When I was saying microwave I was thinking something in the unlicensed bands like 5.2, 5.4 or 5.8GHz. Hey its TV, it doesn't qualify as a 99.999% availability requirement. :)

I haven't measured the actual data rate the HDHomerun is producing while I watch TV yet but I will. The aforementioned unlicensed uwave radios are available up to 100Mbs now so I'm guessing one could mount two, perhaps three but pushing it, HDHomerun units remotely and stream them back providing 4 channels of first come first served viewing.

Curiously enough, the HDHomerun has an IR receiver on the front of it but I haven't seen any information on how to take advantage of it. From a receiver sensitivity standpoint its not as hot as my LG and Sony big screens, but its not far off either. There are no on-board provisions for storage nor is there a VGA or better HDMI output either. Just 1Gbs Ethernet. However I have one of these network drives on my system with copious amounts of storage. I think I paid 100$ for it plus the cost of the disc. It will take a second disc to increase storage further but I haven't (yet) found the need. There's also no provision for NTSC decoding but in my case only channels 3 and 19 are the holdouts and time will resolve this shortcoming.

I bought this particular unit 169$ because I know from friends running HDTV cards in their computers that the satisfaction levels weren't where they needed to be. I also liked the idea of being able to take advantage of the recording/viewing/storing programmes on any of my computers.

There is a bug with specific to Windows Media Centre where it doesn't recognize many of the Canadian channels (the HDHomerun included software doesn't suffer from this). I'm guessing this has been fixed on Windows 7, but on Vista there is an effective workaround available that I'll probably try on the weekend. The feedback for it was all positive so my confidence level is high.