I finally gave in and bought an HDHomeRun Prime. I'm on Comcast in Seattle WA with some sort of extended basic HD package (no premium channels), and got tired of not being able to record anything over channel 30.
I set up a clean R7.4 install (on a new disk, I'll probably ask for help exporting recordings from R6.01.01 to R7.4 later, if I can't figure it out) and got it working with my old hdhomerun.
Next, I hooked up the HDHR Prime and:
- assigned it a static IP address for dhcp, in my router
- downloaded and installed the windows software (setup, config, and quicktuner I think)
- ran hdhomerun setup, which updated the firmware
- browsed to the built-in webserver to get numbers ready for comcast (CableCARD Menu, -> CableCARD(tm) Pairing)
- took a very deep breath, and called Comcast
The automated system was worthless, but eventually I got to a human. I told him it was CableCARD activation, for basically a Tivo, and read back the values he asked for (which I found in that "CableCARD(tm) Pairing" screen on the hdhr prime's webserver.) He did some stuff remotely to the card, and then I did a scan in the HDHomeRun Config program, channels all showed up, and I spot checked several with Quick TV - they were fine. It took maybe 10 minutes in all. Not bad.
Getting it working with mythtv was (eventually) a lot easier than I expected, probably because LinHES is on 0.25 now.
First try: I added tuner-0, a schedules-direct cable source, and scanned for channels. It found gobs of channels, but whenever I tried to tune to one in live-tv, I was getting errors like this:
Code:
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145916-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: I TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:1029 (HandleStateChange) TVRec(3): Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145923-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: I TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:3495 (TuningCheckForHWChange) TVRec(3): HW Tuner: 3->3
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145929-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: E TVRecEvent dtvmultiplex.cpp:325 (ParseTuningParams) DTVMux: ParseTuningParams -- Unknown tuner type = 0x2000
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145935-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: E TVRecEvent dtvchannel.cpp:308 (SetChannelByString) DTVChan(1312C9B1-0): SetChannelByString(79-107): Failed to initialize multiplex options
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145923-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: I TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:3495 (TuningCheckForHWChange) TVRec(3): HW Tuner: 3->3
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145929-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: E TVRecEvent dtvmultiplex.cpp:325 (ParseTuningParams) DTVMux: ParseTuningParams -- Unknown tuner type = 0x2000
2012-09-03T16:20:08.145935-07:00 tv mythbackend[22130]: E TVRecEvent dtvchannel.cpp:308 (SetChannelByString) DTVChan(1312C9B1-0): SetChannelByString(79-107): Failed to initialize multiplex options
I banged my head on that for a while ("Unknown tuner type"? sheesh). Then finally tried following the instructions at the mythtv wiki page for hdhhomerun prime -- instead of scanning for channels, I used "Fetch channels from listings source." and.. like magic. Everything worked, and still does.
I wasn't sure how well my box (combined backend frontend) would handle multiple HD streams.. so for a test I started recording 3 HD channels simultaneously, and started watching one of them. CPU usage went to about 40%.
For the first time in several years I have a completely functional MythTV box again. I know I'm at the mercy of Comcast - and if history is any judge they will probably start messing with the copy flags and I'll see channels disappear, but for now everything is roses so I wanted to document it for posterity, and let folks know that the Prime works great on R7.4.
-John