Entry posted by SpiceWare
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I stopped by SiliconDust's site and noticed that a firmware update, for my HDHomeRun Dual tuners, was released a few days ago. So I downloaded the HDHomeRun Config utility onto my MacBook Pro and installed the firmware update.
When I've done the firmware updates in the past, I used the mini to do so. When I'd clicked on the View button nothing happened, so I thought it was an unsupported feature on the Mac. I wondered if perhaps that button worked now so clicked it, and lo-and-behold it launched VLC.
VLC isn't installed on the mini, so that's why nothing happened before. It would have been nice if HDHomeRun Config prompted an error such as Unable to launch VLC. Anyway, this is rather handy as I now have a way to watch live TV on my MacBook Pro without having to buy another copy of EyeTV.
Using this utility to change channels is a little clumsy due to ATSC's use of virtual channels. If you take a look at the first screenshot you'll see that Houston's CW channel 39.1 is broadcast on physical channel 38. Likewise Houston's NCB channel 2.1 is really broadcast on physical channel 35. Rather confusing.
I wondered if there might be another program that would let me watch live TV on my MacBook Pro without having to remember the physical/virtual channel relationships so did a search. I found HDHRControl linked to in this AVS Forum topic. It lets you map channels so you don't have to remember them. There's no instructions, but after some trial and error I figured out how to make it work and added a number of channel mappings to it.
The first channel I added was channel 8 - which was easy as it's actually broadcast on channel 8. I checked the channel out with HDHomeRun Config and clicked the Program dropdown to see all the subchannels for channel 8.
I then added 8.1 to HDHRControl. After that I clicked on Select Channel then Watch Live TV and was rewarded with PBS in VLC:
I then added 2.1 to HDHRControl using 35.1. Nothing happened when I clicked on Select Channel then Watch Live TV. I took a closer look at HDHomeRun Config
and after a while I finally realized what I'd done wrong. Virtual Channel 2.1 is broadcast on Physical Channel 35.3, nothing is broadcast on 35.1. I thought that was rather strange, but discovered the same situation with a number of other channels. If you look at the HDHRControl screen grab you'll see that VC 11.1 is on PC 11.3 and VC 13.1 is on PC 13.3. Not seen in the screenshot are channels 20.1 on 19.3, 26.1 on 26.3, 39.1 on 38.3, and 49.1 on 32.3. I find it rather bizarre that none of those channels used the .1 channel.
The one minor issue I have with HDHRControl is it doesn't provide a way to select which HDHomeRun Dual tuner to use. That could be a minor problem if the mini has both tuners in the detected HDHomeRun Dual already in use. If that happens to occur I can work around it by launching HDHomeRun Config, which lets me select from all detected tuners.
The HDHRControl program hasn't been updated since 2007, perhaps I'll have to look into writing my own channel selector/VLC launcher 
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