HDHomeRun and Plex DVR

[Ian]

Up until recently, we used our old Sky box to watch freeview channels on TV (no longer have a Sky subscription). However, the dish or box gave up a few days back. I took a look at some freeview boxes to use with our normal aerial, but it seemed pretty expensive to get one with recording facilities and good features.

I stumbled across an interesting product called HDHomeRun on Amazon that is essentially a digital TV tuner that can send the data via IP to things on your home network. We use an NVIDIA shield box for most of our streaming (Netflix, Amazon), and there's an app available for it to watch live TV across the network. I've got this all set up and working well (review in a few weeks once I've tested it all!).

It appears that Plex have a beta DVR facility which is compatible with this tuner, which sounds like it'll do everything we want (i.e. record freeview channels to our NAS from an EPG). Has anyone used this feature? I've signed up to Plex for a month to test it out and see how it goes, but it would be great to get some tips from other Plex beta users if there are any out there.

 

[bootneck02]

Coor things have advanced since Redefusion and the little dial on the wall.

 

[Ian]

I've only used this for 24h, but I'm impressed so far. I don't know if I'm imagining it, but it appears that we're getting a sharper picture on some channels (Channel 4 HD for example) - BBC1/2/News HD seem about the same though.

Plex is all set up to record C4 News on a rolling 5 day basis, so we'll see how it works.