HDHomeRun Prime - Spectrum cable - DVR

Chat with other TGB members about whatever is on your mind.
Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

HDHomeRun Prime - Spectrum cable - DVR

#1

Post by Mountain » Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:39 am

Hello,
Been with WMC since XP. My Win7 computer is held together with chewing gum, duct tape, and bailing wire. It uses a pair of HDHomeRun Prime 3's (6 tuners in total). I just got set up with EPG123 to deal with the current channel guide problem. But I need to figure out what is next.
I'd been hoping for Google Fiber in Austin to save me, but it's not going to happen.

Need to watch a lot of DRM and Encrypted channels. My wife watches a lot of TV on a lot of channels. And we've got to be able to get sports on channels like the BigTen Network. We've also got HBO, Cinemax, Starz, The Movie Channel, etc.
We use the Harmony Remote to control the WMC, TV, Receiver, Playstation, Amazon Fire Stick 4K, and everything else in the TV area.

Can someone tell me the best, easiest solution for watching all that crap? The Spectrum STB is total garbage. We use one for the TV in the bedroom is backup. So we already know it won't suffice for us in the main TV room.
Can someone confirm if HDHomeRun still doesn't let you DVR protected channels? Spectrum seems to protect just about everything.

What will work? And pass the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)? Emby? SilliconDust DVR? Plex?
Or do we need to get a Tivo? If it has to be a Tivo, then it has to be a Tivo. What one should we get? Can you give me a headsup on what we'll lose with a Tivo compared to what we have with the WMC today?
And does this mean that in addition to paying the crazy prices for Spectrum (we need to get their top tier to get that stupid BigTen Network channel) that we'll also need to buy the Tivo hardware and a Tivo subscription? The Tivo subscription doesn't come with channels or service, right? I'm a little unclear.

It seems like the answers to these questions change with time. And a lot of the threads I've read on this stuff is outdated. I was hoping for someone to help with the current take.

Thanks in advance,
Mountain

User avatar
UCBearcat

Posts: 249
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:08 am
Location: Cincinnati

HTPC Specs: Show details

#2

Post by UCBearcat » Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:57 am

We were in the same situation as you. Spectrum service area - watching a lot of sports - and the wife watching a ton of garbage TV from different channels. The Media Center PC was aging at 8 years old. The XB360 extenders equally as old, etc. etc.

I'll get to the point - we went with TiVo. I pulled the Cable Card out of our HDHR Prime and paired it to the new TiVo box we bought a couple months ago.
We opted to buy the newest TiVo box offering - the TiVo Edge. This unit was just released in Fall 2019, so it is truly their newest DVR box. In addition to the TiVo Edge, we picked up a pair of TiVo Mini VOX extenders (on sale around black Friday) to round out a whole home DVR solution.

The price of entry is a hard pill to swallow, as you'll be spending a chunk of change for the Edge and any extenders, assuming you want/need them.
Regarding the TiVo subscription - basically, you're paying for their service, which mainly includes support and updated guide data. You have 2 options. Pay as you go, or "All-In" which is formerly known as Lifetime subscription.
If you do the pay as you go route, you can expect to pay about 150 bucks/year, for as long as you want the TiVo to work. If you go "All-In," it's around 550 bucks - one time fee. It breaks down to about 3.5 years of annual subscription to hit that price All-In - after that, its all gravy. If you ever decide to ditch TiVo and re-sell it, you'll get more money with the all-in subscription attached to the Unit. From my understanding, having the All-In attached to the unit makes it more valuable on the second-hand market.
One additional difference in annual subscription vs all-in: With subscription service, they offer a bit of a "warranty." Basically, if the unit dies, you give them like 50 bucks or something like that, and they send you another one. With All-In, they don't offer that service.

From my readings on the Tivo Community Forum, you can pick up the previous TiVo (BOLT) for much less than the Edge. Be wary, as the Bolt has a bit of a sketchy track record. Aside from its dumb curvy design, many said it was a little underpowered and a bit loud.

We're a couple months in with the Edge and Mini VOX extenders, and we've been pretty happy so far. It can do most anything WMC could do from a DVR standpoint, and just as well. You'll just have to learn a few new button presses, and learn the idiosyncrasies of a new interface.

This is just our experience going from WMC to TiVo, so take it for what it's worth. Hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#3

Post by Mountain » Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:44 pm

UCBearcat,
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer. It is the exact kind of information I was hoping for. I've also done a lot of reading over the weekend since I wrote this post and we're doing a trial of Hulu LiveTV+. We put that on both of the Amazone Fire sticks attatched to the TVs. Even at the highest tier of Hulu+ with addons like premium to skip channels, the DVR upgrade (4x more storage and commercial skip), HBO, etc, it is about $1,200 less per year less than Spectrum Gold. We've only been using Hulu for about a day. But it seems like you don't really need the DVR because its more of a Video On Demand service. I had my wife sit down and do an analysis of the channels she wants to watch all her crap TV, plus sports. Like Olympic channel, big ten, CBS Sports, etc. It looks like Hulu covers most of it. And I guess we could get a $20 subscription for all the A&E stuff. So, we're curious to see if Hulu with Premium LiveTV+ will do it for us. The streams are supposedly in 4K. And I noticed we did have surround sound. That's important to me since I watch mostly movies. We watched the superbowl on it yesterday. I did notice quite a bit of slight pixelation. It was really obvious on the graphics that showed the scores and such.
So Hulu it's definitely a trade off. In channels and quality. We'll see over the next week during the trial if it is "good enough". Maybe watching something other than superbowl will provide a clearer 4K experience.

And if its not, I've landed exactly where you did. It'll be a Tivo Edge with Cable (6 tuners). I understand the Bolt doesn't do 4K, anyway? Plus all the drawbacks you mentioned. I think after this week's Hulu trial I'll go ahead and order an Edge and see how it goes with a 1 month subscription. It looks like Tivo has a 30 day money back guarantee.
I still haven't researched if it is better to purchase directly from Tivo or go through an authorized reseller like weaknees.com. I understand weakness.com specializes in selling Tivo's with storage upgrades they perform. I wouldn't need that service. The regular, factory 2 TB will suffice.

Thanks a lot for your insights. Greatly appreciated.
Mountain

dab2kab

Posts: 46
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:03 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#4

Post by dab2kab » Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:15 am

As far as i understand things, you arent getting surround sound or 4k on hulu live. As far as i know, no live tv streaming services offer that for live tv. In fact, unless you are using an apple tv or xbox one, your live tv will only be 720p with hulu live(although to be fair, many broadcast channels still max out at 720p no matter how they are received...like the superbowl on fox...or anything on abc). Generally, only hulus original programming on demand supports 4k or surround sound. If you want surround sound on live cable channels, youll need to stick with actual cable.

https://help.hulu.com/s/article/sound-q ... uage=en_US

https://help.hulu.com/s/article/video-q ... uage=en_US

adam1991

Posts: 2893
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:31 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#5

Post by adam1991 » Tue Feb 04, 2020 12:42 pm

why does there have to be a "next"?

If you don't trust your hardware, acquire new hardware and put 7MC on it and move on.

Someone here has three Ceton extenders for sale, cheap. That solves the XBox issue (loud, space hungry, power hungry).

You could go years longer on 7MC. YEARS longer.

And then you own your recordings--they won't just vanish one day because reasons. And talk about saving money. Wow.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#6

Post by Mountain » Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:41 pm

dab2kab,
That's interesting. I swear we were getting surround sound when live streaming the super bowl through Hulu on the Fire TV Stick 4K plugged into my TV. Which then uses optical out to my AVR (set to Dolby for TV and DTS for some movies).
I could hear the crowd in the rears. Announcers were only coming in via the center channel. Noise on the field seemed to come in stereo through the fronts.

adam1991,
The hardware is solid, but the OS install is not. I've long ago had to stop patching Win7 because one patch of them broke some aspect of WMC. And I tried uninstalling it and marking the KB hidden, but then it showed up in the cumulative patch.
The integration with smoothly launching saved BluRay doesn't work anymore. It has a problem with the MBR and any attempt to fix it by cloning onto a properly prepared disk fails. The only thing I can do is completely clone the entire disk to put it on fresh. But the MBR issue remains. Plus, the amount of vulnerabilities is mounting for Win7. And I'm not going to run a Win10 and Win7 computer both in my TV cabinet. Its time to retire it for multiple reasons. While I appreciate your perspective, it's even more complicated than what I've tried to explain here.

adam1991

Posts: 2893
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:31 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#7

Post by adam1991 » Wed Feb 05, 2020 1:15 am

I would suggest that asking Win7 to do one thing--WMC--that it does better than anything on the market is still well worth it.

Other things you want to do, you want to do on a different computer for whatever reason. That's fine.

Me, I run 7MC in a remote area and use extenders to view the programming on various TVs in the house. There's no more PC in my TV cabinet, not for awhile now. And the rest of what I want to do is now handled by commercial streaming devices (Fire TV, Roku) talking to various servers--some I own, others are commercial streaming services. My TV cabinet is pretty bare anymore. And quiet. And cool.

I think you're finding that for a DVR, you won't find anything better than WMC--which led me to suggest simply rebuilding on new hardware and letting 7MC soldier on. Other things, you can do on other platforms.

Some tools turn out to be unitaskers no matter how hard you try otherwise.

dab2kab

Posts: 46
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:03 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#8

Post by dab2kab » Wed Feb 05, 2020 1:32 am

My guess is your av receiver is taking the stereo and running it through the prologic decoder and creating simulated surround sound, which isnt the same as the real thing but can sound quite good. Many TV's can't even pass a surround sound signal over optical from a Device plugged into an HDMI port even if Hulu had it, although some will do this.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#9

Post by Mountain » Wed Feb 05, 2020 3:47 pm

I had my AVR set to Dolby, not Dolby Pro Logic. Usually, if I have it set to Dolby and the source isn't giving me 5.1, I only get Stereo. Not sure what was going on. I guess better testing needed.

adam, it's time to give up on WMC on Win7. We need a PC on our main TV to perform a lot of quality of life functions. Viewing our Cameras, browsing the web with full keyboard, playing our library of over a thousand movies stored on a windows share, and any number of things. A full PC does those things better than any app built into a TV or Fire stick. So, whatever solution I go with, I'll be building Win10 on that hardware and keeping a PC in the mix. Win7 is simply not going to stay.

We did some more comparisons last night:

+1 Hulu (and netflix, amazon prime, etc)
Play Quality is better on streaming services. The picture is crisper. The problem with Spectrum Cable in our area is the PQ is poor. Pixelation / macroblocking. They're compressing it so much... trying to get so many channels on the available bandwidth. Which seems surprising because almost every channel is already utilizing SDV here. So, we both remark how much nicer the streamed content looks over the Spectrum content. We observe this when comparing on both the HTCP (formerly original 1st gen Ceton tuners and now HDHomeRun tuners) and the Spectrum-provided STB (an Arris DCX3600-M).

+1 Spectrum
Commercial skipping. For the Hulu trial, I even opted in for the "Premium" option which costs $6 more. This is to enable commercial skipping. It does on some content, not others. The biggest advantage on this front is when you're watching a show that hasn't finished yet. We will commonly start a basketball game, football game, movie, etc a half hour or hour after it begins. With the intention of being able to skip through commercials. Lets say it's a three hour long football game. And you start watching it 1 hour into the game. Last night, it was because we got home late from work. On Hulu, even though we were time shifted an hour, the basketball game was still going, so we could not skip commercials. My wife got pretty frustrated and broke our agreement to not use cable at all this week during our Hulu eval. She switched over to cable TV to watch the rest of the game so she could skip through the commercials. And finished the game before she wanted to get ready for bed.

Tradeoffs in everything. Still haven't decided which is best for us. Just learning the facets so we can make a decision.

Embiggens

Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Aug 07, 2011 3:29 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#10

Post by Embiggens » Wed Feb 05, 2020 3:55 pm

Have you looked at youtubetv? Time shifting and sports-viewing experience is pretty good. It doesn't have automatic ad-skipping (is that what Hulu has?), but 15 second skip with thumbnails makes it pretty quick.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#11

Post by Mountain » Thu Feb 06, 2020 7:07 am

We did. We considered evaluating both yttv and hulu. We compared the side-by-side list of channels the two services offered and yttv was missing a few more of the channels we watch more frequently. Hulu was only really missing A&E, and we can pick that up separately if needed.

jec6613

Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 8:45 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#12

Post by jec6613 » Mon Feb 10, 2020 12:32 am

I'm in the same boat, although with Optimum and Windows 8.1. Currently since extender support is broken when running in an AD environment as of last year, I have a few old machines running Windows 8.1, and boy is the upkeep getting tiring. After working like a champ from Windows XP MCE 2002 through today, about 16-ish years later from me adopting MCE, the last two years have been hell on the upkeep. I've had to:

1) Pull out a couple of old desktops to serve as MCE boxes when the extenders died in AD.
2) Replace video cards, since PlayReady breaks if the video driver is too old.
3) Test every patch every month.

And no, although I have the infrastructure to stop patching, actually stopping is not a possibility (see: AD troubles).

And even then, only two pieces of functionality still work since last month broke the music library with security patches: Recorded/Live TV, and My Moves for watching movies. This from 5 years ago when all of my streaming services, TV, and media library was available with a single device, which my wife fell in love with. Today, I use a Niles system for music, and a Roku for streaming, and MCE for a movie library and TV. And, technically, I have an escape plan for the movie library via Chameleon Media Center on a slimline PC (probably a NUC). A total mess, as things go.

Besides the lackluster experience with streaming TV services I've tried so far, none of them offer all of the channels we watch, so we would need at least two. Two different live TV interfaces = no-go, from both cost and SAF. I do actually like the lineup I get from Optimum and the quality is OK enough, but looking around I see only TiVO as my choice for DRM TV when the MCE finally dies sometime in the near future.

Of course, I'd love if I could just use the Silicondust DVR service - but their target date of 2019 has come and gone for that, so I'm not holding out much hope.

As it stands I think I can eek another year out of 8.1, and have enough spare hardware this shouldn't be an issue for now, and a lot of single point features such as EPG123 I handle via a VM so I'm not dependent on any single piece of hardware, but I know its demise is imminent.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#13

Post by Mountain » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:52 am

Yes, very similar. I disjoined my HTPC from my AD Domain years ago and just rely on mapped drives with pass-through authentication to my windows file server. And local account on the HTPC.
I get some control with patching with a simple implementation of WSUS here. But that basically just means not approving any W7 patches at all. Because I've been burned too many times by random patches breaking something in MCE, MyMovies, or one other things I have in the mix. It gets so that I'm so damn worried about this PC breaking....and making my wife angry in the process. That, and every so many months something critical goes wrong that requires hours of my time. Like figuring out what to do for a channel guide. Researching all the alternatives and then settling on EPG123.
I fear by the time Silicondust figure out how to fully implement DVR for DRM content in the safe and legal way they want, that cablecards will basically be dead in the marketplace. Not only that, even watching liveTV through their app is pretty poor. It's not as good as Hulu or YTTV. So even if they get it working, it's no panacea for me.

I hope you can keep your 8.1 rocking along. For me, it just became too much and the channel guide was the last straw for me.
Tivo arriving Tuesday (with the knowledge that they have a 30 day buy-and-try type policy).

adam1991

Posts: 2893
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:31 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#14

Post by adam1991 » Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:45 am

Mountain wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:52 am That, and every so many months something critical goes wrong that requires hours of my time. Like figuring out what to do for a channel guide. Researching all the alternatives and then settling on EPG123.
????? Something of that level happens to you "every so many months"??

I've been running 7MC for 9 years now, and that's the ONLY "something going wrong" that I've had to address. And at that, it wasn't something "critical" as it happened; it was just something that eventually became obvious that it needed to be addressed, and I had all the time in the world to handle it.

Other than that, nothing. I think you're exaggerating here. Tell us what other "somethings critical" that have happened "every so many months" in your ownership of 7MC. I can't think of a single thing.

jec6613

Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 8:45 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#15

Post by jec6613 » Mon Feb 10, 2020 12:01 pm

adam1991 wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:45 am
Mountain wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:52 am That, and every so many months something critical goes wrong that requires hours of my time. Like figuring out what to do for a channel guide. Researching all the alternatives and then settling on EPG123.
????? Something of that level happens to you "every so many months"??

I've been running 7MC for 9 years now, and that's the ONLY "something going wrong" that I've had to address. And at that, it wasn't something "critical" as it happened; it was just something that eventually became obvious that it needed to be addressed, and I had all the time in the world to handle it.

Other than that, nothing. I think you're exaggerating here. Tell us what other "somethings critical" that have happened "every so many months" in your ownership of 7MC. I can't think of a single thing.
For me, the last few several hour long incidents:

- 2020-01 patches broke music library (specifically the video card handoff to nVidia drivers)
- 2019 October nVidia security patches, but didn't work right, had to registry edit
- 2019 June: Blu-Ray stopped working, needed to re-patch the blu-ray software, but initially the error was on the video driver side.
- 2019 February: Had to upgrade a video card because it got too old for PlayReady.
- 2018 November: XBox 360 extenders no longer playback due to RDP security update

And the list goes on, of course. 2017 and earlier I had basically zero issues, maybe every couple of years or when I wanted new capability, otherwise needed just normal patching... now, it's every few months. And I won't even get into tracking down the occasional hardware failure on the ancient hardware required to run it all.

adam1991

Posts: 2893
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:31 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#16

Post by adam1991 » Mon Feb 10, 2020 2:18 pm

ah. I turned off EVERY update mechanism long ago, because that was all inevitable. And the industry knows it:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voting_software.png

jec6613

Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 8:45 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#17

Post by jec6613 » Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:11 pm

adam1991 wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 2:18 pm ah. I turned off EVERY update mechanism long ago, because that was all inevitable. And the industry knows it:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voting_software.png
I'm in the industry and I know it. Which is why I patch. :)

adam1991

Posts: 2893
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:31 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#18

Post by adam1991 » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:16 am

Patching is simply rearranging the bugs.

Pick the bug arrangement you like, and stick with it.

Mountain

Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:21 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#19

Post by Mountain » Tue Feb 11, 2020 2:10 am

adam1991 wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:45 am Other than that, nothing. I think you're exaggerating here. Tell us what other "somethings critical" that have happened "every so many months" in your ownership of 7MC. I can't think of a single thing.
That seems like kind of an exhausting exercise. And based on your posture in this thread, it serves me no purpose or advantage to do so. I think you just want to argue with me about how I must be mismanaging my computer or your methods are superior. Just imagine that perhaps my configuration is a little more nuanced and complicated than your implementation and leave it at that.

I'm also in the industry. And I facepalm at people that think not updating an OS, applications, and drivers is safe. Just because something bad didn't happen to you in the past doesn't mean it won't happen to you in the future. You work for a large enough company with a large enough stable of computers, and you have good enough monitoring, you see all the crap out there. You see computers getting hit with zero day.

Advising me to lock my HTPC in some kind of statis and not allow it to contact the internet is not an option and does not meet my use-case or needs. It also doesn't protect the HTPC from vulnerabilities that can enter my network through other hosts such as phones, IOT devices, etc.

I'm not going to do a whole "do you know who I am" and give you my credentials. I don't have to prove anything, but I feel confident in my abilities. I know that for me, it's time to retire this platform. I don't really feel like it's my job to convince you of that.

unclebun

Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Jul 09, 2017 11:06 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#20

Post by unclebun » Tue Feb 11, 2020 5:01 am

With the exception of the XBox extender issue, it seems to me that all your problems relate to nvidia graphics cards and lousy drivers.

I can say that I have not experienced anything like that at all...but my HTPC uses AMD onboard (or more properly on-chip) graphics. And I let it do all updates. I do use Spectrum cable.

Post Reply