[sufreak]

I decided to make the jump and try out the HDHomeRun Connect.

I believe Kodi supported LiveTV before with an HDHomeRun, so what would the reasons be to use the app that they just came out with? Do I need a WMC backend for it?

[denmonta]

The new Silicondust HDHomeRun Live TV add-on does not require a WMC backend server as it uses DLNA to reach the tuners directly.
At the moment, it requires a new "beta" firmware on the tuners to get the EPG data so I have not started using it as I want a stable firmware.
Also, it does not work so well for buffering the live tv stream.
When using the WMCserver backend (as I do now), the video is actually stored in a file on the server while being streamed, so that gives you full access to skip back and forth.
Of course with that option you need to have space available on the WMCServer backend to store those files. The files get automatically deleted once the channel is changed or stopped so it is not permanent.