HD Homerun Prime on Sale At Fry’s $139.99

[johnw248]

The HD Homerun Prime is on Sale again at Fry’s in the new weekly ad (bottom right of page seven) http://www.frys.com/ads/page7 For $139.99.  Sale starts Friday, August 17, 2012 and runs through August 23 or while supply lasts.

John

[bbig119]

Thanks for the post. Is this deal too good to pass on? I’m planning a server upgrade, and am considering getting a cablecard tuner. I haven’t read up on this as much as I need to, so I’m not sure if its worth putting together a cablecard capable system right now, and if I were to do so, if the hdhomerun prime is the best option for me. As a reference, I’m running SageTV7 with an hdhomerun and an Hauupauge HD-PVR on an old server with components from 2005-2007.

[johnw248]

A couple of things to consider. First is your cable provider–there is a great variance in the amount of content that is marked copy freely and that which is marked copy once. Copy Once can only be played on the machine that made the reocording or on a Windows Media Extender (right now that’s an XBox or a an ebay purchase of a Linksys DMA2100 or DMA2200 or a HP280n. By the end of the year Ceton will introduce a new extender with more features but that’s in the future.

With cableCARD all your recordings will be MPEG2 unlike you HD-PVR so they have compatibility with the extenders but a larger than your h.264 files.

The Ceton device has four tuners (either the internal PCIe card or external USB device) all current cableCARD tuners support switched digital video but you cannot get PPV or VOD. On the plus side you pay less for a cableCARD rental and you own the tuner. Most systems don’t charge for tuning adapters.  You won’t be able to use SageTV unless your cable provider does not copy protect content. Right now only Media Center has passed the DRM test with CableLabs to be able to record premium content like HBO/Showtime/Starz etc. If you’re on TWC that extends to everything except re-transmission of local OTA stations.

A short primer. For comparison the SD Prime on sale has three tuners, the Ceton with four tuners lists at $199 for either PCIe or USB versions. So at $50 per tuner, they are pretty close to the same cost.

John

[bbig119]

Thanks John. That was helpful. From your points, it seems like the posted price is good, but not too good to pass on. Just to clarify a few of the points you brought up. I’ve got fios in Long Island NY. My understanding is that FIOS is (or maybe was) one of the only providers to mark most (or all) channels as copy freely. Is there any reason to think that the Ceton tuners now will be compatible with their forthcoming extenders? Would the SD Prime be compatible?

[captain_video]

The tuners should work fine with the Ceton Echo extenders.  The Echo is an extender for both Windows Media Center and the upcoming Ceton Q DVR.  If the tuner works with Media Center it will work with the extender.

FYI – FIOS has recently changed their position on flagging channels as copy freely and now marks some of their premium channels as copy once.  All other channels are still marked copy freely.

FWIW, JR.com had the HDHomeRun Prime on sale yesterday via Amazon and Buy.com for only $130.  I just checked and Amazon is out of stock and Buy.com has the price back up to full retail.

[Author]

Posts