Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had been searching for a DVR that I could use for over the air broadcasts, as I’m trying my best to get away from pay television. The move towards entertainment services, such as Hulu Plus and Netflix has encouraged me that eventually we will no longer have to buy 150 channels of stuff we never watch in order to get the 50 channels we do watch. And spending over a $1200 a year on entertainment, to me, is ridiculous. Doing several Google searches brought me to a company called ChannelMaster, which has been developing set top box equipment for years, and a new product they were launching called the DVR +, a standalone, subscription free DVR+ for over the air broadcasts. Its introduction was going to be in January. I purchased one with a Wi-Fi USB plugin, along with a 2 year extended warranty. I was invited to be one of the first (I actually ended up being the first) end users to receive a unit ahead of launch, as I live near the company. The office people were interested in learning my opinion and my experience with their device. After picking up my unit, I went straight home to plug it in. It’s a tiny footprint. It’s about the size and thickness of the original iPad. All the plugs in the back are intuitive—two USB ports, a coaxial port, an Ethernet port, and the AC adapter. There is a single HDMI port. Setup was a breeze. You plug it in, it searches all the available over the air channels, and that’s it. To setup the Wi-Fi is not much different from setting one up on a PS3 or Roku. You find your network, put in your password, and you’re done. The guide downloads quickly, and you have two weeks of programming. It doesn’t appear to be compatible with every USB hard drive. An old 120GB one worked fine. Two 500GB Western Digitals did not. Another 1TB Western Digital did. It may be the age of the two 500GB drives. It appears to be compatible with most hard drives though. I setup to program to record some TV shows. It was easy to do through the guide. The DVR is quick—scannning is fast, and you can set the quick forward or quick reverse buttons to different time spans—10 seconds, 30, 60 seconds (for commercial skipping). The picture is clean, the scanning is fast. It beats the pants off of my DirecTV Genie. You can set up to future record based on the name of the program. It will not let you distinguish between recording new episodes or reruns though. To record all of one show, you set it to search for the text (either complete match or partial match) and any show on the designated channel with that name will be recorded. When you set to record, it gives you the option of recording only the single program or all programs with that name. If you want to just record the episode in the time slot, you'll have to set up a manual recording. This applies if like an episode of "Castle" shows on Monday evening, but then shows in rerun all weekend long. I am well on my way to cutting the cable. Vudu is built in, and I’m told other services will be added in the near future. If that’s all integrated into this one single beautiful piece of hardware, then I can say goodbye to the dish on my roof, and hello to personalized programming. A couple of quirks they can’t do much about. The WiFi dongle throws a blinking light on the ceiling of my bedroom at night. Some masking tape easily covers that up. The interface runs slightly slower while it’s recording. It’s noticeable but not too bad. We had to get a slightly stronger antenna than the Boxee one that I replaced with this unit. The flat antenna I bought at Costco works perfectly, and pulls in all channels clearly without tiling. My broadcasters are about 10-15 miles away, and the channels are beautiful. In all, I am blown away at how good this device is, and am looking forward to more upgrades and accessories that this company will hopefully produce for this line of products. This is the Tivo killer we’ve all been waiting for.