A co-worker is a “cord never” and does NOT have internet at his house or on his phone (He’s really old school—haha). He was surprised that I record my OTA shows with a dvr. He was curious about these things (DVRs). I was looking up dvr’s that can be used without ANY Internet connection. I found this Mediasonic HomeWorx HW-150PVR. Has anyone tried this out? If so, how is it? Is there another DVR that does not require internet or LAN connections?
Thanks fellow Tablo peeps!
I don’t believe the ChannelMaster DVR+ requires internet, though it uses internet to get the full 14 day guide instead of 2 day:
No Internet Connection ___ With Internet Connection
Up to 2 days of guide data ___ Up to 14 days of guide data
USB software updates ___ Automatic software updates
Does not support online apps ___ Supports online apps
the homeworx is decent considering the dirt cheap price, but it is no comparison to the higher end stuff in UI or feature set.
I recently made a linux/kaffeine box for someone with a ATSC dongle (compatibility caveat!), and was quite surprised to find that… SOMEHOW… a few of the stations seemed to be broadcasting there programming schedule directly OTA (as far as I could tell), kaffeine picked them up, and could one-click record them much like tablo (albiet, without the nice poster images)… still not 100% on this (as the machine was networked), and it doesn’t yet compete with tablos $5/month tv-listing-hotness, but I thought it might be worth noting.
ATSC includes up to (I think) 24 hours of programming data in the data stream. Not surprising at all. It should be coming from all stations.
Thanks all for the input.
As you mentioned the Homeworx HW-150 PVR is a inexpensive option ($30) for budget minded OTA viewers. I have one that I keep in my RV. It is very basic & unsophisticated but it does work. You must have an external storage device for storing the recordings. I use a 1 TB HD but a large USB flash drive (say 128 GB) can work as well & be bought at half the price. The biggest draw back is it only has one tuner - thus if you are recording something nothing else can be viewed live.
As StuTomato mentioned the Channel Master DVR+ is a decent option at a heftier price point ($250.00). A friend of mine has one & it has a very nice UI similar to traditional Cable/Satellite DVR’s. It can be used without internet which then limits the guide data to up to 2 days worth (same as the Homeworx). It has two tuners thus allowing you to watch live while recording something else or record two shows at once. while it will technically record without an external storage device, 16 GB is essentially nothing so external storage is needed as well.