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Old 19-Feb-2011, 3:52 AM   #4
Mark_O
Junior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 4
GUM,

I think this is a really great idea. I'm a bit surprised you haven't gotten more feedback on it. Perhaps others are more focused on watching in real-time vs. recording. Rotors work fairly well if you only need access to a single market at a time. Not so well when you're trying to catch an evening's programming on 4 different channels from 3 different markets.

I've been doing something similar to you, though my 3 Homeruns are each dedicated to one antenna/market a piece, each with a splitter driving the 2 inputs. So I can record 6 channels at once, with 2 from each market.

Depending on how many subchannels your sources are cramming in, the primary HD feeds can potentially be enough that 6 channels would saturate a 100 MBit network link. Besides my host PC has only a single gigabit port. So I use a gigabit router to run the 3 Homeruns into the system.

It took me a while to figure out how to use batch files to do what you've done so elegantly above. I was fighting with the TotalMedia craptastic app that SiliconDust includes with their product, which barely handles 2 channels at a time. That gave me a negative impression of the product for over a year.

I'd also point out that if you've got some enclosed space in proximity to your antenna farm (e.g., a shed or an attic), you can also save the cost of one or more low-noise pre-amps and long runs of quality RG6-coax. Just locate the Homeruns inside, close to the antennas (short coax feeds), patch them into a local router, and run a single Cat5 cable to the PC. (I'm not doing that at the moment, because I happened to already have installed a bundle of coax lines out to my shed when I first set things up out there. But it will come in handy if I ever need to steal some lines back for FTA satellite stuff.)

Anyway, I agree that this is a very nice alternative when it comes to combining a variety of antennas into a merged system. Thanks for sharing.

- Mark
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