On Sun, 3/9/2025 10:26 AM, No mail wrote:
My TV is now some distance away from the socket for the terrestrial TV aerial so I'm looking for ways to avoid the need for a cable between the two. We watch very little terrestrial TV so I don't want to invest a lot of time/money in solving the
problem (digging out walls, floors or ceilings is not an option) but it would be good to have a back-up to the internet connection. We're in a weak signal area so an internal aerial isn't an option.
- I'm wondering whether it would be viable to site a STB near the aerial socket and then connect the STB to the TV (or A/V amp) with an HDMI wireless link - has anyone tried this with success (or failure)?
- Is there another solution that I should be investigating?
There is a SiliconDust tuner, with Ethernet and Wifi output.
The packaging seems smaller than the older ones (which were the
size of hifi component boxes).
https://shopuk.silicondust.com/shop/product-category/hardware/
To work with the Ethernet (if you wanted to do that), you could use
Power Line Networking, and send the Ethernet signal over mains
to a matching Power Line unit elsewhere in the house, where it comes
back out as Ethernet.
But with Wifi available, there is no need for a Power Line technique.
The box can Wifi to your router.
There is much research still to be done, about a unit like that.
For example, if the networking is 802.11n (old school), there
isn't likely to be a lot of margin on four channels of output.
Newer Wifi standards don't guarantee much of anything. Boxes
like this, the design could have some amount of old school materials
(be based on a SOC, and not modular design, and only the silicon
tuner chips would be separate, which is the RF front end).
If you used the DVR feature, you would need Guide Data (which always
has an annual fee -- any time someone attempts to offer such data
for free, usually the service stops pretty quickly).
This isn't the same unit, but I bet the silicon inside it is the
same, and it runs different firmware. But the "behaviors" (no remote control) should be similar enough. I can't see a reason it would use the
encrypted channels feature, as it's just not the same kind of TV.
The UK version would work with different standards. I was hoping for a takeapart, to show what the chip count is like. You won't be running
ATSC 3, so there wont be a problem with audio where you are. We don't
run ATSC 3 here either, as far as I know. If we do, then I would consider
it to be very poorly advertised if so. My tuner and STB are 8VSB,
which is the older standard.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/624370/hdhomerun-flex-4k-review.html
There are likely to be better versions of that, and that's just an
illustration of a box. There is not generally a lot of head-to-head
competition for that company. Other tuning solutions don't generally
match them for feature set. Maybe there is a patent involved or something.
Since broadcast TV is a dying thing, the choices of chips for the job,
might not be as wide as it was at one time. That's part of the problem
when shopping for tuners, is the question of "what is left" for chips.
The existence of a box like that, is not an indication that the tuner
industry is "healthy".
Paul
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