Hi,
I was getting this same error and have some more information. Firewall was turned off, however usually the firewall issue is only an issue if you are using a non Windows firewall. Well according to the silicondust site it is.
I have 2 tuners in the HDHomeRun. One was set for QAM (cable) the other to ATSC (antenna). When set up I could only get one set of channels in this case the QAM. The other set I got the TIMEOUT WAITING FOR WRITER TO START error. Now what was interesting was I flipped the order of the TV Devices in MC 14 and the problem also flipped. I could now see my ATSC and I got the error for the QAM channels. I flipped the inputs to the tuners and that didn’t change anything. So I’m not sure what’s going on here, but some things not right.
Thanks