I
f you’re cutting the cord like many Americans or trying to reduce your cable bill by getting rid of costly boxes to rent for DVR Features then you have probably been looking into a solution that includes a SiliconDust Tuner and Kodi.tv.
Well lucky for you SiliconDust has just released a Beta Version of their new Add-on for Kodi.tv that will let you watch all of your TV Programs on Cable or Over The Air depending on your Model without the need for finding hard to configure workarounds.
The first thing you should know is the Kodi.tv plugin is only for SiliconDust’s Newer models of Tuners. If you have one of the original Tuners the Techs at SiliconDust tell us that there are hardware limitations that won’t allow them to upgrade your firmware to let it work with this plugin.
However this plugin will work with both their Antenna and Cable TV tuners. With the limitation that only copyfree stations can be sent to your TVs. I guess that means if you have a subscription to HBO or if large numbers of your stations are copy protected like Comcast does at my local headend you won’t be able to view stations like FoxNews, FX FXX FoxSports AMC Bravo and many others even though they are not pay stations. I am not sure why my local Comcast does this and they probably shouldn’t be doing it but they do and like everyone knows there is no telling the cable company what to do even when they’re wrong. I mean why do they let you get MSNBC their own network but not FoxNews? hmmmm yeah there is something going on there.
Anyway at this time the following devices are compatible with the Kodi.tv Add-on
HDHR3-CC CableCard (copy-freely channels only)
HDHR4-2US
HDTC-2US
HDHR4-2DT (coming soon)
The next thing you should know is that you can have more than one SiliconDust device so if you have many TVs or if you want to record a number of shows while also watching a number of shows you can have access to all of it.
Unfortunately this Add-on does not allow you to record TV like you can with Windows Media Center. If you want to Record Live TV or schedule recordings you will still need to use a Media Center Computer.
What you do get is access to your TV Guide which is free. Some software requires you to pay for Guide Service and it is never free. With Microsoft Media Center Microsoft is picking up the cost from Zap2it and for this Add-on SiliconDust will be covering the cost for you.
How do you install the SiliconDust Add-on for Kodi.tv?
The process is pretty painless you can either get the add-on directly from silicondust or through your kodi video add-on section.
Your SiliconDust must be connected to your network and working.
As soon as you install the Add-on your tuners should be available.
Its basically a couple clicks and you’re done. There is no extended channel scan or setup necessary.
The direct link for the current release is
http://download.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/script.hdhomerun.view-2015.3.20b1.zip
As you can see the b1 on the end means its Beta
Final Note
Although this is an improvement over accessing your channels through Microsoft Media Center this add-on does have a few drawbacks. It does not interface with your Media Center to allow you to make use of DVR Functions and does not provide them on its own.
The main use of this Add-on is to allow lower end devices that can run Kodi to access your SiliconDust for Live TV and thats great.
We hope that there might be an additional add-on for the Simple.tv devices that SiliconDust is manufacturing for that company.
One important note is that you can not access this information without the use of a network connection.
That is a little unfortunate since many OTA broadcasts now include a Digital TV Guide in their signal but there are probably problems with all of the devices working together.
So if you have a SiliconDust that is one of the Newer ones and you use Kodi.tv get on this add-on it will make your Live TV viewing experience much easier and its free.