SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K ATSC 3 0 NextGen TV 2 4 Tuners HDFX-4K

This is a quality product for tuning in & recording OTA TV. Paired with a Winegard Elite 7550 Outdoor HDTV Antenna & 2TB external hard drive I purchased separately, I was able to pull in 78 clear channels 37 miles from my local antenna farm. Five ATSC 3.0 channels scanned in, but only 3 ATSC 3.0 actually displayed pictures and sounds; none were broadcasting in 4K so far. I purchased the $35 channel guide & DVR recording capabilities (the whole point of buying this product) separately from SiliconDust online. Here is a rough cost breakdown for my setup: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K $200, Winegard Elite 7550 Outdoor HDTV Antenna $150, 2 TB external hard drive; $70, SiliconDust DVR/Channel Guide 1-year service $35, two Onn TV Android boxes $40, 30-foot telescope mounting pole/hardware/coaxial cable/professional installation $460 equals $955 total, a lot of money, but a professional clean weatherproof performance ensemble. Cable TV with DVR (w/o internet) in my area is about $145 a month with NO premium channels, so ostensibly my breakeven is at 7.5 months. I did not want to further complicate my life with a Plex server and/or Channels guide, nor the associated extra costs and complexity, which is not necessary since the SiliconDust UI is top-notch/excellent. ONE CAVEAT: If your TV or streaming device is running Roku software (like mine & millions of others)—my SiliconDust HDHomeRun app was prone to crashing frequently, and the FF/rewind did NOT work AT ALL. I solved this problem by buying/installing two $20 Onn TV Android boxes from Walmart and using the free SiliconDust HDHomeRun Android app from the Google Play Store. Now FF/Rewind works as it should, and the HDHomeRun Android app does not crash. Some internet searching will reveal this is a common SiliconDust HDHomeRun/Roku problem/issue that SiliconDust has been unsuccessfully working on debugging for a long time. It should have been resolved by SiliconDust and/or Roku long ago, and I should NOT have had to figure out this workaround on my own. Still, this is a solid OTA tuner w/DVR capabilities with superb channel tuning and UI that I will give it 5 stars despite my Roku caveat. 6 MONTH UPDATE: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K is still a solid choice. I have really warmed up to the excellent UI. The FF/rewind is still working on my Onn TV Android box. I must report the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Onn TV Android app does not load easily, or as it should, like all my other apps. Restarting the Onn TV box is typically necessary, usually 2 times, to bring up the SiliconDust HDHomeRun UI. I am not sure if this is a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Android app issue, a Google bloatware issue, or both. I have yet to try an alternate launcher, which I have some reservations about. SiliconDust has still not fixed the aforementioned Roku app problem. A SiliconDust sad state of affairs. Customers should not have to figure out a Roku workaround. I have given serious thought to trying the newest Tablo (despite having so many problems with an old Tablo Quad, Tablo’s poor customer support, & no hardware repairs offered), or "rounding up" 2 older used model TiVo’s that work with an antenna. Why the latter? I have owned a Tablo Quad, a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun, and 2 TiVo (very old) Premiers—all fed by antennas. TiVo (the most expensive option that works best with a box for each TV) has the best UI, works flawlessly, responds the best by far instantly, and has a one-button auto commercial skip that actually works. 12 MONTH UPDATE: I have now surpassed my breakeven point. I’m in the black with my SiliconDust HDHomeRun/antenna setup vs. cable TV cost by a wide margin. Admittedly, there is some loss with OTA programming vs. cable, but not by $0 vs. $145 a month margin. Not to mention, if I really want to see a program, I can easily find it and stream it. With the last SiliconDust firmware/app update, I have found that the previously discussed SiliconDust HDHomeRun app loading issues do not occur if the app is returned to the Live TV mode before exiting and not left in DVR mode. I have given up on the idea of “rounding up” a used older TiVo since my SiliconDust HDHomeRun is performing better after the latest firmware/app update. You’d also need a TiVo for each TV, and TiVo has really abandoned the OTA DVR business altogether. I recommend SiliconDust HDHomeRun and hold out hope that SiliconDust fixes the Roku app soon to accommodate the FF/Rewind function. Read more

This is kind of lengthy... Previously, for the past 6 years, our household used a “Tablo” as our in-home OTA DVR solution. For that purpose, it worked fairly well. I won’t go into any of the downsides, but the final deal killer was the inability to access it remotely using Roku devices. No matter how many router tweaks and settings such as port forwarding I tried, Roku just couldn’t access it. The only thing that worked was using a smartphone. All we wanted was the ability to access our local news broadcasts and sporting events when out of town. We thought we had found a solution by subscribing to “YouTube TV” which provides local channels as part of the package. Imagine our disappointment when on our first trip out of town, we could not get any of our hometown stations but instead those of where we were at the time. Upon our return, I resolved to finally replace the “Tablo” with a SiliconDust “HDHomeRun Flex 4K”. Operationally, much like the “Tablo”, you connect an OTA antenna to the unit, connect to your home network and then power it up. One of the nice things about the “Tablo” is that you can connect to your home network wirelessly. The “HDHomeRun” requires a wired ethernet connection. This meant we would have to run ethernet cable from our router to where the unit would reside. Fortunately for us this was something we did last year for different reasons but in the process, the “Tablo” was connected directly as well which greatly improved its responsiveness and stability. Unboxing the “HDHomeRun” and connecting it in place of the “Tablo” took only a few minutes. I used the “HDHomeRun” app on my android phone while connected to the same network to finish up firmware upgrades and channel scans. The “HDHomeRun”, when connected to our attic antenna, picked up 52 local ATSC 1.0 channels and 4 ATSC 3.0 stations. Now, the main reason we selected the “HDHomeRun” was its ability to integrate with our “Plex Media Server” which we have had operating for years. Within just minutes, the “HDHomeRun” was setup within Plex which, as part of our lifetime pass, provides a guide for all of the channels the “HDHomeRun” found. Plex also provides native DVR support so no additional storage devices or fees to SiliconDust for their DVR functionality. What Plex won’t do is decode AC-4 audio (blame FFmpeg) which is what the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts come with. Not a huge problem since all of the ATSC 1.0 audio channels work just fine. We anticipate that Plex/FFmpeg will provide the AC-4 decoder eventually as ATSC 3.0 adoption picks up, but the main thing is, since Plex is a server, we can access it remotely which means all of our local channels are available remotely as well. “HDHomeRun” also has a Windows 10 app which was downloaded to test. That worked great and after downloading a couple of drivers it said it needed, including a 99 cent one from Microsoft, I was able to play the ATSC 3.0 channels with audio as well. Some users have complained about channel changes taking a long time. For us this is 2-3 seconds. I challenge anyone to go from one YouTube or Roku channel to another much faster. All in all, to date, this change over has worked out well. It picks up all of the local free channels we could ever need. Subjectively, we also think the image quality is great. If I had a wish list, it would be that the “HDHomeRun” apps provided more native info and/or metadata about each channel such as the kind of audio track being listened to and the video resolution. Kind of like YouTube providing “Stats for Nerds” on each of its videos. We’re not sure if we are future proofed on the ATSC 3.0 roll-out but that was not the only or even main part of the reason for our purchase decision. What we wanted is what we got, and it works very, very well. Read more