HDHomerun Issues

 

Issues with HDHomeRun

12/20/2020 Same morning Tablo decided to stop talking to anything till it was repowered the HDHomeRun just did not record anything. Not seeing any reason for it. Ended up again falling all the way back to the TiVo to see Sunday morning news shows.

1/6/2021 HDHomeRun still not recording anything though shows tasks in queue. No indication as to why. Pretty much given up on it as a standalone and am planning on building a Plex PC and use the HDHomeRun as the tuners.

More cable weirdness

 Since just internet from Spectrum costs almost a much and the bundled internet, cable and phone I've kept cable. Especially since the phone comes in handy from time to time out here between towns where cell service is often iffy and I still want access to channels like TBS and BBCA which require a cable ID. After my cable TiVo died I thought I'd return the cable card and tuner to at least get those fees off my bill. It turned out it would cost me more to turn in the cable card since it would invalidate my bundle. Their DVR is even more so the cheapest option was to keep the cable card. Go figure. I wonder how many people just using the on demand app these days also have an unused cable card floating about for the same reason. Now I need to sort where to put it so I can find it when / if it becomes cheaper to go with just internet service.

Tablo Amazon review

My review as it is on Amazon with links added.

I've been looking for a TiVo replacement since TiVo seems intent on driving away all their DVR customers. The Fire TV Recast having only 720p max output was a non starter for me and Tablo seemed to be the favorite so started with it. Coming from TiVo the Tablo interface is a bit of a let down. But on the plus side it is viewable from a Roku or browser. The main issue for me is the lack of being able to visually fast forward till a bit after something has finished recording. Commercial skip works a bit less often and well than TiVo but happens shortly after the recording is done instead like TiVo where it can be a day before it kicks in. Still not sure if commercial skip is worth the added subscription cost. The most disturbing is I've had a few bouts of unexplained "reboots" with the Tablo.  In quotes because it is impossible to know for sure given the lack of accessible logs or debug info screens plus having to access via another device. When they happen all recordings stop for a bit though so it is as disruptive as a reboot. Looking at TiVo recordings running in parallel it does not appear to be a signal issue like others have reported. I should note the one time I was able to see a signal issue in action the TiVo recovered while the Tablo just stopped recording. Support was unable to sort what was causing the "reboots" either. It was annoying enough I got a HDHomeRun Quad scribe to compare but have not had a "reboot" issue in the week all 3 have been running. The HDHomeRun interface is no where near as polished as even the Tablo and its apps appear to mainly useless. So Tablo for all its faults appears to the better TiVo replacement. Though I'm going to look into Plex using the HDHomeRun tuners as well. 

Updates:

Let me add adding apps to my Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD has proven almost impossible so giving the Fire TV Recast a pass seems to have been a good call as I'd probably need a newer Fire TV to even get it to work.

1/6/2021

Tablo worked fine for about a week then did the reboot thing for 6 days worked for one and is failing again today 

More detailed reviews in works but wanting to find a acceptable solution first. Looking like as bad as TiVo has become it might still be better than the alternatives. Still have building a Plex PC using the HDHomeRun as the tuners on the todo list though.

2/9/2021

More random reboot waves (confirmed by monitoring it drop off the network with continuous pings) even after adding a laptop cooler below to the 80mm fan on top of the Tablo. Decided to swap out the Western Digital 2TB WD Blue Mobile Hard Drive with a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB I had bought for another project while I run tests on the 2TB drive and see if that gives me any clues. Note it took 3 tries to get the SSD to format and after it still seems to think I have recordings so I'm no hopeful.

I found this which suggests a external is the way to go which I might try since the issue is at least made worse by heat.

Selecting the streaming services for you

Watch Cordkillers 292 - Don't Be Ridisculous (w/ Fraser Cain) where Fraser Cain details how he used his watchlist on Just Watch to create a spreadsheet of how many movies and TV shows he wants to see are on each service. He then further took the monthly cost of each service divided by the things he wants to watch to figure out the ones with best ROI. If you are looking to budget ths is a pretty quick and easy way to do it. Though I might suggest of there are any deal breakers (stuff you do not want to lose access to) you may want want to add some columns for those as well to mark what service(s) they are on so you do not drop the wrong one.

 Just Watch is an awesome free service by itself. It is similar to Roku's watchlist feature where you can just plug in the stuff you want to see and the watchlist shows what is available on what services you subscribe to. With the added plus it is a well formatted list instead of Roku's notifications format. It also makes it easy to see if something is available on a service you do not have.

WeaKnees Single 3 TB Replace TiVo Upgrade Kit for 849000 install

Single 3 TB Replace TiVo Upgrade Kit for 849000

If you follow the instructions the hardware part goes pretty smoothly. Step 1D is the only tricky part. Read the whole bit about how to apply pressure in steps or you might break off a tab.

BUT before you start get kmttg before you start the upgrade and save off your settings:

• One Passes
• Thumbs (Though it seems TiVo might not be using these anymore.)
• Channels

Otherwise you will be manually be setting them up again. Note in theory One Passes should be downloaded from your TiVo account but if you want to have them today you will need to load them via kmttg.

Next bit is you will probably need to call your cable company and have them push an activate to your cable card even though the host ID does not change.

If you favorited channels you will need do those again manually.

Lastly you will need to reactivate all your apps.

Update: looks like you need to turn auto skip back on as well.

After the upgrade you should find:
recordingCapacityHdHours       476
recordingCapacitySdHours       3274
freeDiskSpaceSdHours           3212
freeDiskSpaceHdHours           465

Note part of that used space was programs already recorded by my uploaded One Passes.

If 3 TB is a bit tight you should know WeeKnees has options with Bolts up to 13TB and Roamios up the 20 TB

Updated Cord Cutting Notes sheet to pull TiVo data

My watched vs available sheet Cord Cutting Notes  now pulls in the csv files created by my TiVoGet program as part of the Last Show update. I also updated the menu to the new sheet model. (Something you seem to need to do now if you edit a sheet script with the old menu model in it.)

Cord Cutting Notes now pulling status info from epguide

My watched vs available sheet Cord Cutting Notes now has a status column at G on the shows tab that combines info copied in from renewcanceltv.com with auto pulled data from epguides.com's Current U.S. Shows on Hiatus or Discontinued page to try and let you know the status of shows listed on the shows tab.