- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 11 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Excellent, smart in some ways, not in others"
Pros: Up to 160 hours of recording, easy editing
Cons: No battery backup, small buttons
Summary: I like this unit. It does EXACTLY what I wanted it to do and, best of all it's almost impossible to miss recording a show. Choose to burn a show direct to DVD and run out of room it will continue it to the hard drive. Set it to record to DVD and you have a movie DVD in there it will detect that and record to the hard drive instead. There are some broadcast shows/movies that have protection that prevent recording them to a DVD. This unit will detect them and burn them to the hard drive. I've even been watching a DVD when it came time to record a show. Up pops a message it's going to start recording a show in 1 minute to the hard drive... and it let me continue watching the DVD while it recorded the show I wanted to the hard drive simultaneously. That is cool. Doesn't matter if you have the unit on or off either way it'll record the scheduled program. If it's on it will pop up a message a minute before recording starts telling you the channel will be changing in a minute for a recording. Otherwise, it will power on, record the show, then power itself off.
I LOVE its editing feature, it's very easy to remove commercials off the HDD. Simply choose "scene delete", then it asks you to press the okay button when you want to start, and again when you want to end. I click to start at the beginning of commercials, and again at the end of them. It then asks me if I want to preview or delete them, I delete. If you screw up you can preview, cancel, rewind and fast forward to make sure you got the exact points. Afterward I can burn it to DVD, commercial free! It upscales to whatever setting you want through the HDMI (480, 720, 1080). It plays CD's, MP3's, you can even pause live TV!
I was particularly happy its antenna out is a pass-through. I use a rooftop antenna only (no cable), I plug my antenna into the antenna in port, and hook up an HDMI and coax cable to their respective out ports to my TV. That lets me set my TV to HDMI input when I want to use this unit for viewing or I can set my TV to antenna and it bypasses this unit as if I had my roof antenna directly plugged into the unit. Sort of like an AB switch without the switch.
It would be better if the unit had a guide, it can only tell you the current show playing whereas my TV has a guide button that lets me see a list of shows for hours ahead. It did detect all the digital stations my TV did, but oddly you can add/remove analog stations at will but can't add digital stations, only remove. Also, it doesn't store your recordings in some kind of permanent memory. If you lose power, you'll need to re-enter all your scheduled recordings.
When you set up a time to record, you have to say, record every thursday from 8:00 to 9:00 PM channel 04 at SLP setting (or you can choose a date as well). It doesn't record the info of that show or its title. When you recorded a bunch you'll get a preview of 6 shows per screen and it lists them like 12/25/2007 8:00 9:00 PM 25.1 if you highlight the show it will start playing the show in a little preview box to give you an idea what it was. You can also choose to edit and name it. Would've been nice if it embedded the title of the show.
It does what I want. I can play my music on it, watch my DVD's, record and watch shows with no intention of burning them to a DVD, don't have to worry about running out of room, and not concerned that I can't record in HD even if it's a HD show. Thanks to the big wigs out there every DVR has to downgrade the signal and record in standard definition and not restricted to just this unit or manufacture but all(except Tivo if you pay their subscription service). Most likely if you're looking at this unit, it's because you wanted something a little more than a DVR but didn't want monthly Tivo fee's. I give it an 8.5 but had to round up to a 9. Really would've liked it to have a TV guide feature and that it didn't lose my shows when the power fails but, it has literally changed the way I watch TV (being able to pause, store 160 hours, easily remove commercials before burning to DVD, play DVDs upconverted to HD) and now would never think about ever getting a regular DVR.
