New ATSC tuners

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daaronb
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New ATSC tuners

Post by daaronb »

I have been looking for a new ATSC tuner. It seem what is being sold now on amazon and best buy are mostly dvr based. (Can any one say "subscription")
What tuner would you buy for you Mythtv Box at this time?
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

If I needed one today.
Hauppauge WinTV quadHD - Digital TV tuner - ATSC, QAM - HDTV - PCIe.
You can still find them for $99.95. Or maybe search ebay for a cheaper one if you don't want 4 tuners.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
Lost Dog
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by Lost Dog »

I'd still go with a HDHomerun. I've been running one for years and it's been solid.

I've got the new ATSC 3.0 backed on kickstarter and exited to get that in and play with it.
mathog
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by mathog »

Lost Dog wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:55 pm
I'd still go with a HDHomerun. I've been running one for years and it's been solid.
The only problem we ever had with ours was when the power wart died after many, many years. Bought a generic one of ebay with the same specs and no problems since. (Hardly a criticism specific to the HDHomerun - every laptop we own is on its 2nd or 3rd power supply.) If you want to add more tuners it is easy to do, and you don't need to open up the DVR to install anything. We already have a 1000baseT hardware switch since the network connection is cable_modem to wifi/router to switch to DVR. There are at last count 6 devices plugged into the switch (MythTV box, 2 printers, hdhomerun, bluray player, Nvidia Shield). Traffic to the Shield (when watching Netflix, for instance) does not interfere with traffic between the hdhomerun and the MythTV box, so never any issues recording two TV shows while watching streaming video. Perhaps if we had 6 tuners or something like that it would be a problem, but with just 2 it isn't.
jpasher
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by jpasher »

I second the recommendation for the HDHomeRun. I was using an HDHomeRun Prime (3-tuner cable card) for probably about nine years before I recently cut the cord and switched to an HDHomeRun Connect Quatro (found it on sale for about $110). The ability to stream the video over the network is nice, since it means the coax connection doesn't have to be in the same location as the backend. I too had a power supply problem with the HDHomeRun Prime, but a generic one fixed the issue.
Lost Dog
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by Lost Dog »

mathog wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:13 am
Lost Dog wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:55 pm
I'd still go with a HDHomerun. I've been running one for years and it's been solid.
The only problem we ever had with ours was when the power wart died after many, many years.
I guess I should say I'm on my second HDHomerun. I also had the wall wart issue on the first gen HDHR. I found several blown capacitors in it and swapped those out and it worked fine for years after that. It finally just died and rather than troubleshoot I let the upgrade bug order me a newer generation.

I do have to say it's a really solid product and should be on the top of anyone's list for a tuner.
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

Just curious. Will the hdhr tuners record more than one channel per tuner as can regular internal tuners that can record up to 5 channels per tuner?
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
jpasher
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by jpasher »

Speaking for the HDHomeRun Prime (which is no longer available new) and the HDHomeRun Connect Duo/Quatro, it's one channel per internal tuner. The Prime can stream three simultaneous channels, while the Duo and Quatro can stream two and four, respectively.
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

Just to clarify, they can only record one virtual channel per tuner? IOW's they could only record one of these channels per tuner, 8_1, 8_2, 8_3. and 8_4, which are all on the same real channel 9 here. With a regular tuner one can record all of these at the same time with just 1 tuner.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
mathog
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by mathog »

Is recording multiple virtual channels from one channel at the same time actually useful? (As opposed to theoretically so.) I do not recall having every programmed a pair of shows like that, and it has been more than a decade of use.
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

There are a lot of areas where 1 station carries 2 or 3 major networks, so yes, it is a consideration if you happen to live in one of these areas. One that comes to mind is where my cousin lives close to Atoka OK. There are just 2 stations that she gets there, but each has 3 sub-channels. With 2 regular tuners she can record all 6 channels. Besides, I have never liked the idea of the HDHR's eating up my networks bandwidth and slowing down the other network traffic.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
jpasher
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by jpasher »

wesnewell wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:53 pm
Just to clarify, they can only record one virtual channel per tuner? IOW's they could only record one of these channels per tuner, 8_1, 8_2, 8_3. and 8_4, which are all on the same real channel 9 here. With a regular tuner one can record all of these at the same time with just 1 tuner.
Correct. The sub-channels are each considered a unique channel. It doesn't support any sort of post-demuxing of the stream. Each tuner is added to MythTV as a single, individual source. The nice thing is that you can have as many HDHR receivers as you want based upon your simultaneous watching needs, although I'm not sure how far you can go before you need more than one antenna.

Bandwidth-wise, it's really not a huge bandwidth hog. If you have a gigabit network (real cheap nowadays for the home network), it really shouldn't have any trouble. When I used the Prime, I want to say the typical HD channel transferred at around 10-12 Mbps. I had no problem recording three HD channels at a time. For my Quatro, I've never needed to record many HD channels simultaneously, so it uses even less. As long as your backend isn't doing a bunch of other things over the network, you're unlikely to have much trouble. It won't affect traffic for other devices that are not talking with the backend.
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

With almost all stations these days having multiple sub channels, it makes the hdhr pretty much worthless in my book and certainly not an option I'd consider. For my cousin who only gets 2 stations with a total of 7 sub channels as I found out it would be very cost prohibiuted. She'd need 2 quad hdhr's to record all channels compared to just 2 $10 pcie tuners. Turns out they aren't a very good option at all imo. Certainly not one I'd recommend.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
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kmdewaal
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by kmdewaal »

I would expect the so-called multirec feature, recording more than one program from one transport stream multiplex using one physical tuner, to work also for ATSC HDHomeRun tuners. It does work for European DVB HDHomeRun tuners. Also, as far as I understand the software there is no difference made between PCIe bus tuners and HDHomeRun tuners in this respect. So, in my understanding, to receive 2 stations with 7 sub channels simultaneously you would use two of the four tuners of a HDHomeRun.
wesnewell
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Re: New ATSC tuners

Post by wesnewell »

Will it, or won't it? Since I don't have an hdhr, I can't test it. I have tested recording 5 sub channels with 1 of my internal tuners and it works fine. The most shows I've recorded at once was 12 or 13 iirc. But that was just for testing. It worked fine.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
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