SiliconDust HD HomeRun Prime CableCard Set-Up
My current DVR solution, BeyondTV, was ageing and appears not to be the long-term focus of Snapstream, so I went shopping for a new solution that had some legs. I have the Extended Basic tier with Comcast and due to encryption of the "channels" above 30, I was only able to record about half of the content I was paying for. I could get HD local channels nicely with my twin Hauppauge 2250's, but couldn't record the likes of History Chnnel, Discovery and others.
The HomeRun Prime works with Wndows Media Center under Windows 7. While I'm waiting for the activation to complete, I install the HomeRun Prime software on one of my three Windows boxes. As one of the last steps in the install, I did a channel scan expecting no channels to appear. But, no - channels start appearing in the HomeRun config tool! So, in my case it looks like activation took less than 30 minutes. Cool.The odd thing was, the web page that the HomeRun config utility takes you to (a 192.168.0.* address on your network under DHCP) indicated no channels were downloaded to the three tuners even after activation was complete and I could view channels in WMC. I refreshed a couple of times and still got the same report back, no channels.
The only slightly rough spots were when I set up the HomeRun on a WMC machine previously configured for the Hauppauge 2250. First, the DCA wanted a Product Activation Code and they weren't talking about the Windows OS. They meant the HomeRun product code. A little googling turned up a valid product code in the SiliconDust forums:
263DJ-2Y9YT-6X9G6-W28DB-697TF
This is for the forum entry: http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10080
- can watch TV through WMC on any computer in the house with HomeRun software installed
- fairly straightforward set-up for HomeRun
- self-activation with Comcast actually worked and was painless (quelle surprise!)
Con's:
- the HomeRun seems to only show SD content; the Hauppauge HVR-2250 also shows HD local channel offerings
- a little laggy in WMC when you first start up, say a few seconds of unsynchronised lips/audio
UPDATE:
I was confused on the HD offerings due to different presentation styles. On the HVR-2250, local HD channels are interleaved with SD channels like so: 2 (SD), 2.1 (HD) and so on. The CableCard presents the local HD channels and other content in the 700's-800's band of channels.