Had a Channel Master DVR+ The fact that the guide stopped working is why I switched over to Tablo. I purchased it then because my house was not “hard-wired” and I did not have a smart TV.
Or Windows Media Center or Hauppauge Cordcutter TV.
Of course depending on what you are trying to determine, you might be interested in who has TV tuner background since many of the older tuners ran on a PC that was too slow to record. I use to love my ATI All-in-Wonder
Prior to purchasing my first Tablo in May of 2015 I used Windows Media Center with a Hauppauge tuner card after the conversion to ATSC 1.0. Prior to that I had a Panasonic DMR-EH75V VHS/DVD/HDD that could record to tape, disc or harddrive. I would typically record OTA to the harddrive, edit commercials out and then burn to a DVD if I wanted to save something.
Before Tablo I had (and still have) a Philips 160GB HDD/DVD-RW DVR unit. It even is capable of tuning cable channels and recording any of them. But I do not have cable so there’s that. It has a digital tuner so technically I could still be recording OTA with it but don’t. Tablo is a far and above better solution. It is still connected to one of my TVs and every once and a while I play around with it. I have used it to dub videos from VHS tapes using its Composite video inputs. Anything I record on it I can dub to DVR+RW discs and transfer them to my computer, then NAS.
Dish, Sling, etc wouldn’t seem to qualify as OTA DVR in my mind. Cable, satellite, and OTT versions aren’t really over the air even with DVRs. This would distort Other. In that case, I’d think the choice would be None or just leave a comment.
It’s neat to see comments about this, as it means people are indeed leaving those (overpriced) services for something like Tablo.
I had a DVD recorder as my first stand alone OTA Digital Video Recorder.
Before that I did have quite a few gadgets and gizmos that used my computer to record or transfer video to digital. If I wanted to actually record something on a timer with one of those I would have had to write a program to do it. lol
Who remembers the infomercials for the remote control with the built in timer so you could schedule a recording on your VCR?
Then there’s this. I installed my own Direct-TV system back in 1997. It came with a little wire you’d plug in the back of the receiver with an IR emitter at the end of it. You’d stick it to the front IR sensor of a VCR so the Direct-TV receiver could turn on your VCR to record a program. Programming was done through the Direct-TV receiver. It was really quite slick.
