HDHomeRUn Prime for $65 after discounts

I just mentioned this tuner from Silicondust the other day and now Newegg has it at a discount price on it when using MasterPass checkout and a promo code. 

As I found on Slickdeals.net

"Newegg has SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime Triple Networked HDTV Tuner (HDHR3-CC) for $79.99 - $15 Off with MasterPass Checkout via Newegg Mobile App with promo code MBLMASTER15 = $64.99. Shipping is free. Thanks hookemut25"


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Build Your own DVR for ~$200

The normal price for our HD DVR from Comcast is $20 a month.   Thats  pretty pricey.   You could buy a TiVo Roamio for $150 and buy lifetime service for $500 but thats $650 total and pretty pricey too.  

Another solution is to use a CableCard tuner with your computer and make your own DVR.   You can get a setup working to replace a DVR for $100-$200.    This does require that you already have a computer and internet connection at home but I'm guessing thats a safe assumption.

One such CableCard tuner is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME    Currently those run about $100 on Amazon or Newegg, but you can watch for sales and discounts and probably get one a bit cheaper.


Here is a YouTube video about setting up the HDHomeRun Prime to work as a cable TV decoder and a DVR.   He also has a follow up updated video
 
If you want you can connect your TV directly to your computer and watch the programming like that but that may not be convenient or work well if your TV and computer aren't usually in the same rooms. The video recommends using media extenders like either a Ceton Echo ($100) or a Xbox 360 4GB ($176) to watch the programs on individual TVs.    You can also pick up a refurbished Xbox 360 from Gamestop for $90-$120.

Between a HDHomeRun PRIME and a Ceton Echo you're in for about $200 total to make your own DVR setup on one TV.   You can cover more TVs with more Echos for $100 each.


Note the video also recommends using wired ethernet connections instead of wireless.   So that  means you would have to have physical wired network cables connecting the HDHomeRun and the media extenders.   Depending on your setup that may be more cumbersome.   You can try wireless to see how well it works of course  but note their recommendation is for wired connection.

This kind of solution takes a little bit of technical savvy but its not nearly as complex as building a Linux based PC DVR.   The boxes are designed to be more user friendly and are compatible with typical Windows OS systems that more of us are familiar with.  

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Merry Christmas

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You Should Buy a House, (Unless you Live in San Jose, San Francisco, New York City, Boston or Seattle)

I'm going to make a broad generalization here :  You're probably better buying a house than renting in most of America.   Only a handful of cities with very expensive real estate are exceptions.   I'd also assume you're going to stay in a home for a reasonable period of time and assume generally average costs otherwise.

I will support this conclusion by looking at cost of housing vs rent in each city from my old article
Estimating Rental Investment Returns per Major Metropolitain Areas  And then I can take those and figure which cities favor renting vs buying.    The New York Times has a nice buy vs rent calculator to help you figure if buying or renting is a good idea.    So I simply take the figures for median home values and rents from my article and plug them into the NYT calculator.   To make it easy I started with the cities where being a landlord is worse deal which means that housing costs are high compared to rents.   I can do that by looking at the sorted list of lowest return for rent/housing cost.   San Jose is at the top of the list and the NYT calculator says for the $570,000 home cost there you are better off renting if rent is $2,066 or less.   But the average rents are $1,460 so yes in that city you're generally better off renting.   I went down the list and had similar results for San Francisco, NYC, Boston and Seattle.     #6 on the list is Providence, RI, where the houses cost $217,000.   The NYT calculator says you're better off renting if rent is $847 or less and the average rents are just a hair more at $849. 

So based on general numbers only the top 5 most renter friendly metros are better places to rent than to buy.   San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Seattle.   In those 5 cities its generally cheaper long run to rent.  The other 43 cities on the list are all better places to buy than rent.   I would also then make the assumption that the smaller cities and rural areas in the US are generally going to be better to buy than rent as well as generally housing is lower in small towns and rural areas.   Of course there will be exceptions out there.

Of course there are major holes in my methodology here.  I used the average figures in the NYT calculator and thats not something you can assume.  Property taxes, insurance, etc vary widely across the country so to get a better result I'd have to find and plug in the averages for each city.  But thats far to much work for a lazy blogger like myself to do.


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