hi folks,
I've been comtemplating the purchase of an HDHomeRun for my KnoppMyth setup, and was especially interested because of two recent events: 1) KnoppMyth now supports (I think) the HDHomeRun, and 2) my cable provider (Comcast) was troubleshooting my cable signal in the last two months and finally fixed the problem today (HD channels were rough at best, and some wouldn't even tune-in with my DCT-6200). Poor SNR was the problem, and maintenance crews today went upstream from my house and found/fixed the problem. Yay!

I haven't pulled the trigger yet on the HDHomeRun, so I receive HD via firewire/DCT-6200. This works reasonably well, and the picture quality on my Samsung HPS4253 is simply outstanding.

However, looking forward from here in terms of advancements in entertainment technology, digital and HD are going to be what we consider "normal" TV very soon, and the analog broadcasts will quickly be replaced.

With that in mind, I see no point in investing in another Hauppage or similar analog media device, and any of you who have recorded HD programming will agree that the resulting media, although quite large in terms of size in Gb, are something to behold. Widescreen HD is great.

I went spelunking on the net during the last few days looking for information about QAM, Comcast, Motorola HD STB. Didn't find all that much information (it's still just a bit geeky, let's face it, and meaning no offense, but MythTV is, too), but there are sources out there. This one:

http://www.cjhengineering.com/hdtv/cablehdtv/dctdiag.htm

is of particular interest to me because it allowed me to look at the digital cable signal that I receive and see which stations are encrypted. This will have a direct impact on my decision to expand my digital/HD capabilities.

I'm still in the market for a HDHomeRun, even though about half of the HD channels I receive are encrypted (and this trend looks to continue).

Oh, and on a related note: how much trouble is it for all of you who post to this list to put your location in your account setup so that the rest of us can see where you are? It would be of great help to see the geographic location of a person who is posting about their cable/Myth/satellite system...!!

-sTv

edit
this page:

http://home.comcast.net/~timmmoore/firewire/readme.htm

gives more information about 5C encryption on the Motorola HD STB.

_________________
R7.3 Backend
CPU: 1.8 GHz
RAM: 2Gb
Drives: 500Gb IDE; IDE DVD-RW
Mobo: eMachines
Tuners (Analog): PVR-250
Tuners (Digital): DCT-6200 Motorola Cable Box, HDHomeRun (OTA + cable)

Not on the topic of the Moto STB, but our Comcast provider encrypts all digital streams except for the network broadcast channels. And they don't distribute all of the network digital channels that would be available OTA. IE, our local PBS station has three digital signals (11.1, 11.2, 11.3) and Comcast only distributes two of them (11.1, 11.3). Granted, there really isn't anything on the other digital station that I am interested in, but still.

Given what I have seen, I wouldn't expect Comcast to distribute anything unencrypted except for the network OTA channels. I had an HDHomeRun, but decided to sell it and get an AirStar HD5000 instead. This was due to the fact that I don't watch that many network programs, so the extra $70 for the second tuner on the HDHR was not worth it for me.

Hope this makes sense.

_________________
Tim

LinHES 8.4
HDHR3
BioStar A770, AMD X2 4050e, 2GB RAM
GigaByte GeForce 8400, Chaintech AV710
USB-UIRT

I have the the HDhomerun with Comcast and the device is good, but a little bleeding edge right now.

1st issue is Comcast they strip data from their QAM stream. This makes is difficult to match up scanned channels with zap2it's data. I have to go though every channel and find what it is and match it's XMLID to Zap2it's. This sucks (Comcast's fault).

2nd issue is .20 MythTV doesn't display a large subset of channels, comparing what VLC picks from HDHR up to MythTV many missing channels. I have to upgrade to SVN to fix. I upgraded to SVN on a test box, but haven't got the guts yet to risk it on my production box (wife will kill if goes bad)

Upside when running SVN is pretty stable with HDHR and the HDHR guys seem commited to MythTV support. I suggest taking a look at the Silicondust forums too.

I watch very little TV get HD/Digitial channels with HDHR and I have the basic cableTV pricing. The HDHR is cheaper than a STB for me and I am happy with current channel choices.

If you are not comfortable with SVN may want to wait until MythTV .21 is released and KM incorporates.