Home Theatre/TV: SiliconDust HD HomeRun DVB-T Network Decoder – Review – 77
Since the launch of Freeview digital terrestrial TV in New Zealand, decoders have been appearing on the market with increasing frequency, but they all do the same thing – take a signal from your aerial and feed it to your TV.
You might think there isn’t much scope for variation, but you’d be wrong. The HD HomeRun takes an ingenious approach to HDTV and is designed with a different mindset: it takes a DVB-T signal and pushes it out over a network.
The unit itself is very small and can easily be tucked away, but make sure that there is both a network connection and an aerial connection nearby. Apart from the network port, the dual antenna ports and the few lights on the front, there is not much to the HomeRun.
However, you need to have a PC (or Mac) to watch TV, which may be the biggest limiting factor. But with so many households having at least one computer, this shouldn’t be a problem.
In use I had a great experience but there where a few niggling issues. I couldn’t get a decent picture over a wireless connection but two other PCs I tried worked great. Picture quality was excellent and recorded TV played back just as well.
I would definitely recommend this unit, especially to those households with multiple PCs that can double as TV screens.
TIM ANDERSON
Tech Specs
HD HomeRun
DVB-T Network Decoder
$349
- DVB-T (QAM64/16/QPSK)
- DVB-C (QAM256/128/64 Annex A/C)
- 8/7/6 MHz channel bandwidth (multi-country operation).
- IR receiver (signal PC with a standard remote control)
- 100baseTX high-speed network
Compatible With: Windows Media Center – MCE 2005 (32/64-bit), Vista WMC (32/64-bit), WMC TV Pack (32/64-bit), Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
MediaPortal – DVR for Windows, GB-PVR – DVR for Windows, VLC – multi-platform media viewer
Verdict
- A great approach for reviewing digital TV that is perfect for today’s connected households
Contact
This Review is from Tone Issue #77.
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