Hi everyone, As other list members may remember I bought a Silicondust TV Tuner a little while ago but have only now found the time to get the unit up and running. Silicondust specialise in TV tuners and several models are mode. Mine is the 4 tuner version so 4 FTA TV programmes can be viewed at once, 3 recorded at once whilst another is viewed and so on. The tuner is straight forward enough, just a small 4 inch square box with 3 connectors. One connector for your TV aerial, another for the DC power supply and the remainder is a LAN connector so the Tuner can connect to your Home network. Connection to the Home Network is the key here as the tuner is designed to stream around the house via the network. That means you can use Apps on your devices to call up a programme to watch at any time. For example I use VLC on my Android and IOS devices to select a channel to view. So that’s the very basics but what if you want to go further and actually view a programme guide and schedule recordings from there/ That can be done though it took me a little while to find an accessible way of doing this but I persisted and with the help of Google I’ve found a useable and accessible solution. Unfortunately the software that Silicondust bundles with their TV tuners is extremely grotty and even reviewers suggest a third party alternative. One of these alternatives just happens to be the Plex Media Server with a Plex Pass which I already have. Setting up Plex to recognise the Silicondust TV Tuner was easier than I expected. All I had to do was select PVR from the settings menu and I was guided through the setup thanks to a wizard in the HTML interface. The wizard detected the connected tuner and even did the channel scanning after I had specified my location and world region. Plex then gave me a choice of local tV Programe guides for my region and then commenced the download of the guide which took a little time. The guide is presented in the HTML interface though manipulating the guide may take some getting used to depending on how the guide is actually presented on screen. Recording is a snap, just press the Record button next to the programme you wish to schedule. A dialogue box then pops up so you may choose to record a series or just that one particular episode etc. You can choose where the recordings are stored and they can go anywhere including NAS storage drives if you would prefer. So that’s as far as I’ve gone with the Silicondust tuner and I’ll write more as I discover. Apple TV users may also be in luck as there is an App/Subscription TV guide service called Channels which uses an Apple TV App. I don’t as yet have an Apple TV so I have no idea just how useable this App would be. Now that I know the Channels App is available I’m more tempted than ever to shell out on an Apple TV and and see what results I can get with the Channels and other Apps.------------------------------
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