Its not well known but the DVB-T version of the HDHomeRun networked TV tuner also allows each tuner to work as a DVB-C tuner for Free-To-Air channels – potentially very useful in continental europe where some cable providers have a lot of FTA content. Up to now there have been two issues with this:

1, The tuners struggled to tune anything in

2, When they did tune anything Media Cent(er)(re – sorry Josh)  would not find the channels as DVB-C is not directly supported under cable (Clear-QAM is but that is slightly different)

SiliconDust’s beta resolve both of these issue but somewhat strangely:

First from reports on the forums tuning seems to work really well on tuner 1 but poorly on tuner 0.

Secondly to tune in MC you first set up the scan in the HDHomeRun software as Digital Cable but in Media Centre you say you have a Terrestrial tuner and choose the HDHomerun. Scanning terrestrial channels in Media Center(OK Josh) causes the cable channels you scanned earlier to magically appear.

http://www.silicondust.com for more details but very interesting stuff – although only having one tuner working properly does make for an expensive box.

Edit: thought I’d better explain the Josh comments – these refer to Josh Pollard from The DigitalMediaZone and the Entertainment 2.0 Podcast and if you want to know what it is all about I suggest you listen to their Europe we still love you edition of the podcast.

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