# USB adapter to record OTA on Roamio Plus/Pro



## s10023 (Nov 12, 2013)

please!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Or what about just supporting the HDHomeRun. It's a network based tuner.

I wouldn't mind seeing this since I have one station I can only get OTA and it would be nice to integrate those into my Roamio Pro.


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## flashedbios (Dec 7, 2012)

I think a USB adapter would be better. It would certainly be cheaper and more affordable, but then I have this to consider: The Higher end roamios have 6 tuners instead of 4 and thats the only advantage other than more recording space. Now, if you don't have cable and want to record OTA, I can't think of more than 4 stations that come in OTA that are worth recording, which are CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. and there are rarely shows on these OTA channels at the same time that I'd want to record. I mean CSI and Law and Order SVU are on at the same time but thats only one time per week. And thats covered by having only 2 tuners let alone 4 or 6. I guess what I'm getting around to asking is are there other features available in the plus / pro that make it worth spending the extra money on when all you have is OTA television?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The 6 tuner Roamios also have a built in TiVo Stream and built in MoCa. They also come in a bigger, nicer looking, case with built in power supply. Also the current limitation is that you have to choose either OTA or Cable, you can't get both at the same time.

An add-on like this that even just allowed you to record 2 OTA channels I think would be more then enough for most people. TiVo has done asynchronous recording before back when the S2DT could record 2 standard cable channels, but only one from the box, so they have experience with integrating stuff like this.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Integrating external tuners, especially from third parties like the HDHomeRun, seems extremely unlikely. I wonder how many people use the combined OTA + Cable at the same time in a Premiere, TiVo HD, or 4 tuner Roamio. There are tradeoffs, and cost is a huge factor. 4 OTA + 4 cable tuners probably cost about the same as 6 cable tuners. To keep from having to overhaul the scheduling code, they'd need to sell you as many OTA tuners as you have cable tuners (having an unbalanced number of tuners would complicate conflict resolution, etc). As constrained as TiVo development seems to be, I don't see this ever happening.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

It's my understanding that finding a chip that can tune 6 ATSC streams simultaneously is virtually impossible. The inventor of the HDHomeRun is actually a member of this forum. He mentioned in a post once that to get 4 cable tuners it required just 2 chips, but to get 4 ATSC tuners it required 9. This was a few years ago, so I'm sure things have changed a bit, but the big problem was that ATSC is a US only standard, whereas QAM is used in a bunch of different countries around the world making it much more widely used and as such developed for.

TiVo has done asymmetrical scheduling in the past. The S2DT unit had the capability of recording 2 things from it's internal cable tuners and one from the connected cable box. So they have experience with this type of thing.

That being said I think it's unlikely. As much as I'd like to see it I think the market for such a device would be limited and not worth the development effort.


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