Beyond doubling down on cable television capabilities at CES, Silicon Dust also announced an upcoming cord cutter DVR. While the company has produced network tuners, basically forever, and been iterating on DVR software recently, the upcoming HDHomeRun Connect DUO+ is the first to merge both solutions within a single box, along with a hard drive. As such, the two-tuner Duo+ includes 250GB of storage, good for 60hrs of HD antenna recording. As opposed to TiVo or Channel Master, the Duo+ is more Tablo-like in that it’s a headless device that streams content through various platform apps, like Roku and Fire TV. Beyond claims of a mid-year release and reference to a DVR subscription fee (currently $35/yr), timing and pricing remain elusive.
Interesting trivia – Silicon Dust partnered with Simple TV back in the day to provide similar. So it’s been interesting to see them expand their software chops and now ready to execute this strategy on their own. (Will also be interesting to see if the final product is as compact and fan-free as the render…)
4 tuners would have been better, but if they have a decent price point around $199 or LESS ($149 would be better IMO) they could have a winner on their hands. Especially with guide data only being $35 a year.
Good news.
I’ll be interested if it will allow for adding at least one more 2-tuner HDHomeRun OTA box (Extend or Connect) to provide a little more headroom for recording and viewing live TV.
Mike, for comparison the 2-tuner Duo runs $100. But obviously no hard drive, not clear if beefier components will be required to power DVR, and if they’re including transcoding (they should). Also for comparison, the newer 2-tuner Tablo model, with starter storage of 64GB, retails for $220 – transcodes and includes WiFi.
krkaufman, I’m willing to bet you can link up multiple network tuners as they did mention adding this to Prime for a cable+ota solution.
This could be the first real competition to Tablo, however…
– Silicon Dust’s approach to UX has been anemic and their PC DVR UI is painfully beta
– There’s a monthly fee requirement and no lifetime option, defeating the purpose of cord cutting to eliminate monthly fees
I’m all for networked tuners with integrated DVRs, but Channel Master has blown it, and Silicon Dust’s traditionally DIY approach has me very skeptical that this will be a decent experience. I’m looking forward to seeing some in-depth reviews.
Still seems like my TiVo Romaio OTA I got for $200 was a better deal. Four tuners with no more fees. Two tuners wasn’t even enough for me sixteen years ago to record all my OTA HD programs.
I asked a few questions about the Connect Duo+ on their Facebook page, got some helpful answers: https://www.facebook.com/HDHomeRun/posts/10156193980551522
can able to watch LIVE TV through our HDHomeRun DVR app and can record, pause, rewind and schedule my favorite shows using the HDHomeRun DVR service
these features are amazing