How has the reliability and stability of the HDhomerun been? I know the device has been around for a few years and is pretty well regarded but I'm curious if you have had any problems with it.
The device is very simple and requires zero maintenance or interaction from me. It tunes and provides the info to my EyeTV software. Oh and it has three LED lights on it: one to show power is on, the other two light up when one or both of the tuners are in use for recording. I've had it on full-time for the past 5 months or so and have had no problems. It just sits unobtrusively next to my ATV2 (it's about the same size as the hockey puck). Also the HDHR3 (little black) version is pretty new (only a year old or less, I think), though I haven't heard complaints about the previous versions either.
I'd love to cut my costs this way, I'm just not sure that I can do it with few enough hassles.
I spent a year of backburner-thinking about the best way to cut the cord and do it in a way that would be acceptable/convenient to my wife so that the solution would be sustainable. At first I thought the mac-mini + plex route would be best, since it would let me run EyeTV full screen. That probably is the best DVR experience, since EyeTV run full screen feels a lot like you are using a regular cable or sat company DVR. And then Plex provides all the online content you want with a nice user interface. But then you are paying $600 (more probably, since you'd want more than the 2GB base ram, and maybe you'd even prefer to have the upgraded CPU and GPU so that the mini would last longer as a home media center). And you'd need one for each TV.
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Get rid of everything, just get an internet connection.
Jailbreak your Apple TV and install XBMC. Download the free cable, icefilms, and navi-x plug-ins and you will have everthing you need. Every show ever aired (almost), every move, and a whole lot more.
I've done this too. Highly recommend, as it fills the gaps of shows that you don't get for free over the OTA broadcast or clear QAM signal.
The EyeTV paired with my clear QAM signal and the ATV2's works great for all my local-channel HD shows (which comprises 75% of our TV watching, I'd say). For everything else, I have jailbroken my ATV2, installed XBMC and the bluecop repository so I get Hulu for free without commercials as well as the "Free Cable" program that nicely streams TV shows from other cable network websites. That covers the Daily Show for me and Project Runway and some Food Network shows for my wife. A Netflix streaming subscription covers most of our other entertainment needs.
That said. . .
The experience of using XBMC on my ATV2 is not bad, but it's not as quick and responsive as the base ATV2 interface. As such, my wife tends to get frustrated when she wants to watch the daily show. There are a lot of "buffering" or "downloading" progress bars that go on when you're navigating around XBMC for streaming shows, and she often just hands me the remote to handle it. Don't get me wrong: it works great and is the main reason I gave up on the idea of getting a mac mini, since it makes cable shows available via Apple TV2, so no need to go to websites or do Plex streaming using an expensive mac mini. I'm just saying that, if we can get the show on our EyeTV-->iTunes-->ATV2 setup, that is always a better user interface experience than the XBMC on ATV2 route.
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One more thing. . .
I had been prepared to do all this EyeTV stuff just using our OTA antenna on the roof, which gets us the local networks in HD and a bunch of other foreign language channels I'll never watch (I'm in L.A.).
But then I heard about clear QAM: Apparently there is a law that says that cable-providers, if they are providing you broadband internet, have to provide at least the local channels over that same coax without a fee. I've also heard that the cable companies CAN put a terminator on your cable connection to scramble the extra basic cable channels so that you can only get the locals without paying. . . but that most of the time they just DON'T do that. I have Time Warner cable for our high speed internet, but I don't pay for TV service from them.
To test whether I could get more channels by using my Time Warner clear QAM channels instead of OTA antenna, all I did was plug the cable co-ax into my HDTV. I had it scan for channels, and found I got dozens of channels, including the SD and HD versions of all the broadcast networks, PBS, etc as well as Discovery HD and a few others. So now I use that signal to feed my HD Homerun and EyeTV. I pay $45/month for 10Mbps+ internet from Time Warner, but I also get more-or-less basic cable from them for free, as it turns out. With the EyeTV I don't pay a monthly fee for DVR usage, and if Time Warner ever changes its mind and somehow scrambles their signal to me, I'll just switch to OTA.
moral of the story:
If you have cable internet, and are not paying for TV, just go ahead and plug your co-ax into your TV and see what you get. Might solve a lot of your content worries.