eek - of course I just bought “the now old version” CONNECT just last week…
There is an interesting callout on the page that the device is 4K ready. Anyone have any idea what that means? From what I understand ATSC 3.0 will support 4K, but isn’t expected to rollout for over the air in the US for about 2 years.
I’ll wait until we start having OTA 4K before I swap hardware. I suspect that the Channels folks will be able to support 4K on the DVR and their apps.
There’s no OTA 4K broadcasts today. 4K would require HEVC, which would require ATSC 3.0, which requires OFDM. The CONNECT only does 8VSB, so you will need new tuner hardware when ATSC 3.0 goes live in a few years.
At https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-quatro/, it says “Our devices at 4K ready”. Wouldn’t this imply that it has the hardware to handle ATSC 3.0?
Yes it would imply that, but in the technical specs below it says 8-VSB and QAM64/256 only.
Acronym overload! And 4k broadcast TV is the dream! Can’t wait.
maybe the chip they are using is an SDR? in theory then a new firmware could enable OFDM… seems like a stretch though.
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Thanks @djcastaldo for getting clarification! The wording of the response is interesting “do not yet support ATSC or 4k”. I wonder if the gen5 hardware can support it via a firmware upgrade or if new hardware is needed.
In any case, without 4K OTA, I’ll just wait.
thanks for that, the SD forum thread on this is super confusing.
https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=113&t=66483
seems like they are saying that if someone put HEVC packets into an ATSC 1.0 stream it would work, but that would be counter to the ATSC 1.0 spec.
I assume this will work with Channels? If no one knows, I just ordered one - realized I missed a few recordings because 2 tuners just isn’t enough in the fall - so I can report back once it shows up!
I don’t know what I would do with just 2 tuners. There are days in the fall schedule and during sweeps that I have 9 tuners in use regularly. (now @ 4 primes and an extend). [Some stations also like to play with start/end times with strange times forcing you to “decide” which show to watch/record…]
Yes the Quatro will work with Channels.
I see on the SD website there is a UK version as well as ATSC. I’d like to get one (or 2!) to replace my 2 connects. Any idea if it registers itself as 2 virtual devices with 2 tuners each or one device with 4 tuners. I suspect the latter with only 1 IP address available.
Is there any tuner limit for channels or the DVR??
The UK version will be available later this year.
All Channels products work with as many hdhomeruns as you want. The 4-Tuner model has only one IP.
Mine just came in the mail today. I ordered it with the plan of giving one of my 2-tuner HDHRs to my mom, since I rarely use more than the 4 tuners that I already have. But right now I have it set up in Channels along with 2 2-tuner HDHRs, providing 8 tuners. Ridiculous. But it is nice. And I can have all 8 tuners working simultaneously without issue. This Quattro is very small; It has the footprint of an Apple TV, and is much thinner than previous versions. And it works great. I would recommend this one.
The form factor of the 4 tuner is great - great for stashing somewhere, which I assume most folks do. It works flawlessly with channels - was fun recording 4 things at once just for kicks.
I just ordered one so I could kick the tires on Channels again. Would love to free up a HDMI port.