HDHomeRun Flex 4K ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV: 2/4 Tuners HDFX-4K

This was a quick setup that was actually so easy it threw me for a loop. I had no choice but to get a replacement for my Amazon Fire TV Recast. Support was dropped for that and mine finally just failed. After reading reviews, I settled on the 4 tuner (4 x ATSC 1.0, with 2 x ATSC 3.0 capable). There are a couple of things to be aware of on this model and I'm going to go with them under the pros and cons, but suffice it to say, so far, I'm satisfied with it. I wasn't satisfied with my Recast unit from almost day 1, but read on. Pros 1. Handles through ATSC 3.0 so it'll do NextGen channels if you have them in your area and your gear is capable of getting them. 2. Has four tuners so you can record or watch programming on four different tuners, though only two can handle ATSC 3.0. 3. The apps to facilitate getting programming from the HD Homerun appear to work well so far on both the Fire TV, Windows 11, and Android. Scratch that - they work. The Windows 11 app almost locked my system up solid while doing this review. 4. The picture is not only good, on HD broadcasts, it's OUTSTANDING on both the Fire TV and via the Windows app, and it looks fine on the phone, but why bother with a phone when you've got a larger screen? Cons 1. This doesn't come with a guide - if you want the guide and DVR capability you have to do the following: a. Shell out $35.00 for a year of DVR / Guide capability b. Shell out for an external hard drive - yeah, you heard that right - this comes with no hard drive c. While I have nothing good to say about my previous Recast unit, at least that came with a guide, DVR capability and a TB of storage for $179. This was $199 with no no disk or guide. 3. That you even have to use an app to view it on the Fire TVs, but it's not an Amazon product 4. While you may see that I did a scan and found 99 channels (I have 2 x HD OTA antennas) probably 10 to 12 of those cannot be viewed because they're DRM protected So, with those cons, why did I buy this one? First, read the reviews on the other units outside of Amazon. From what I could find online, the top models appeared to be the Silicon Dust HD Homerun models, the Tablos, and the ZapperBox. They each had their pros and cons and the ZapperBox also has a similar setup to the HD Homerun for recording and a guide. The Tablo would have been the more economical model in initial cost, that it came with storage, and has no charge for it's guide. Unfortunately, it's only equipped for ATSC 1.0 (I'd like to be ready for 3.0) and if you look at some of the reviews, no thanks, they're not very good. There was a greater than 20% return rate on the models I looked at on Amazon. I already had enough of that with my Recast unit. So that's why I went with the HD Homerun 4-tuner model. My photos include out of the box (the first 2), via the Fire TV app, and on my Windows 11 Desktop which uses an HDMI input into the same Fire TV as it's monitor. These photographs do not do the HD broadcast pictures any justice. You have to see them in person. Yes, I'd recommend this just out of taking everything into account including technology, customer service (I read ZapperBox now has customers IM or email them?), cost, and the aggravation I was hoping to avoid. It's my hope that in the future, some company will come out with something that's a bit more reasonably priced overall, like the Recast was, if only it had worked right out of the gate.

Should have got this sooner! We got local channels as part of a streaming package but lost access to a channel my wife watches so started looking at over the air antennas but that meant running coax. The HDHomeRun Flex needs an antenna but doesn’t need to be located where we watch. It just needs power and an Ethernet cable to connect to a router or wifi extender. The unit itself has no WiFi and the connection to your router should be solid. I don’t know if it can be beat for ease of setup and quality of instructions. The picture quality is excellent on good stations and the tuner pulled in more stations than my TV tuner could. They make it easy to just turn off and skip all the home shopping and other annoying channels too. It found over 100 channels where I am and being able to cut out the clinkers easily is valuable. We use Roku boxes and Apple tablets to watch. Now we can tune in local news or whatever on a tablet for less TV-centric viewing. I don’t have a hard drive hooked up yet for DVR functionality but it looks easy to set up recordings. You get free channel guides forward and back 3 days but 2 weeks into the future with ongoing recording schedules costs $35/year. With a hard drive and the schedule subscription it functions the same as something like YouTubeTV where you can have recordings - only you really have them unlike YouTubeTV where they live on their servers. That’s good and bad. You can always play them back on the HDHomeRun Flex even without the subscription (according to the website) but you have to supply the storage and it supports multiple kinds. You can use a NAS or computer to store videos but I’m going dedicated external hard drive. They say 18 hours of video can be stored on 500Gb for sizing. And the storage can span devices. The flexibility is pretty amazing. I’m not compensated or paid or a vine reviewer. I don’t have experience with the other OTA DVRs. But this is a pretty full house solution. Very flexible, very powerful, great picture quality, and no problem recommending it if you’re looking for an OTA DVR.

I am leaving this review as someone who has had two Tablo products, neither of which lasted more than a few months before breaking down. Tablo seems like a better solution to me if it wasn't for their poor reliability! The interface is easier to navigate, though it is somewhat slower responding to input from the remote. The HDHomeRun is faster, but it's not very stable. It initially worked with my Roku when I first got it a few days ago, but then refused to pause, FF, or RW. I trIed calling their support number but got voice mail saying they would return my call "in the order received." So I sent them an email instead. They replied to me after two days, which is not acceptable to me, though Tablo support is just as bad. I was hoping for better. So what is their response to my Roku complaint? Yeah, there's a problem and we're working with them to fix it, but no timetable! So, to get my sweet wife off my back I ordered a Firestick and it does seem to work better with HDHomeRun, but still not completely stable. I had to reboot my firestick a couple of times to get them to work together. I even got a “404 page not found error” once. This is really not acceptable, by which I mean the reliability AND their lack of support, for a product that costs $200. Based on my experience, the reviews that are glowingly positive are either lies or they somehow got a much better sample than I! UPDATE 04-13-2024: More difficulties. It has now stopped interacting with Roku. It will go to a blank blue screen with the time when I select the HD app and will not respond when I click the roku remote. But more importantly, I am having difficulties with the app on my new firestick as well. When watching a recorded show it will very frequently stop and say either "Unable to connect to channel" or "Unable to play stream" and then drop back to the recorded shows screen. However, it doesn't show any recorded shows, even though I have several recorded. If I exit the app and click it again the recorded shows are back but when clicked it doesn't remember where it had left off. So we start at the beginning and FF til we get back where we were. However, it will do the same thing all over again. So in an effort to troubleshoot I replaced the 256 gig flash drive with an external 1tb hard drive, but I am getting the same thing. My network is fairly robust and shows a download speed of about 200 megs when tested with the Okla app on my phone. For this reason and because their support is difficult to contact I am reducing my rating to one star. UPDATE 04-18-2024; So I called tech support (Which again is not directly reachable) and left a message for them to call me. To my surprise, they called me the following day and immediately knew what my issue was, partially because I had indicated in the phone app that it should share app data with them. The problem was this; when I went thru all the options on my phone app I had checked the "record to this device" option, thinking it meant to record to the hdhomerun device, not my phone. But apparently it was attempting to record to the phone rather than the flash drive i had plugged into the HDHR. One can maybe see why this would cause issues! Once I disabled this option I have had no further issues! I am still not entirely pleased with their support, hence minus one star. If I had been able to reach them in the beginning we could have averted all this!

Update: January 7, 2026 I will upgrade my original 3-star review and criticism to 5 stars now, because several updates to the HDHomeRun's firmware have resulted in a stable system that can now provide very good connections to all of my devices, including Roku TVs. All good now, and I'm very pleased with it. Like many new devices, the firmware often lags the release of the hardware. The newest firmware (and hopefully that's what ships with newly-purchased models) has closed the loop, and I'm a very happy customer. I can also report that it works consistently and well with my Linux server that hosts Jellyfin in my home. Happy, happy! --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my first day with this device, and it's been a long day because I just can't leave an unresolved issue alone! The picture quality is excellent! It easily found all my local channels, and there were a lot of them in the Salt Lake City area where I live (Utah County). Even though mountains get in the way, it still worked well. I have a 4-bay UHF antenna with built-in amplifier in my attic to reduce the effect of a 75-foot coax cable. OK, so that's the good part. Now the not-so-good part: The apps are quite (ahem) variable. It took me two hours of trying over and over again to get either of my two iPhones (X Pro Max, and 13 Pro Max) to connect. The app kept reporting over and over that it couldn't find the tuner. I had exactly the same problem with my two iPads (a 9th gen, and a 3/2025 version). All using the latest OS updates, and all gave the same report--no tuner found. I accidentally discovered the key: Reboot the phone or iPad! It worked fine on all 4 devices after a reboot of each. My new M4 Mac Mini also stumbled but finally connected. Roku support is really terrible. One TV works great with the HD HomeRun (channel) app, but after I exit the channel, it totally disappears from the home screen. Each time I want to use it, I have to re-load it by searching for it in the channel store. That's just awful. I also have a 2-month-old Roku Ultra, but it refuses to find the tuner. The weird part is that it says it is trying to locate an MDU (from Silicon Dust's website, this stands for Multi Dwelling Units--a commercial product). Roku is the most popular TV OS in the USA, and this company is going to sink themselves if they can't get a decent Roku app fixed right. Roku has tens of thousands of other channels and apps, and these guys stand alone in somehow not being compatible! I also had trouble following their incredibly skimpy instruction sheet provided in the box. It assumes too much, and doesn't provide any remediation if something doesn't follow the ideal scenario they describe. I downloaded and installed the Windows 11 app from the Microsoft Store per SD's instructions, and it too could not find the tuner until I went to the command line and pinged the tuner's IP address I was able to determine with Advanced IP Scanner (a free piece of software that allows you to scan your own home wired and wireless networks). After I was successful is getting pings back from the tuner, suddenly the Windows app discovered it. Maybe pinging it helped the weak network discovery process in the app. Dunno for sure. The Google TV app works fine BTW. No issues there. So anyway, I hooked up a USB drive and tested the recording and DVR capabilities, which worked just fine. It worked well enough that I decided to buy the extended DVR recording capabilities. That went well. You buy the $35/year license, get a code from an email they sent within just a few minutes, enter the code, and it just works. Hey, some of the software works! So...do I plan to keep it? Yes, but mainly because I'm going to connect it to my Jellyfin server, which will help me avoid the use of the horrible apps these guys are putting out right now. All my TVs and players will interface with the tuner through Jellyfin. Their user interface (UI) reminds me of the much-hated BMW i-Drive from the mid 2000's: Wonky and built to one person's view on how a UI should be built. Not at all intuitive, but I guess I can get used to it. Some of the keyboard or remote control key commands either don't make sense, or don't work at all. This is the case for all devices I tested, whether on Windows, Mac, iOS devices or TVs. A rookie mistake I see on all of these interfaces is that they sometimes highlight two different unrelated menu actions at the same time, causing you to press "OK" or "Enter" and something unexpected happens. For example, "Live" has a shaded focus, indicating that you just moved the cursor to it, but "Recordings" shows as brightly bolded. Which do you think will take effect when you press OK? I still don't know, but I think it's "Live". As a user, I shouldn't need to guess. I included a photo of this very thing, taken from an Android TV screenshot. In another example, pressing some of the buttons on the Roku remote results in a black screen with no sound. Just sits there doing nothing until I press something else to recover. A good UI designer would map all possible keystrokes and trap them for at least a default screen like, "Sorry, try again" or similar. Rookies. In summary: Great hardware (5 stars), and I hope the software (apps and UI = 1 star or less) can catch up. This also includes the underlying software used for device discovery that needs serious help. It seems to me that network discovery of the tuner should be the first priority, because that's what everyone first has to face. I can't see their code, but in my opinion, they have some timing issues. The software does a network scan in less than a second, then gives up, asking the user to hit the retry button. The "retry" should be happening automatically for some timeout period. Each time several of my devices failed to initially "find" the tuner, another device was nearby, either pinging the tuner successfully, or playing video from one of the 4 channels. And yes, I also tried this with no clients connected, just to make sure it wasn't a congestion issue, although it's all connected over 2.5Gbps Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi 6. I respect all the effort put into this system by SiliconDust, and I don't want to see these guys go under because they couldn't get decent programming help.

Update: I've been so frustrated with the constant freezing. I basically never watch antenna TV anymore because of it and customer support's usual answer along the lines of "it could be worse." In fact, I forgtt all about even having it until I saw the auto payment for another year of the dvr service. I saw it to late to cancel, but I don't renew next year, for certain. I don't even use it anymore until Sundays when I'm trying to watch football on my local station. I miss so many plays because of the freezing and having to restart (and missing every play that happened during that process), but that's not the only problem with live tv. Pausing hardly ever works, and more often than not, when I unpause, it skips right to live and I'm unable to rewind. When I watch something I've recorded, maybe the whole episode will be there... but maybe it crashes. In any case, if i try to pause, it restarts at the beginning. At one point, I blamed the Roku HDHomeRun app, but I later downloaded the app on an Amazon Fire TV, and wouldn't you know it, I have the same problems. I absolutely cannot recommend this product, which makes me sad bc it had a lot of promise, and I paid good money for it. Original review: The only reason I need a tuner/dvr at all is so I can record NFL games—I don't want to miss one while I'm watching another that's being broadcast at the same time, and I want to be able to skip commercials (and sometimes the announcers' chatter). I've tried several OTA receivers/DVRs but finally settled on the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K. The SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K is dead simple to set up: plug in coax cable from the antenna, plug included ethernet cable into the HDHomeRun and your router, plug included power supply in. The HDHomeRun isn't connected to your television, only to your router (and antenna and power)—it streams your OTA channels to your TVs and other devices via app. Viewing OTA (antenna) TV: My two main TVs are Roku Tvs (and a rarely-used 3rd TV uses a Roku device), so I just added the HDHomeRun app. I didn't need to do anything else to view all my OTA channels, not even run a channel scan. I spent a total of about 2 minutes from opening the box to watching TV (and probably 60 seconds of that was bc my arthritic hands had trouble tightening the coax cable). I wasn't missing any of the 77 channels my TV found when the antenna cable was connected directly to the TV. (Incidentally, HDHomerun was not my first choice: I bought a Tablo Dual Lite first, but it could not find as many channels, and not the local networks that broadcast NFL games at all, so I returned it asap.) The picture through the HDHomeRun is clearer than watching when watching from my Dish, which surprised me. Note: Some Samsung TVs cannot get audio when using the HDHomeRun. The site's FAQ says "To hear audio, you need a TV, AV receiver, or soundbar that can decode Dolby Digital or AC3 audio over HDMI. Most modern TVs can do this, though we’ve noticed a few Samsung TVs cannot." DVR: If you want DVR functionality, you'll pay $35/year, and plug in an external hard drive to your HDHomeRun via usb. I tested the DVR functions via the HDHomeRun app on my laptop and on my phone. I started recording a program already in progress. I scheduled recording for a program that would start about a half hour in the future. I used the search bar to schedule recordings of all NFL games, on any channel, at any time. Super easy. The quality of the recording is great. Here's where things get a little less than ideal. I could not for the life of me figure out how to use the DVR functions from the Roku app. I submitted a support ticket to Silicone Dust, and they told me how to find my recordings (just hit the "back" arrow button on the Roku remote), but I can't schedule recordings from the Roku app... yet. I'll paste Silicone Dust's email below: The Roku version of the HDHomeRun app is getting some long overdue updates to help bring it in-line with the HDHomeRun app for other platforms. We'll be adding the ability to schedule recordings, search guide data, and more, in the coming months. When you open the Roku app, it will start playing the last played channel right away. Pressing left/right arrows will bring up the live channel switcher. Icons and guide data might take a moment to load, and we are working to improve those loading times. Pressing "Back" from live TV will bring you to a new "Live/Recorded/Discover/Tasks" screen. Selecting "Live" will bring you back to the live view on whatever channel was being watched before Selecting "Recorded" will show recordings if you are using the HDHomeRun DVR service Selecting "Discover" will give you our guide discover view. Selecting a TV program from "Discover" will show a summery for that program, and will show the current and future episodes (if the program is a TV show and not a movie). If a program is available on more than one channel, you will also see those options listed here. In the future you will be able to use this view to also schedule recordings if you are subscribed to the HDHomeRun DVR service.

This is kind of lengthy... Previously, for the past 6 years, our household used a “Tablo” as our in-home OTA DVR solution. For that purpose, it worked fairly well. I won’t go into any of the downsides, but the final deal killer was the inability to access it remotely using Roku devices. No matter how many router tweaks and settings such as port forwarding I tried, Roku just couldn’t access it. The only thing that worked was using a smartphone. All we wanted was the ability to access our local news broadcasts and sporting events when out of town. We thought we had found a solution by subscribing to “YouTube TV” which provides local channels as part of the package. Imagine our disappointment when on our first trip out of town, we could not get any of our hometown stations but instead those of where we were at the time. Upon our return, I resolved to finally replace the “Tablo” with a SiliconDust “HDHomeRun Flex 4K”. Operationally, much like the “Tablo”, you connect an OTA antenna to the unit, connect to your home network and then power it up. One of the nice things about the “Tablo” is that you can connect to your home network wirelessly. The “HDHomeRun” requires a wired ethernet connection. This meant we would have to run ethernet cable from our router to where the unit would reside. Fortunately for us this was something we did last year for different reasons but in the process, the “Tablo” was connected directly as well which greatly improved its responsiveness and stability. Unboxing the “HDHomeRun” and connecting it in place of the “Tablo” took only a few minutes. I used the “HDHomeRun” app on my android phone while connected to the same network to finish up firmware upgrades and channel scans. The “HDHomeRun”, when connected to our attic antenna, picked up 52 local ATSC 1.0 channels and 4 ATSC 3.0 stations. Now, the main reason we selected the “HDHomeRun” was its ability to integrate with our “Plex Media Server” which we have had operating for years. Within just minutes, the “HDHomeRun” was setup within Plex which, as part of our lifetime pass, provides a guide for all of the channels the “HDHomeRun” found. Plex also provides native DVR support so no additional storage devices or fees to SiliconDust for their DVR functionality. What Plex won’t do is decode AC-4 audio (blame FFmpeg) which is what the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts come with. Not a huge problem since all of the ATSC 1.0 audio channels work just fine. We anticipate that Plex/FFmpeg will provide the AC-4 decoder eventually as ATSC 3.0 adoption picks up, but the main thing is, since Plex is a server, we can access it remotely which means all of our local channels are available remotely as well. “HDHomeRun” also has a Windows 10 app which was downloaded to test. That worked great and after downloading a couple of drivers it said it needed, including a 99 cent one from Microsoft, I was able to play the ATSC 3.0 channels with audio as well. Some users have complained about channel changes taking a long time. For us this is 2-3 seconds. I challenge anyone to go from one YouTube or Roku channel to another much faster. All in all, to date, this change over has worked out well. It picks up all of the local free channels we could ever need. Subjectively, we also think the image quality is great. If I had a wish list, it would be that the “HDHomeRun” apps provided more native info and/or metadata about each channel such as the kind of audio track being listened to and the video resolution. Kind of like YouTube providing “Stats for Nerds” on each of its videos. We’re not sure if we are future proofed on the ATSC 3.0 roll-out but that was not the only or even main part of the reason for our purchase decision. What we wanted is what we got, and it works very, very well.

If you are a casual user looking for a network-based gateway to watch or record broadcast TV, this is not the device for you. This device is for the technical hobbyist crowd. That said, if you pair this device with something like Channels or Plex, and the right streaming client, I think it can be a great setup. But I was frankly just looking for a way to watch broadcast TV anywhere in my house without having to run coax to every room, including on my desktop and laptop PCs, tablets, and phones. This is actually the second time I've tested an HD Homerun Flex 4K. The first time was about a year and a half ago and from my testing, almost nothing at all has changed with the product in that time. While the hardware is great, the software is very weak, especially if you are a Roku user. I have three different generation Roku Ultras (4802R, 4760X, 4660X). The only one it works somewhat reliably on is the latest one, the 4802R. On the others, it is completely unstable and crashes and freezes quite often. Since my first, test, I actually now have run coax to 3 TVs and they all get the major over-the-air stations in my area without issue. The Flex 4K is no different and actually picks up quite a few more channels (about a dozen), all of which are completely unwatchable because they are too weak, so I have to remove those manually form the channel list on the Flex 4K (my TVs don't find those weak channels typically). The other big issue with this hardware is with ATSC 3.0. With DRM now becoming more common, it is questionable whether buying a Flex 4K makes sense. Only one of my Rokus, the 4802R, is capable of decoding the audio on ATSC 3.0. And since my first test, one of my local stations (Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ) is now using DRM, I cannot even watch it using ATSC 3.0 (1.0 is fine). That said, I can watch all the non-DRM ones on the 4802R mostly without issues (I do seem to have some audio syncing issues at times). I also have an Apple TV and ATSC 3.0 works fine most of the time on that as well (I do occassionally see "jitter" issues with the picture on Apple TV). On one of my old Samsung TVs with a Roku, no audio works at all, even on ATSC 1.0. I believe this is a common issue though on older Samsung TVs that don't have the ability to decode the audio built in. This is one of the TVs I ran coax too and can watch OTA with the built in tuner. I am able to watch live TV using the HD Homerun software on my Mac laptop, Apple iPads, and iPhones, so that is nice and is most likely how I'll use this most of the time. I tested Tablo devices as well, including the latest one. While I think the Tablo is probably best for the less technical user, it is lacking in many ways, such as no desktop client and no Apple TV client (although one is in beta at time of this writing). And honestly, the Tablo client would crash as well on Roku occasionally (but it worked even on my old Samsung TV). Its channel to channel changing time is also very slow compared to the Flex 4K. Is $200 a lot for casual OTA viewing? Probably. I probably would have been fine with a Flex Duo as I don't see ever using all 4 tuners at once, but I figured I'd get the Flex 4K and hope that maybe public pressure will cause the broadcasters to pull back on DRM (I know, wishful thinking!). Or maybe Silicon Dust will figure out a way to support DRM (rumors seem to indicate that may be possible). I do have a Plex Server running on a Synology NAS I use for my own media content, and I did try integrating the Flex 4K with Plex, but my Synology is just not powerful enough to do the transcoding, so it cannot play back cleanly. I'm considering maybe building a Plex Server on a NUC for this purpose (which means more time and money, which is why I say this I not for the casual user). Just know what you are getting if you decide to buy one of these.

I purchased this item and it worked as advertised. The setup was easy basically plug and play. The scan pulled most of my local channels with the the exception of my ATSC 3.0 channels which are blocked due to DRM encryption. I was also able to incorporate the channels into my Plex Media Server with no issues which allows me to access my channels and movies away from home. Despite the lack of ability to pull ATSC 3.0 channels, I recommend this item.