Introducing HDHomeRun OTA Live for Roku (BETA)

Today, we are excited to announce, after years of requests, the first step in HDHomeRun support for Roku. We need to start out by saying this is very much a Beta product. It does not do many of the things you expect from a traditional HDHomeRun app. And because of that we’ve decided to give it a new name “HDHomeRun OTA Live.”

As you can probably guess from the title, this first app is solely dedicated to Over the Air Live TV viewing. Watch TV, check out the guide, change channels, do all the simple things you expect from a great Live TV app. But for now, we’re holding back DVR until we have it working beautifully. And we are still working on support for HDHomeRun Prime.

How To Install

First, before anything else, you need to have a compatible HDHomeRun device.

This is a beta app, which means you have to go through a small process to set things up. Visit my.roku.com, log in to your Roku account.

Update: The instructions for installing the old beta have been removed. The new method to install is the same as installing any other Roku channel. Search for HDHomeRun. Install.

And that’s it! You should have a fully working HDHomeRun Live app!

A Few Notifications

As previously stated, this is a beta app that only plays Live TV. Here are a few other things you should know about.

First, only Over the Air TV is supported at present. The HDHomeRun Prime is not currently officially supported in this release, but we are working to add support, and it likely will work with most cable providers outside of Comcast, as long as the channels are not DRM protected.

Second, 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. All Roku televisions should be able to play audio without any trouble.

Third, support is limited to those Roku devices that have been updated to support MPEG-2 with Firmware version 9.0 or above.

Conclusion

And that’s it. If you’ve got an HDHomeRun and a Roku, feel free to get testing!

Categories: Release | Technology

Tags: Beta | Cord Cutting | Roku