SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME - Owner's Thread

[Scallica]

Did anyone pre-order the HDHR Prime 6-tuner? The shipping date was supposed to be today, but according to Newegg, it has been postponed until 7/22.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

What I like about this device is that it assigns network tuners dynamically, rather than statically, like the InfiniTV tuner.

[gofeet]

Ouch. Looks like it may have been pushed. With the weekend, it's just about the same release date as the Prime 3-tuner (I went for the 3). Don't have experience with pre-orders on Newegg, so I can't comment on how they are usually handled. Some companies may ship pre-orders early.

[LuckyDay]

The 3 tuner version is supposed to ship after the 6 tuner version. So if the 6 got held back, the 3 probably is also.

[richard1980]

What I like about this device is that it assigns network tuners dynamically, rather than statically, like the InfiniTV tuner.

I wonder if your opinion will change first time you miss a recording because another machine causes a tuner conflict?

[Scallica]

What I like about this device is that it assigns network tuners dynamically, rather than statically, like the InfiniTV tuner.

I wonder if your opinion will change first time you miss a recording because another machine causes a tuner conflict?

Good point. Although I am hoping they include a "reservation" feature, so I can statically assign one of the six tuners to a specific system.

[Scallica]

The release date has been postponed until 8/15

[richard1980]

Well that sucks. Is Hauppauge seriously going to beat SD to market? I think Hauppauge was shooting for the end of July.

[STC]

The release date has been postponed until 8/15

There seems to be some deja vous going on... Remember the behemoth Ceton thread over at WEC exploding each time the date got pushed back?!

[gpatlanta]

I remember that. I also recall a the time that there was a huge backlash of SD supporters saying that Ceton sucked and that SD was going to beat them to market...they said SD would never do this and if they posted a date it would be right... Funny how things play out sometimes as it has been about a year that Ceton has been on the market and many SD fans were predicting SD would beat Ceton to market after the initial delays. I'm sure the tuner will be good and this is likely a testament to how difficult cablecard is.

[STC]

Well that sucks. Is Hauppauge seriously going to beat SD to market? I think Hauppauge was shooting for the end of July.

I wonder what 'partnership' SD and Hauppauge have? Maybe SD sold rights to their tech?

[LuckyDay]

Well that sucks. Is Hauppauge seriously going to beat SD to market? I think Hauppauge was shooting for the end of July.

Looks like it. From the way the Hauppage techs are talking on their FB page comments, the units are pretty much ready to go as early as this week.

[EmirOfGroofunkistan]

glad I just canceled my preorder and went with the Ceton ... now that they're practically the same price.

[LuckyDay]

Also just canceled my HD Prime pre-order. My Ceton will be here tomorrow.

More tuners, reputable product, and similar price. SD took too long and they are going to pay for it.

[makryger]

Took them too many months to get to this point, but hurray for transparency! Even if there are bad parts, it shows us they are quality testing their product, and dealing with the issue.

[Scallica]

I received an order confirmation email this afternoon.

[richard1980]

As I understand it, the first batch didn't have the bad SDRAM parts....or did they?

[Scallica]

Below are pics of the HDHR Prime 6CC. The first two status lights on the left are for the network interfaces, the second two lights are for CableCards, and the remaining six lights are for the tuners. Overall, the installation procedure is very much the same as the regular HDHR. The Prime 6CC has a nice sleek design. The picture quality and sound quality is great. If you look at the SD forum, there are lots of users having various issues. However, firmware updates have been very frequent.

[twiseva]

Well, I have my HDHR Prime 3 and its all working well. Ordered the cable card from Verizon as soon as it was shipped and that came very quickly. Install procedure was very simple. Longest parts were waiting for cable card to activate (had to use Verizon's web page -- the autoactivation did not seem to work) and retuning 7MC to the new tuners. I had a HDHR 2 tuner for sometime and this has basically the same interface with a few additional tabs related to cable card features. Actually I noticed that there was not a specifc s/w install for this HDHR so I guess it covers them all.

Note: When activating the cable card you need the host id and data numbers -- They can be found in the HDHR admin interface. This is all outlined in SD's support pages (not on quick start that came in the box).

So far so good -- still playing with it and cleaning up channels I do not subscribe to -- and of course removing those SD duplicates so al lI get is HD

My PC hits about 20% CPU while recording 2 channels of HD goodness but all other resource are hardly taxed -- netwrok (GB), disk, memory, ....

Shipping STB back to Verizon after the weekend.

W00t!

[Jim Fox]

I'd like to add my experience with the HD Homerun Prime, FIOS and Cable Card. This is a long post, so if you don’t need the details, I’ll spare you reading the entire thing by saying the whole experience went smoothly without one hitch and I’m now enjoying three channels of HD goodness. If you’re thinking about doing the same thing yourself and you want the details, read-on.

I pre-ordered the HD Prime and it arrived the week after Silicon Dust announced the shipments to New Egg had begun.

When the new unit arrived from New Egg and before I ordered the Cable Card, I uninstalled the standard HD Homerun that I had been using for about a year and installed the three tuner HD Prime in its place. The HD Homerun Prime powered, up but only two of the 5 green lights came on. When I turned the computer on and opened the software that had come with the first 2 tuner HD Homerun, it said that there was a software update. I clicked on the update and the new software downloaded and installed. After re-booting, the new software recognized the three tuners and the set-up process began. Because I didn't have the Cable Card installed, I had to select Digital Cable instead of Cable Card. I then let the software scan for channels which took about 5 minutes. After accepting the new line up I ran the small TV viewing program that comes with the Silicon Dust software. It displayed the full line-up names and numbers of hundreds of channels, but I could only see the picture and sound of the same unscrambled channels that I got on the old 2 tuner HD Homerun, but now they were on 3 tuners.

The next day I called Verizon and after mentioning the term Cable Card I was kicked up a couple of levels of Customer Service. The fellow I got switched to was completely aware of what a Cable Card was and without asking told me that the only cards they had available were the M multiple tuner style and they rented for $4 per month. On his own, his next question was whether or not I felt that I could install the card myself. When I said yes, he then said that he could see that I had two set-top boxes and asked if I wanted to return any of them. I told him I wanted to return both and he said he'd send a pre-paid UPS label along with the M-card, so the set-top boxes could be returned when I was ready. All in all it was a quick professional and positive experience.

The Card arrived in 3 days and I unplugged the HD Homerun Prime tuner from the power brick to install it. When I plugged the power back in, the unit did a boot-up sequence and after about 10 seconds all five LED came on green. I ran the Silicon Dust set-up program again and this time selected the Cable Card tab at the appropriate time. I still of course could only watch unscrambled channels because the Cable Card had not been authorized.

I ran the Windows Media Center set-up program again and it saw the Cable Card and eventually displayed a page that had a phone number for me to call at Verizon FIOS. After that phone number, it displayed a bunch of ID and Activation numbers that it said I would have to give to the person at Verizon. I dialed the number and again was kicked up a couple of levels when I mentioned Cable Card activation. The fellow knew what Cable Card activation required, but he asked for a number -I think it was called a POD number- that was not on the list. I asked him if he thought I had a Tivo and he said yes. That number was just for Tivos. When I said my Cable Card was installed into a network tuner for Windows Media Center, he said he had heard about Media Center but had not activated a card for it yet. I said it was my first time too, so we'd both learn something. He asked for the numbers I did have on my computer's screen and entered those. He said he could see my Cable Card on his screen and the activation process would take about 5 minutes. After that time passed, he said his screen showed the Card was active and working properly. He asked if I wanted him to stay on the line as I finished going through the Media Center set-up, but I said that as long as he saw that the card was authorized and working, I would rather continue myself. He gave me a report number to use if I needed any further help and said he was happy that he had now gone through the Media Center - Cable Card set-up process. All in all, I'd give Verizon top marks for the experience I had getting the card and activating it.

I ran the Windows Media Center set-up program the rest of the way through and wound up with hundreds of channels that I could see and others that I haven't subscribed to as black screens. As TWISEVA said in the post before me, "So far so good -- still playing with it and cleaning up channels I do not subscribe to". I may have missed it, but I really wish Media Center had an easier way of deleting unwatched and unsubscribed channels rather, than clearing them one at a time.

I now have crystal clear HD pictures and the free Media Center Channel guide makes recording or viewing them a breeze. My main Home Theater PC is over-kill (8 core Intel i7, HDD and 1 TB Disc drive, etc) for Media Center, so viewing 1 HD recording while recording 3 more doesn't make it break a sweat. All 5 computers on my home network can see and record the channels. Four of them are wired desktops, but one of them is an older laptop that accesses the network wirelessly. That one chokes a bit on HD live channels, so it's better to watch the SD versions on those channels to get a smooth picture. The four other PCs can also see the programs recorded on the TB Hard-drive of the main HTPC, so they don't have to record on their smaller hard-drives. I'm VERY happy with the Silicon Dust HD Prime Tuner, the Cable Card and the Verizon Cable-Card activation process. I highly encourage others to give it a try.

[lovemyram4x4]

So Jim did FiOS actually send you the pre-paid UPS labels? Just curious as I tried returning my STBs from online a few times then over the phone, ending paying several hundred dollars in extra rental fees and then after over 1hr on the phone w/ them for the second time for them to say they can't send me a label and to just take the STBs to a UPS store and they'll send them back for me. They also told me that I'd get credited back all my rental fees from the time that I disconnected them(this also ended up being lie just like them saying they'd send something to return them the first few times) they stopped charging me for the day UPS delivered the boxes to them.

If it wasn't for the fact that they give me copy freely on every channel and have unbeatable internet service(well pretty much everything about their network) I would have dropped them.