnipping" natively and I believe BTV uses that process rather than it's own for other tuners. Not saying that can't be the problem, just thinking it might be the less likely culprit.

[jbartlett777]

I had two HDHomeruns and both functioned perfectly. One eventually died though...

Edit your tuner priority to alternate between the two - this reduces load on each unless you're recording 3 or 4 simultaneous recordings. Also having more than one hard drive in a recording pool will help because BTV will split the recordings between the drives.

[Dave Gestens]

I used to think I had problems fairly regularly, but it turned out to be the crappy little router I had between the HDHR and BTV box. Since I replaced the router I have not had ANY issues I would attribute to the HDHR.

I also have a 2250 and I can't really tell the difference in the recordings except for the file sizes of recordings seem to be a little different.

[Banjo H]

Originally Posted by Nick Burns

The HDHR actually does "streamsnipping" natively and I believe BTV uses that process rather than it's own for other tuners. Not saying that can't be the problem, just thinking it might be the less likely culprit.

I am pretty sure that the HDHR does not streamsnip. I just did some testing and the recordings with HDHR on BTV 4.7.1 are not streamsnipped. So, it's probably hard to tell if the update to 4.9 enables some HDHR capability or it's the 4.9 addition.

I am pretty sure the tuner is only able to dump a channel, not weed out the particular PID.