Hauppauge Broadway, network/wifi tv tuner (works with ipad, iphone, android and any browser)

I was looking for a way to listen TV on my iphone. The easiest product, most complete, was the hauppauge broadway, an external networked (wifi/ethernet) tv tuner that has an ATSC/ClearQAM tuner. (it also have other video input, see the picture below).



The firmware version of my unit: v3.1.609
File size: 9.2 MB
Date: September 17, 2012

The setup is quite easy, you only have to point your browser to http://distan.tv and the magic does it! ( I don't know how they do it) . The wizard will help you to setup the device.  I was not able to have the wifi to work, but it is not a big hassle since my Broadway is near my main router.  The setup will also scan for channels. For me, the device did not found 1 of our local digital ATSC TV station, luckyly, I'm not interested in this tv channel :-)


The web interface is very simple and the TV tuner is protected by a NIP defaulted to 0000 written on the login screen (there is also an administrator password).

As seen on the screen shot, on the left section you can see the list of the available channel.  On the right, you see the tv channel with few controls (stop, pause, record, volume control)

One missing feature would be to add a description of the tv channel.  The device can connect to EPG provider, which is not available in my region.

There is an option to put the device to sleep when unused.

With this device, if you add an external hard disk drive, you can schedule recording. Unfortunately, you can not schedule recurrent show (in my case, I would like to record the simpsons everyday, but need to schedule it manually everyday).

On the left, you see the recording form.

The video quality is nice, and a 1h recording will use around 8GB of data on the hard drive.

Regarding the external hard disk drive, I uses a 2 TB seagate usb disk and even if the Broadway was able to format the disk correctly and I can access the recorded show, most of the time the system is not able to record because the drive is not detected. Have to disconnect the HD and replug it to make things work. This is very annoying since this feature is nice and unusable!

Finally, the thing that annoy me most, and make me wanting to change this device is the fact that it will not manage connection nicely. I mean that everyday I need to reboot the device because it thinks somebody else listen to tv (and there is only 1 connection available).

I contacted the Hauppage support service and they did nothing for me.  Their first reply told me to solve my USB drive problem on my computer and download the latest version of the software. This was, for sure a standard answer that was not targeted to the broadway. I replyed with more details and they never get back to me with an answer...

Finally, on paper this device is very nice, and backed by the Hauppauge brand name I was sure it was a very good quality. Unfortunately, I feel this device is not yet ready for release. This is why I will try to get a refund.

Thank you for reading.