HDHR at a different location than Channels DVR Server

[HarperVision]

Yeah. I definitely have thought about switching it around to have the DVR at the lakehouse. My current setup has the dvr at home with the lakehouse in away mode.

My main focus of all of this setup is to try and get to a single ui/app (being channels) that has local channels from both locations and uses tve from my required cable subscription (via the HOA fees at the lakehouse) for the rest

I have an HDHR Prime in PA at my house that my daughter lives in connected to Comcast using a cablecard. Then I have an HDHR Extend (it has the built in transcoder to convert MPEG2 to MP4 so the stream is smaller, ~12Mbps vs ~ 2-4Mbps) setup here in HI on my OTA antenna picking up my locals, mainly so my wife can watch local news and as a backup for the HDHR prime.

This goes through an OpenVPN setup with two Asus routers, one at each location. The PA one is the server and the HI one is the client. They use TAP, not TUN mode. I created two networks, 192.168.1.1 (HI) and 192.168.3.1 (PA). I connected the HDHR Extend to an old Apple Airport Express setup so it extends my ".3" PA network to here, so the Extend gets a ".3" IP address and talks to the server router and the Channels DVR Server that is setup to it in PA via an nVidia Shield w/ an external USB HDD.

Here in HI I connect my AppleTV boxes, one at each TV, as DVR clients and they are on the ".1" network, so they're connected via "Out of Home" to the Channels DVR Server in PA. In this configuration I have both tuners in the guide, watchable and recordable, with the Prime being in PA using Xfinity and the Extend using a HI antenna signal. I did have to set the Extend's transcoder to "Mobile" for it to work seamlessly without buffering and the quality is surprisingly good considering it's really being compressed from the original. It's only for news and the occasional backup that the Prime or TVE can't do, so it is worth the advantage of having it.

When Channels uses the Extend tuner, the signal is received by the antenna here in HI, transcoded to its "Mobile" setting, sent through the VPN to the Shield's DVR Server in PA, recorded if needed, sent back out through the VPN in PA, received back here in HI and played back on my AppleTV Clients and I can't believe it goes through ALL that and still looks pretty damned great, especially converted to Dolby Vision/LLDV on an ATV 4K to my LG C8 OLED or BenQ LK990 projector!

[JMcGuire]

That's impressive, but WHY are you converting everything to DV???

[Pstunder]

Nice setup and explanation! TL/DR I will try using TAP too.

My silence over the weekend is because I was at the lakehouse and setup the server there. I hit some new, unexpected issues with TVE since ABC is not served up there. I am moving the server back down to Home next weekend and should be able to try the TAP method.

Theres a couple of other things I read about trying using TUN types to make sure the broadcast of the hdhr is being picked up. I'll let you all know how I end up

[HarperVision]

That's impressive, but WHY are you converting everything to DV???

Because it looks so darn AMAZING!!!!

I discovered a way to present DolbyVision on home theater projectors, which many said couldn’t be done and wouldn’t be done, but I did! It’s basically a way to get dynamic tone mapping (on any display) along with native DolbyVision on HT projectors instead of just flat panels.

I decided to research and see if it could be done as a way for the layman (like me!) who can’t afford the high ticket video processor/scalers like the Lumagen Radiance Pro and upcoming MadVR Envy but still take advantage of dynamic tone mapping and amazing video processing that these items provide.

I used to have a Lumagen Radiance Pro connected to my BenQ LK990, but now being able to show native DolbyVision and upconverted to LLDV/DolbyVision HD SDR (Blu-rays, HDTV, etc.) has been the best video upgrade and Godsend I’ve experienced in many years, maybe ever. It’s the best I have ever seen my home theater image look! It takes a bit of setup and knowledge but when you hit the sweet spot, it’s like......WOW!!!

Here’s some links about my creation, if you’re interested in reading them. They’ve exploded and are quite long now though, but worth the read:

Dolby Vision, including HDR10 conversion w/ DTM on Projectors? Yes!

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=58724442#/topics/3097934?page=1

[Pstunder]

Finally got all this working. After restarting several times from scratch, a similar setup to what I had originally tried works (Grrr!)

I ended up having a TUN vpn directing just the lakehouse HDHR over vpn to the Home network. This is working great and am now able to see lakehouse locals and then also home TVE locals.

Exact setup I wanted in the end

[HarperVision]

Can you post exactly how it's setup and what the values are for each setting of your TUN VPN? I use TAP and have tried just using the HDHR through it. It sees and connects as if it's on the same network, but I get pixelation and breakups so the signal is unusable to the server on the other side of the VPN tunnel. What's your updload and download speeds at each end again? I have 1,000/35 Mbps at PA location and 200/20 Mbps here in HI.

[Pstunder]

I guess i may have posted a little early. I too have it all setup and the networks are seeing each other perfectly but I also get pixelation on some of the channels that are HD. SD channels work much better.

To remedy, I tried changing the quality down to 720. Better but still not 100%.