Adventures in getting a networked TV tuner to work
Posted: 2012-06-18 11:55pm
So, while I was away from home, I saw a HDHomeRun Prime on sale on Woot for $140 shipped. This was actually the second time I saw it on Woot, and it took me a bit to convince SWMBO to let me get it (promising that this time, the TV tuner would actually work). Showed up while I was gone, and so I got to play with it as soon as I got home.
I was apparently insufficiently versed in how cable cards work, and thought I could just rip the card from the cable box out, and plug it in to the tuner, and have it just work. Wrong. Cue call to the cable company to get them to replace the cable box. Apparently they're paired at the factory, and removing it just makes it not work. Can't be repaired short of sending it back. Oops. Cable guy claimed that they just spontaenously unpair sometimes, and just gave us a new one, identical to the old one.
So we've got cable working again... but no working tuner. I mean, it can get the free stuff, but so would the other tuners I've bought over the past 2 years. Kinda lame. So I still need to get a cable card. Go to the cable office, and pick one up. Pretty easy, just give some identifying details, walk out with a cable card, after signing for it. No case, oddly enough, just the bare card.
Go home, search for a 2-way coax splitter, and more coax cables. It's quickly becoming a rats nest of cabling behind the facade of my entertainment center. I stick the card into the device, call the activation line. Tech has me pull the card and reinsert it at some point, after which I can't hit the HDHR's webpage. I'm mystified, but I have to leave for work, so I hang up on the tech. Right before I leave, epiphany: check the network cable. It managed to not latch, and came loose when I pulled the card. Card works!
Except I don't get all the channels. Cableco uses SDV to deliver more channels than can actually be watched on the local loop at once. Trek back to the cable office. Get what's called a tuning adapter. It plugs into the tuner, and tells the head end that we want to watch channel X, so head end can put channel X on, and tell us what channel it's actually on, so tuner can tune in. Now, the tuner has an IP address, and I have a cable modem. So really, there shouldn't be a need for a tuning adapter, the tuner should be able to just request to a server that I get channel X. Apparently that's for the future though. In the meantime, I've got a tuning adapter that's as wide as my cable box, though not as deep or tall.
Search the house for a USB cable, and another coax. Tuning adapter requires a full sized B end on the cable. Who still uses a full sized B on their devices? Cable company. Everyone else uses the mini-B or micro-B. *sigh* Finally find one in the closets, wire up the tuning adapter in line with the tuner, and failure.
See, the tuning adapter couldn't actually manage to communicate to the head end, so it just kept blinking it lone LED at me. Another call to the activation help line clarified this, and resulted in a service call out. Before it actually came though, I had the brilliant idea of trying to move the set of boxes. It's a network tuner, after all. It shouldn't care especially much where in the network it gets placed, and may actually prefer being on a gig-E port. So I moved it. And it was happy. Success! Now I just need to get rid of all the channels I won't watch from the guide.
So, now I can watch live TV on my xbox360, instead of on my cable box, on the same TV. Err... yeah, lot of work for almost nothing, right? Well... I've got 3 tuner DVR functionality, so I can have stuff being recorded while I watch TV on a different channel. I can record up to 3 channels while watching a 4th using the cable box.
I was apparently insufficiently versed in how cable cards work, and thought I could just rip the card from the cable box out, and plug it in to the tuner, and have it just work. Wrong. Cue call to the cable company to get them to replace the cable box. Apparently they're paired at the factory, and removing it just makes it not work. Can't be repaired short of sending it back. Oops. Cable guy claimed that they just spontaenously unpair sometimes, and just gave us a new one, identical to the old one.
So we've got cable working again... but no working tuner. I mean, it can get the free stuff, but so would the other tuners I've bought over the past 2 years. Kinda lame. So I still need to get a cable card. Go to the cable office, and pick one up. Pretty easy, just give some identifying details, walk out with a cable card, after signing for it. No case, oddly enough, just the bare card.
Go home, search for a 2-way coax splitter, and more coax cables. It's quickly becoming a rats nest of cabling behind the facade of my entertainment center. I stick the card into the device, call the activation line. Tech has me pull the card and reinsert it at some point, after which I can't hit the HDHR's webpage. I'm mystified, but I have to leave for work, so I hang up on the tech. Right before I leave, epiphany: check the network cable. It managed to not latch, and came loose when I pulled the card. Card works!
Except I don't get all the channels. Cableco uses SDV to deliver more channels than can actually be watched on the local loop at once. Trek back to the cable office. Get what's called a tuning adapter. It plugs into the tuner, and tells the head end that we want to watch channel X, so head end can put channel X on, and tell us what channel it's actually on, so tuner can tune in. Now, the tuner has an IP address, and I have a cable modem. So really, there shouldn't be a need for a tuning adapter, the tuner should be able to just request to a server that I get channel X. Apparently that's for the future though. In the meantime, I've got a tuning adapter that's as wide as my cable box, though not as deep or tall.
Search the house for a USB cable, and another coax. Tuning adapter requires a full sized B end on the cable. Who still uses a full sized B on their devices? Cable company. Everyone else uses the mini-B or micro-B. *sigh* Finally find one in the closets, wire up the tuning adapter in line with the tuner, and failure.
See, the tuning adapter couldn't actually manage to communicate to the head end, so it just kept blinking it lone LED at me. Another call to the activation help line clarified this, and resulted in a service call out. Before it actually came though, I had the brilliant idea of trying to move the set of boxes. It's a network tuner, after all. It shouldn't care especially much where in the network it gets placed, and may actually prefer being on a gig-E port. So I moved it. And it was happy. Success! Now I just need to get rid of all the channels I won't watch from the guide.
So, now I can watch live TV on my xbox360, instead of on my cable box, on the same TV. Err... yeah, lot of work for almost nothing, right? Well... I've got 3 tuner DVR functionality, so I can have stuff being recorded while I watch TV on a different channel. I can record up to 3 channels while watching a 4th using the cable box.
