Silicondust HDHomeRun CONNECT DUO Network DVB-T/T2 TV Tuner HDHR5-2DT(UK)

There are lots of reviews for the HDHomeRun, both good and bad. Most of the bad reviews seem to complain about issues that are outside of the control of the unit. To summarise, there are three issues that can influence the correct functions of the unit, and they are signal strength, network and software.Signal StrengthThe built-in tuners are quite sensitive but may not be as good as your TV. They need a good strong signal from your aerial. If you are in a weak signal area then consider getting an aerial amplifier to boost the signal.NetworkThe unit connects to your local network via an ethernet connection. Each TV channel can use up to 6Mbps of network capacity, so if your network is already congested you may run into trouble. It’s well recommended that you plug the HDHomeRun directly into your router for the best results.SoftwareThe quality of live video and/or recorded video does depend on the software you are using. There is free software available to download from the manufacturer and available for most platforms. This software will let you watch live TV for free but requires a subscription for recording TV. There is other compatible software available such as Plex and Emby. You can use more than one at the same time as the HDHomeRun unit controls the tuner allocations.I use Plex for my library at home and this has live TV and recording facilities. You do need a Plex Pass subscription to gain these functions but it’s well worth it. It has the facility to remove adverts from recordings as well which is nice. This works reasonably well but it’s not perfect every time. The quality of recording is good but it can get a few jagged edges on video now and then.Setting up the unit is easy. It only has three connections, a power socket, an RJ45 ethernet socket and a UK compatible aerial socket. Please note though, there is no pass through on the aerial socket which means you need an aerial splitter if you want to share the aerial with your TV.Overall, this is an easy to use system and is very much a plug in and forget box.

I've been fiddling around with a PC to act as a DVR for a long time. Since the sad demise of Windows Media Center, I've been looking at various options for TV playing and recording and have got precisely nowhere in finding anything that would suffice. I'd even tried Plex, but I found the length of time it took to tune channels was unacceptable.So, after discovering that Emby didn't suffer quite so badly in those stakes, but wouldn't work with my TV card setup, I bit the bullet and bought this tuner. It's a remarkably small device, smaller than the switch installed in my TV cabinet and definitely less unsightly and power hungry than the PC I was using. It was easy to set up, found all the channels quickly and was found and configured instantly by Emby.The picture quality is very good, there's no buffering issues and using Emby with it is a breeze. I'm now wondering why I bothered spending almost £170 on a TV card in the first place.It's not cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination. But the fact it just works, and works well, makes this a very worthwhile purchase if you're planning on ditching Sky or Virgin Media at any point.

UPDATE 18/6/20Well, ahem, it turns out my signal booster in the loft was duff. Signal strength for some of channels was 93% this then caused symbol quality to deteriorate causing image deterioration and blocky display.Needed to use hdhomerun config software for Linux to troubleshoot this.Replaced the booster and all is now good. Back to 4 stars.I think it does need a really good signal. My PC tuner card is much more forgiving.UPDATE 7/4/20Sadly the new unit I received is now playing up. If it records a film for example which would be around 2 hours long I find that in the latter half the signal it breaks up. I know it's nothing to do with signal strength. I believe the thing just overheats and can't cope. I will again have to send the thing back at my expense and be without live TV recording for 2 weeks and then what? Another gamble. Really fed up.UPDATE 22/1/20For a couple of weeks it was great.Then in the morning I would find it hadn't recorded anything and furthermore I could not tune into any channel.Unplug the box for a short time and plug in again and all would be well for 12 hours until it broke again.Support responded to my ticket within hours. They asked me to turn diagnostics on and re-tune.But then it could not find any of the 192 channels it found before (until I left it unplugged for several hours)They asked me to return it (at my expense) and said a replacement would be cross-shipped and has now dispatched.I'm loping off just one star because equipment can break and they have responded in all the right ways and quickly.I'm hoping this was a one-off and the replacement will be good - other people have told me these devices are normally rock solid.----------------------ORIGINAL 5* reviewI've been tinkering with media centers for years now and had settled on using SageTV my PC with a PCI quad tuner card keeping the PC turned on 24/7.I wanted to turn off the PC to save electricity get away from the very unstable windows OS and moved to a QNAP NAS running Emby and this HDHomerun quattro as tuning device.I have found the device really easy to setup, it has run flawlessly, has stayed coo,l and the picture and audio quality good.The (browser based) configuration and status screens are simple but good enough and I was delighted that I could disable channels I am not interested in.The device has met expectations and is only 4" x 4".I have not seen any of the issues that others have cited. My TV signal strength has always been good because I made sure its accurately pointed, I amplify it at the aerial, and don't split it downstream that sorted all the issues I used to have with digital TV signalsIf I could name a single improvement it might be for an RF out so you can daisy chain two HDHomeRuns together without splitting the signal (my PC tuner card has that ability). But four tuners is enough for me so its not a biggie.