In praise of the HDHomeRun

Over 13 years ago, SiliconDust released the first of its HDHomeRun devices. These are pretty nifty network-attached TV tuners that can stream over-the-air and/or cable broadcasts to any device on your network. Currently they’ve got several models available. I bought one of the very first devices they released, a dual-tuner back in 2007. I remember how cool it was to get digital HD right on my computer for the first time, especially compared to the (then still being broadcast) analog channels.

Well, that little tuner is still going strong, and SiliconDust still supports it! Yes, that’s correct: in a day and age when you’re lucky to get more than a year or two of support for your $1,000+ TV, my tuner is still getting firmware updates well over a decade after its manufacture. True, they aren’t as frequent nor do they bring shiny new features, but on the other hand, it’s a tuner and does its job very well. Client software libraries are also regularly updated and available as open source, and integration into MythTV and Kodi is super smooth.

The only thing I’ve had to replace in over a decade is the original wall-wart. That’s pretty impressive engineering for a device that has been powered on for over 110,000 hours!

My only nit-pick in all this time: It doesn’t seem to support IPv6. But that’s understandable for the time, and you can be sure when my tuner does eventually die, I’ll be ordering a brand new one from SiliconDust.