

The two tuners allow you to watch and record two different channels at once. You can also see which of the two digital tuners on the HD Homerun are in use and what kind of signal quality they’re pulling. No need to flip past channels I’m never going to watch I haven’t channel-surfed in a very long time and have no interest in starting now. It’s easy to simply uncheck all of those and narrow things back down to the network channels you watch most. One thing about plugging in an OTA antenna these days is that you end up with access to something like 60 channels (again, depending on your area) and the truth is that most of them aren’t very interesting. A web-based interface makes the HDHomerun easy to program. If you’re not concerned about recording TV, you could even stop there.
PLEX DANCE TV
Even withou t a Plex Pass, you can watch live TV using any device that can connect to your network and has an HDHomerun app available. The HDHomerun Connect (I paid $65) is the go-to digital converter box for a reason. I have a box running an Intel Core i5-4590S with 16 GB of DDR3 memory that runs my Plex Server, my Minecraft server, and my client, and after a lot of digging around, I came to the conclusion that getting a Plex Pass just made sense.įirst, I needed a new digital converter. I already run a Plex Media Server in my home for housing my movies, music, and photographs. I’d been reluctant to pay for a Plex Pass because of its three-digit price tag on a lifetime subscription, but after my experience with the Homeworx, I was more open to trying something else. I also had an issue that never fully went away where audio would slowly desync over a few days. Programming it ends up feeling like programming a VCR more than DVR. While it does show data for current television episodes, though, it doesn’t show that for more than just that day. Once you get it running, it works, but you’re still having to tangle with that clunky interface. Instead, you have to format it on your computer with specific settings prescribed by Mediasonic. The drive would successfully format and record video, but turning the Homeworx off would erase any programming you’d done for recordings and render the drive unreadable.

For example, the system has the built-in ability to format a hard drive, but woe be to those who try to use it. I would plan out my moves within the interface before I made them so that I could press more buttons at a time. The Homeworx has a laggy interface where you’re counting one-two every time you press a button. Ultimately, though, the Homeworx converter was the weak link in the chain for a number of reasons.įirst and foremost, it was a huge pain to setup. Depending on how far from civilization you are, you might need something more powerful. The Mohu Leaf antenna is a solid piece of hardware for my situation that brings in good image quality for my area, which is in the suburban ring around Minneapolis, MN. The only piece of hardware that carried through to the current setup is the Mohu Leaf antenna.

I bought a stack of hardware for my first attempt at taking control of my TV viewing: I needed a way to reliably time-shift over-the-air television with solid image quality. Everything else I watch is streaming exclusive or pops up on a streaming service the same day it airs.

At the same time, I’ve long since snipped the TV cord connecting my home to my cable provider. I write about them for another site, so I need same-night access to them, but I’m also not going to sit and wait for them to come on. You’re welcome to jump into the comments and have at it with my taste in TV if you like: I love the Arrowverse collection of shows on the CW. I love tinkering with my tech, but I’m also a huge TV fan. Here’s how I struggled and then ended up on the Plex Pass DVR. I can now watch OTA TV from just about any device I own and record it, too. These days, TV couldn’t be much more different from what it was like back then. Getting a signal required what felt like a magical dance. I grew up in a time when any TV not plugged into cable had a pair of bunny ears mounted atop. The latest new piece of tech in my home: Over-the-Air television. Whether it’s with the Xbox Accessibility controller or experimenting with solar panels, we love it. But we love all kinds of tech and making our lives better with it. Our focus here at Tech Report is often on the latest processors, displays, storage, and the like.
