HDHomeRun: Difference between revisions
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Having an [http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun HDHomeRun] box on your network allows you to watch Live TV directly from XBMC. | Having an [http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun HDHomeRun] box on your network allows you to watch Live TV directly from XBMC. | ||
Revision as of 12:13, 19 March 2013
Having an HDHomeRun box on your network allows you to watch Live TV directly from XBMC.
What is HDHomeRun?
HDHomeRun (by SiliconDust) is a stand-alone Networked Digital Cable TV/HDTV Tuner box available in two models, one ATSC (American market) model and one DVB-T/DVB-C model (Europe/Australia/New Zealand/Taiwan).
You connect the TV antenna cable to the HDHomeRun box and it will scan and tune all channels, and via its built-in network-port the HDHomeRun box willl share and stream the channels over local-network using to supported clients such as XBMC.
hdhomerun:// network protocol
The hdhomerun:// protocol was released as a supported source in XBMC Media Center 8.10 and later.
To communicate with a HDHomeRun, add a new Source from the videos section in XBMC, the source should have a URL that looks like:
<xml> <source> <name>HDHomeRun</name> <path>hdhomerun://</path> </source> </xml>
How to watch live TV from an HDHomeRun device in XBMC
- We assume that your HDHomeRun device is up and running in your network and is accessible from the XBMC computer. To test that add a new video source and in a Browse dialog select an HDHomeRun device: after clicking on it XBMC will perform a network search and show you the list of available HDHomeRun devices. Verify that your device is in the list. You don't have to complete adding a new source and may click cancel at this point.
- XBMC accesses a live TV network video stream from an HDHomeRun device via a URL using a built-in HDHomeRun driver. You can either configure a corresponding video source for each channel that you want to watch from the HDHomeRun or you can generate a list of text files with .strm extension each of them containing a single URL line that points to a certain channel.
- To generate .strm files on a Windows computer see Windows HDHomerun Stream Builder or this guide. For a Linux or Mac OS X machine see here.
- Note: these scripts generate different output. If one didn't work for you, try another. For combination Eden beta/Fedora 16/HDHR Prime/Comcast Bay Area, hdhomeruntoolbox worked, while hdhr-mkchan did not.
- When you have the .strm files copy them to some folder on your XBMC machine and then create a new video source and point it to that folder. When you select that video source you'll see a list of .strm files. By clicking on any of them XBMC will play back a corresponding live TV channel. Switching channels is done exactly like switching between movies: stop the currently viewed channel then select and click on another one in the list.
- For XBMC on Windows to play live TV from an HDHomeRun you need to manually configure a firewall if it's turned on. Add a new rule for an application, select XBMC executable and then select "private" network and you are done.
- If you have any problems with configuring XBMC for HDHomeRun use reach out for help here.