I’m planning to get an ATV4k and an HDHomerun. I have only one TV (not 4k yet), will be doing OTA DVR recordings, and will be using all wired ethernet connections, no wireless. Will a Connect Duo suffice or would I be better off buying an Extend in this situation?
Thanks.
Better off with the newer generation CONNECT. There are very few use cases which require an EXTEND.
If you're going with wired connections all the way, there's no reason at all to spend the extra money on the Extend.
Great. I’ll get a Connect Duo HDHR5-2US which I think is the newest one. Thank you!
Duo is the 2-channel tuner. Quatro is the 4-channel, which you might consider.
We've had a ChannelMaster DVR+ for a few years. It has two tuners and it has happened, not often, but it has happened from time-to-time, that we ran out of tuners.
I went all wired, and am using an HDHOMERUN Quattro, with my 2012 iMac (with an Intel i7). I setup my shows to record on an external USB drive.
Everything works like a charm. Never had a single hiccup.
I heavily researched this question as well, and went with Connect just to see what would happen, and everything turned out fine.
I don’t think you will need the Extend.
I am using a Mac Mini 2011 Server with 2 EXTENDs and all works very smooth. I really wanted the hardware transcoding so as not to burden the server.
Are you transcoding everything you view and record at home, and what is the pro and con? I assume less data transferred and smaller file size, but lower quality image?
I have it set to HEAVY transcoding and have no complaints. Quality looks very good to me. More importantly my wife is happy with how things work and look.
I have 2 extends and find transcoding helps with wireless when I watch live tv on my iOS devices. Playback stays smooth even with wireless contention or the iOS device approaches the edge of my wireless network. I also use the extends transcoding on my DVR to reduce recording space. My Appletvs are hardwired and I don’t use transcoding for live tv with them.
Just to be clear, the Fire TV 4k stick can take the mpeg2 signals fine without the need to transcode. I am looking for a new network tuner that will feed both my fire stick and shield. (The shield now has a direct antenna connection)
The thing that makes me want to go wit the transcode is that the Fire TV recast transcodes (and I assume the tech heads at Amazon think that is better for the stick) and if I add another device that doesnt support MPEG2.
For new purchases we recommend the CONNECT over EXTEND. The CONNECT has a newer tuning chipset. And frankly, the transcoder in the EXTEND is not very good.
Many Thanks. Given the cost of the EXTEND, I could get a 4 tuner for the same $$.
I was thinking of buying an HDHR Extend with its MP4 transcoding to use through my personal VPN to the remote server location so I can add in the local channels from here to my guide, Live TV and recording capabilities on my remote Channels DVR Server. Would it work well in this scenario?
Might work. There's not a lot of transcoding modes on the EXTEND, so if you have limited bandwidth the you'll end up with really bad quality video.
Thanks tmm1! The video quality I get now from the Quattro is really good, it just stutters, pixelates and drops out. So my thinking is that if I can halve the upload stream to the remote DVR server using the Extend’s mpeg4 transcoding rather than using full MPEG2 on the Quattro, it should alleviate the dropouts. I have about 22 Mbps upload here and 1Gbps down at the remote server location.
If this works as I think it should, I’d certainly be willing to trade my relatively brand new Quattro to someone for a dual tuner HDHOMERUN Extend V2 (fanless).
I use the extend in heavy transcoding mode for DVR of HD OTA content. I did some testing in the BETA days of the Channels DVR and found this reduced DVR file sizes by about 50% with minor degradation of quality. That mode essentially converts from mp2 to mp4. I use other modes for live programming to phones or tablets to reduce wireless data which helps when devices aren’t always close to a wireless access point.
Some of the extend transcoder modes can kill the quality so I generally stay with the modes that don’t reduce the data too much.
Good luck with your project.