I have THREE AndroidTV boxes in my home. If I wanted to add Cable TV to my home, how does this work?
Do I have to buy an HDHomeRun for each box? Or can I buy a single HDHomeRun and somehow let all 3 boxes connect to it?
I have THREE AndroidTV boxes in my home. If I wanted to add Cable TV to my home, how does this work?
Do I have to buy an HDHomeRun for each box? Or can I buy a single HDHomeRun and somehow let all 3 boxes connect to it?
As an owner of a HDHomerun Prime. You rent a cable card, have them enable it over the phone via tech support. You then log into it via web browser to scan for channels. You have two lists, one is all channels, the other is a favorites list of channels.
I have two nexus players and a Mi Box, all work fine, but these devices really work best on a hard wired ethernet connection. If you dont have a Wireless AC router, then you'll need power line adapters to connect it and an OTG USB Ethernet adapter.
Channels App, VLC or Kodi will let you view the channels.
One HDHomeRun PRIME has three tuners, so it can serve three clients at once.
One problem I've noticed is that with the HDHomerun app I couldn't go directly to the channel I wanted like on a TV remote. There is no number buttons on the remotes. When I connected a keyboard I could type in the channel #'s but pressing the enter key didn't work so there is no way to navigate channels except by pressing up or down button on the remote. Granted you can press and hold the up or down button and it would scroll quickly, but with 100's of channels that is annoying. This apparently isn't a problem with the HDHomerun app but with Android itself. So using Live Channels on AndroidTV instead of the HDHomerun app doesn't help. When I run Kodi from Linux I can use a keyboard to change channel #'s just fine.
The "Homerun" part of the name is actually the indicator of what it does. Its like an electrical homerun. The setup goes something like this:
Input source (cable/antenna) is connected to router via coax. After configuring the HDHomerun via a computer, the HDHomerun is able to "tune" channels and stream them to other devices on the network (like your android boxes) that are running compatible software (like the HDHR app). So to answer your question, you only need one HDHR to get started (you can add more for more tuners).
But there are some more details. If you want Cable TV from a local provider, you will need the HDHomerun Prime + a cable card from your provider (and then just tell them to keep their shitty boxes). The prime has (3) tuners so you will be able to have (3) simultaneous streams per HDHR Prime box + cable card (not sure if a cable company would give out multiple cable cards).
You could also subscribe to SiliconDusts new Cable streaming service for $35/mo . This is like the equivalent of Sling TV or DirectTV Now Or PS Vue, but requires an HDHomerun Connect or Extend. The stream comes over the internet, gets tuned via the box and can then be streamed across your network. These boxes each only have (2) streams but you can add more boxes to your network for a total of (4) simultaneous cable streams. The cool thing about this implementation is that the Connect/Extend can also take an antenna feed so you can have antenna stations right alongside cable streams. You can also DVR this service directly to a hard drive, meaning you maintain a copy of the content that you can use at will.
You should check out some videos on youtube about the HDHomerun and do some more research for sure.