SiliconDust HDHomeRun HDHR5-2US Connect Duo Dual Tuner

TL;DR: Amazing cord cutting TV solution provided you live in an area that can receive good antenna signal. One device, one antenna to provide TV across the entire home. Pros -Extremely simple setup -One device can provide channels to several TV’s across the a home -HD local channels (dependent on location) -No lag or channel disruption with a whole home mesh network -Apps across all devices including Smart TV’s, streaming devices (Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Fire TV, etc.) Mac/Windows. -Flawlessly compatible with Plex Pass (Lifetime purchase and monthly subscribers) -Can get TV in rooms with no antenna signal since it streams on internal network Cons -Native app works very well but the navigation is bad After a very bad experience with my cable company, I have decided to pull the plug and become an official cable cutter. I live in a metro area of Arizona so I know I get great HD antenna service at my home. I have one antenna and was looking to purchase a few more as I have 5 TV’s in my home. I started looking up solutions for whole home antenna service and I stumbled across the HDHomeRun. There are several different models of the HDHomeRun, some of which include 2 simultaneous streams and some that have 4. Others have Hard drives with DVR capabilities (extra subscription cost required) and one that even allows you to connect a paid cable provider which would allow you to have one cable unit to provide cable across several TV’s instead of renting multiple cable receivers. I chose the HDHR5-4US Connect Quatro 4 Channel Tuner because I have a home that often runs 2-4 TV’s at a given time and I am not interested in DVR. Once I received the unit, setup was a breeze just as everyone else says. The box includes everything you need, the tuner, power cable, and CAT5e Ethernet cable to connect to your modem/router. I have a mesh network where all of my satellite units have their own Ethernet ports so I chose the room that had the best window access to the antenna towers. There are several websites you can go to which can help you learn what channels you should expect to get and where the towers are located. Once I connected my HDHomeRun to my router and power, I let it fully power on(only solid green light on the back) and then went to my computer to do the final setup. You go to a website specified in the instructions, scan for channels, then download the app to view. It is that easy! Once you open the app, as longs it is running on the same network as your HDHomeRun, TV will start playing! The native app is less than desirable. It is clunky and hard to navigate but once the channel is playing, it works very well. I personally do not use the native app. I use Plex as I have a Plex server and am a paid Plex Pass subscriber. Setup on Plex was also very easy, but I will not go into detail as this review is not for Plex. There are also other third party apps you can download/purchase if desired. After a few weeks of using the HDHomeRun exclusively, I am very happy o say that cancelling cable has never been easier. Yes you may only get a small handful of channels vs hundreds from the cable company, but depending on your needs, this product works excellent for getting TV across an entire home without the need of several antennas. Plus if you only get antenna reception in one room, you can still get good reception across an entire home including a basement that normally would not have access to TV signal since it streams over in home router equipment. Highly recommended for cable cutters who want local TV.

Got this to stream live TV through Plex and can't believe how easy it was to get up and running. I was expecting some configuration and setup but it was entirely plug and play - attached my antenna, plugged the network cable into my switch, created a DHCP reservation for the device so its IP address won't change, and added it as a tuner to Plex by its reserved IP. Seconds later I had live streaming TV! While this is not a review of Plex, there are a couple things you should know if you are planning on buying this to use with Plex: 1. You need a Plex Pass for certain features, for example casting live TV to a Chromecast. 2. Casting to a Chromecast device is pretty problematic in the current version of Plex (stream ends unexpectedly, sometimes I'll get "stuck" in a show in Live TV mode where the show ends and Plex fails to continue the stream as the next show begins, etc.) 3. Casting live TV to a Chromecast (and I think just playing it through a web browser like Chrome) causes Plex to do a significant amount of transcoding so ensure your Plex server has adequate CPU / memory. But, if you don't have Chromecast devices, it's probably fine. I have 2 TVs with Amazon FireTV Sticks, both of these can stream live TV through Plex for hours on end with no issue and perfect 1080i video quality. If you're just planning on using the HD Home Run app, it works well enough for streaming live TV on your mobile devices. There's no cast option in the native app so it's useless for me to use on my TVs with Chromecasts attached, but the few times I fired up the app, video and audio quality were fine.

I could not decide on either the Duo or Quatro version, but ended up with the Duo. As there are only two of us who use it, I did not see much sense in getting the Quatro. If I had to do it over again, perhaps I might. But the way these tuners work, adding more tuners is only a matter of getting another Duo...or Quatro. This device appears as another "server" on your network. And with that in mind, I would say that it is one of the easiest devices I have ever used on the network. I essentially just plugged everything in (power supply, antenna coax cable, Ethernet cable), installed the applications on the computer, and it all just worked. I did have to scan for channels, which is done through a setup utility. But beyond that, the hardware has worked perfectly. As for the apps themselves, it's a mixed bag. I actually have had the best luck using the HDHomeRun app for viewing, and the DVR subscription for $35/year was worth it. Is their app perfect? No, as the use interface could use a little more work. But as for reliability, it seems to work the best of anything I've tried. The only place where I don't get good results is on the Nexus Player--I have minimal apps loaded on it, and the signal strength from the WiFi is nearly at maximum, yet it has a lot of dropouts. (I do not get the dropouts when using VLC to play back MKV files stored on my NAS.) The app works fine on my older Nexus 7 tablet under weaker signal conditions, so, go figure! It works smooth as buttah on my Windows 10 setup as well as the Pixel XL. For DVR, I had tried Plex, but it was a colossal failure--it missed more than half the scheduled events, and the start and ending times it decided on would cut off one or both ends of the program. Playback was also full of glitches on any device I tried. So no, I don't recommend trying it with Plex. The Nexus Player also has its own built in "tuner" feature (with Android 8.0), but like the HDHomeRun app, it experienced too many dropouts to make it usable. Emby I have not yet tried, but I may do so just out of curiosity. Overall though, the HDHomeRun is an excellent hardware product. The software side of things can be spotty, but all I can suggest is that you experiment, and also give their own apps a try, as they seem to work the best of anything I have tried thus far.

Should be called out as incompatible with Australians frequencies. Purchased a paper weight.

This was shipped to Australia, but does not work with Australian free to air TV. Fastway agreed to return for credit, minus a restocking fee, at my freight expense. Not happy. The fault here in not Silicon Dust, but the vendor and the product description on Amazon.

Ho scelto questo tuner per non buttare le vecchie TV che ho ... A settembre ci sarà il primo cambio nelle trasmissioni DTV per passare tutto alle nuove codifiche più efficienti e adatte alla qualità HD. Sulle TV più vecchie ho Amazon FireTV Stick: installando su quest'utlimo l'APP della SiliconDust (gratuita) ho ottenuto che senza decoder esterni sulle vecchie TV vedo la TV (tramite proprio HDHomeRun), Netflix, Disney+, RaiPlay, Chili, AppleTV ! Ho trasformato le vecchie TV in smartTV che si usano con un solo telecomando e saranno funzionanti anche dopo lo switchOff sia del 1 settembre 2021 sia quello di giugno 2022. L'installazione è facile se si seguono i semplici passi indicati nel foglietto incluso nella confezione (e se si leggono i messaggi sullo schermo). Nei prossimi giorni penso anche di "agganciarlo" a Plex per poter registrare qualche programma senza "bloccare" il sintonizzatore della smartTV principale ma, già così, lo trovo molto soddisfacente! Lo consiglio a tutti coloro che non vedono solo serie e film in streaming ed amano ancora usare la TV. Con HDHomeRun si ha una modalità di fruizione della TV tradizionale molto moderna e 2.0