"micky" wrote in message

$35 on Amazon. But I'm glad you warned me, and the other guy, in
advance.

If you really want to get some bang for your OTA buck, about $35 at Amazon
gets you one of these.

Mediasonic HW-150PVR HomeWorx ATSC Digital TV Converter Box with Media
Player and Recording PVR Function/HDMI Out

http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1365123671

I've ordered one for every large screen TV in the house. It receives free
OTA HD TV broadcasts via a *good* HDTV antenna and allows you to store them
to any sort of USB drive (I've tried thumb drives, 500GB WD and 2 TB Seagate
external devices so far). The recordings are in HD as MKS files and I can
take the thumb drive out of the mediasonic unit, plug it into my Sony
BluRay's USB front port and play whatever I just recorded in very nice
looking 1080 resolution. I wish that the unit took the file names it
recorded from the EPG like the Panasonic DVR did (before the digital
conversion - afterwards nada). It instead records the channel name and
number along with the time and date, which is enough to distinguish
recorders.

In terms of bang for the buck and the number of problems solved for so
little, I think this may be the "Most Useful Purchase" of the year. I've
tried recording HD-TV to PCs and while it can be done, it's nowhere near as
convenient or cheap as using a PVR. The recordings are stunning -
particular compared to my old Panasonic and Polaroid DVRs which had a HQ
mode but nowhere near as sharp as the Mediasonic's HD recordings.

It's got an HDMI, component and composite outputsIt's got an EPG and timed
recording, too. Some people report issues with that which oddly seem to be
caused by local TV stations setting their time signal incorrectly, which the
Mediasonic depends on for timer recordings. Haven't found a way to tell it
to stop recording after an hour, but it might be possible - it's just not
obvious (on the Panny you just hit record again to add another 30 minutes of
recording time.

Now, when there's four different things on at the same time that I want to
record (it's happened!) I can just set each box to a different OTA channel
and have at it. Allegedly there's a FW upgrade that lets the unit decode
QAM, but I think I've decided that with Netflix, Amazon Prime and OTA in the
DC area, who the fu& needs Comcast CATV? I only subscribe to the basic
package which means local channels (fewer than the new box gets!!!), CSpan,
WGN and the local public access channels.

While there are clearly "settling in" issues with the firmware and the
hardware, I don't think I've ever seen an HDTV recorder for OTA broadcasts
for anywhere remotely as cheap as $40 and I've made enough manual one hour
records to different kinds of media that even if that's all it ever does and
the timer recordings never work, it's still worth the money. Plays all the
files from my other DVRs, too.

I'll post updates as I discover new features (or bugs) but so far, what a
great Easter gift to myself! My wife is not as impressed, I'm afraid,
because she's finally figured out how to use the current setup and fears
that will be changed.

--
Bobby G.