HDHomerun in Canada? When?

[computer33]

I noticed that more stores now carry HDHomerun but still no Canadian sites.

* Order online from 9thtee.com
* Order online from pcalchemy.com
* Order online from dvrupgrade.com
* Order online from cyberestore.com

I want to avoid that heavy "Duty" charges as well as large shipping costs. I'll continue to wait.

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by computer33

I noticed that more stores now carry HDHomerun but still no Canadian sites.

* Order online from 9thtee.com
* Order online from pcalchemy.com
* Order online from dvrupgrade.com
* Order online from cyberestore.com

I want to avoid that heavy "Duty" charges as well as large shipping costs. I'll continue to wait.

I sent you a PM, but I ordered from 9thtee.com and it came across with nothing owing.

[computer33]

Alright! Time to get me one.

[Kilaz]

I got mine from Cyberestore, shipped to Canada and there where no duty charges. I Think because USPS was used. The 5% off coupon code thats posted on another forum site (Coupon code=TAMPAHDTV) worked to also so my landing cost was about $160.00usd.

[fvoicu]

Originally Posted by Kilaz

I got mine from Cyberestore, shipped to Canada and there where no duty charges. I Think because USPS was used. The 5% off coupon code thats posted on another forum site (Coupon code=TAMPAHDTV) worked to also so my landing cost was about $160.00usd.

I got mine from Cyberstore too. It was shipped fast with UPS. I was worried of UPS brokerage fees but they knew what they were doing and arrive in good order "shipping and brokerage fees" free . Highly recommended.

I had some challenges on locking into some of the OTA channels from Buffalo due to week reception (i.e. NBC 2.1 , CBS 4.1) from Toronto but with a laptop on the roof I was able to find the optimal signal. The signal strength is still not what I expected but it is reasonable most of the time. I have a Channel Master 4221 antenna with an CM 7777 Titan amplifier.

Here is the mapping list in the HDHomeRun Config GUI) for Toronto OTA (8vsb). Tune into a channel and adjust the antenna for optimal reception.
Channel Number: Program

14 :29.1 WUTV-HD (Fox29)
14:29.2 WYTV-SD
20: 5.1 CBLT-DT (CBC)
24: 25.1 CBLFT-D (CBC Fr.)
27: 26.1 WNYB-DT (TCT)
32: 23.1 WNLO-HD (CW)
33: 2.1 WGRZ-DT (NBC)
33: 2.1 WGRZ-SD
34: 49.1 WNYO-HD (MYnetworkTV)
34: 49.2 WNYO-SD
38: 7.1 WKBW-HD (ABC)
38: 7.1 WKBW-SD
39: 4.1 WIVB-HD (CBS)
40: 9.1 CFTO HD (CTV)
43: 43.1 WNED-HD (PBS)
43: 43.2 WNED-SD
43: 43.3 WNED-Th
53: 57.1 CITYHD (CITY)
66: 66.1 CKXT-DT (SUN TV)

[MilkmanCDN]

fvoicu. Where are you located? I'm out in K/W and would like to know if I can get HD reception from Buffalo and TO.

[technazz]

Originally Posted by MilkmanCDN

fvoicu. Where are you located? I'm out in K/W and would like to know if I can get HD reception from Buffalo and TO.

Check out these forums. You will find your answer there

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MilkmanCDN

fvoicu. Where are you located? I'm out in K/W and would like to know if I can get HD reception from Buffalo and TO.

Did you find an answer? I looked at this a year ago and found that K/W (I am assuming kitchener waterloo, I live in northwest corner of waterloo) was too far by about 20 - 30 Kms. At least that was what people were telling me.

I keep looking at roof tops to see if anybody has antennas up but I see nothing so I still don't think we get anything.

Greg

[MilkmanCDN]

Unfortunately, I haven't setup anything yet and have since moved to Cambridge (Townline and the 401). What I did find was that I was going to need a very large roof-mounted directional antenna and an amplifier to have any chance at receiving OTA HD. I may give it a shot this summer. If I do, I'll be sure to post my results.

[gveres]

I took a different route.

I decided to get the R5000 mod for my starchoice HD receiver. This seems to be a better approach. If you are interested, I will let you know how it turns out. The receiver is being shipped to them this weekend (shipped from buffalo and returned directly to me).

If you want to find info, google R5000.

Greg

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by gveres

I took a different route.

I decided to get the R5000 mod for my starchoice HD receiver. This seems to be a better approach. If you are interested, I will let you know how it turns out. The receiver is being shipped to them this weekend (shipped from buffalo and returned directly to me).

If you want to find info, google R5000.

Greg

Yeah I've read about the R5000 let us know how it works out!

[gveres]

The receiver made its way to Conneticut today. It was delivered to them at 10:25am and they sent email with a USPS tracking number for its return at 2:43pm. Wow, that was fast.

I will let you guys know how it works when it gets back here. If it is anything like USPS trying to get me the Sage HD extender, it should be in a couple of weeks.

Greg

[gveres]

The reciever came in on Tuesday but I didn't pick it up and get it installed until today. Right now it is working and I think I am happy with it. Here are some observations / comments:

• it has to stop recording and start a new recording with each channel change
• channel changes are currently 17 seconds while using the HD100 as the viewer
• it tells the receiver to change channels twice (which I am sure causes extra delay given how long it takes to tune a star choice channel anyway)
• the recordings are around 1.4 GB / 30 minutes. This is twice as big as I was encoding to using my Hauppage and BTV
• If you tune a channel that you don't have a subscription for, the program on the PC stops receiving data - you don't get the "you need to subscribe" message. (This and the first point were what caused the install to take a day - mostly user error)
• the recordings don't seem to have a timeline that VLC will pickup while playing back. The timeline works fine within Sage. This might be an issue if you watch your recordings outside of Sage.
• The guy that monitors the email is very responsive.
• Sage can now change the channel on the box without any IR blaster

I think that is about it. I am happy - well, I will when I see it record the F1 race tonight.

I am still running BTV and Sage w/ the R5000 in parallel for a while until I am convinced I am recording all the right stuff and it is working.

If you watch liveTV a lot, I would not recommend it. 17 seconds to change channels is about 12 seconds too long. I have sent an email to the guy asking him if 17 seconds is normal and if there is a way to get it to not change the channel twice.

Now I am going to have to figure out how to get Sage to encode to divx or H.264 to reclaim some of that disk space. My disk just shrunk by a factor of 2.

BTW, I also got an STX-HD100. The combination is fantastic. Now I need to get another on for the upstairs TV! Lets home Sage gets another shipment in soon

Greg

[gveres]

Ok, an update on the size of recordings - it appears to be 3x what I was using when I used BTV. I used to use 1.6 GB for a 1 hour show. Using the R5000, I am using 4.5 GB for a 1 hour show.

A movie in HD is somewhere between 13 and 17 GB.

I guess I need to purchase a few 1TB drives!

I am able to play back the HD movie on my 20" imac (recent one) with only 2 hiccups for the entire movie and they were really small hicups.

It plays back on the STX-HD100 without issues at all. I need to get another one of those.

Greg

[gveres]

Ok, here is an update. There is a setting in the R5000-HD program that causes the program to "compress" the video stream. From what I have read, the satellite providers pad out the stream to 19 Mbit/s or something. Without this setting, the stream is large. With this setting, it removes the padding.

I just taped 25 minutes of HD video and it came out to 1.8 GB. That is about double what I was getting with the PVR-250 doing VBR on SD.

I will report back when I have taped an SD show.

BTW, placeshifter on a dual core AMD 5600+ w/ crappy ATI motherboard graphics could not playback the HD mpg stream without making it choppy. It played back perfectly fine in VLC on the same machine.

The R5000 coupled with HD extenders is a great combination though.

I just wish it changed channels quicker.

Greg

[thedaver]

http://store.sensuz.com $189.99

[Berg]

Hello Greg,

Just wondered how you were making out with your R5000 ?

Also, how did the customs clearance/duties work when you Nexcomm sent the receiver back to you.

Thanks in advance.

[gveres]

Hi Berg,

I like it. The quality is nice. I assume that you have read my previous posts in this thread.

Right now I am not fighting with anything that has to do with the R5000HD. I am fighting with Sage stability issues. I am using an HD extender (also very nice) and placeshifter on one of my PCs.

the clients are locking up, can't reconnect and are laggy. I am trying to track that issue down right now.

I have tried to get some support from Sage but because I am using SageMC, they asked me to get rid of SageMC to try it again. I haven't had time to do that yet.

Greg

[gveres]

There is one issue but I haven't brought it up with the R5000 folks.

I run Sage as a service but the R5000 app that you have to run constantly doesn't run as a service so if my server reboots, I have to go manually run things or I start missing recordings.

[Berg]

Thanks Greg.

I have been following your posts.

Have you thought of using a utility app to make the R5000 software run as a service ? I would have to Google but I use to use one to run BeyondTV on a headless system and did a short write up. It worked very well for me. If you don't have any luck, let me know and I'll look it up and find the software I was using.

How about custom/duties ? What ended up happening there, if you don't mind me asking ?

Thanks again.