SiliconDust had two new products to show us at CES this morning. The first is called the Scribe Duo. It’s essentially an HDHomeRun Duo with a hard drive and their DVR software built in. If you’ve been considering cutting the cord, the Scribe Duo could be the perfect starter device for you.
The Scribe Duo will let you watch and record two over-the-air (OTA) channels at the same time. With the built-in 1 TB hard drive you can record up to 150 hours of HDTV. If you subscribe to HDHomeRun Premium TV you could record around 1000 hours of content from the streaming service. There are many ways to use an HDHomeRun tuner to record TV, but this one doesn’t require an always-on PC, a NAS, or any other technology that my be confusing to new cord cutters.
If you already have tuners from SiliconDust you can use the Scribe Duo to expand your system. If you’re an HDHomeRun DVR subscriber already you can set the Scribe Duo up as your new DVR. We asked if they had plans for migrating files from an existing DVR configuration to the Scribe Duo. Currently they don’t have that built in to the software. It should absolutely be doable manually though. Their DVR just writes out TS files, and they can easily be moved and copied to other devices already. The files also don’t have any pesky DRM (unless you’re recording from cable with an HDHomeRun Prime and your provider locks down its channels.)
Perhaps the biggest competitor to the Scribe Duo is Amazon’s Fire TV Recast. Amazon’s box has half the storage, isn’t expandable, and costs $30 more. The Recast is also enormous compared to the Scribe Duo, as you can see from our photo. That just goes to show what can be accomplished when creating your own device versus using off-the-shelf reference hardware from Broadcom.
SiliconDust told us that the device is already in production, and they are confident that they will begin accepting pre-orders in late March. The Scribe Duo should go on sale in April. It will have a retail price of $199. It also includes a free year of HDHomeRun DVR service, which saves you $35 for the first year of service. If you’re already a subscriber, then the free year will stack on top of your existing subscription.
That wasn’t the only announcement from SiliconDust. Keep an eye on the DMZ for more news, and all week long from CES!
