Mediasonic HomeWorx ATSC Digital Converter Box with TV Tuner, TV Recording, USB Multimedia Function (HW-150PVR-Y22)

My old Sylvania set top box had become uneconomical to keep repairing, so I opted for a new unit to use with my projector based system It came packaged very well - but as others have mentioned, no batteries were included for the remote, which is rather odd these days but by no means a reason to not purchase it Installation took literally seconds - as I had everything there ready to go Power up asks for your country and time zone - then it sets about automatically tuning in to the locally available stations My old hardware usually found around ten channels - this found twenty! Quite pleasantly surprised, but some of them do break up a little, and so my antenna will need a tweak Quite why the Dolby Audio label is on the front, I don’t know - every STB I have used over the last several years all had this capability and didn’t feel the need to shout about it Overall, very good and quite satisfied - the remote codes will be transferred to my Philips Universal Remote and then I’ll be perfectly happy Go ahead and buy this - you shouldn’t regret it

En los comentarios decían que tiene mayor sensibilidad de recepción que otros, lo que nadie dijo es que NO sintoniza VHF solo UHF, así no sirve para nada.

I recently cut cable and am mostly watching shows using my Roku or smart TV but was hoping I could get more OTA channels. I will say that it didn't appear to have a higher number of OTA channels then my LG smart TV receives, but I like that you can record OTA shows such as live sports in my instance and also to record movies on the Movies! channel so I can fast forward the long commercial breaks. I'll probably also record the daily local news and on MeTV channel the Svengoolie show. I have a slew of portable hard drives from trying to make a youtube channel and college so it wasn't a big deal, but if you want to use the DVR and don't have one you can try a USB (I didn't, some reviewers say it works) but the manual says you should have a 1TB drive up to 4TB. 1TB seems like it will last long enough for my needs. If you use a HDD you can also tell whether its recording or not from the HDDs light flashing, when its not recording the HDD light wont be flashing, (it will also be an extra indicator thats on when you turn the unit on). Things I picked up so far are the CC works as long as you are not watching a live recording and rewind it while recording. I read the onscreen shortcut prompts to navigate the DVR set up and was able to figure it out OK. For correct scheduling, I noticed that the time was off an hour so I adjusted the Daylight Savings Time function and that solved that. I spent under $40 plus the cost of a drive which I already had but run under $100 and are probably under $50 now for a 1TB in 2023. The recorded video looked like no degrade from the SD OTA movie channel I watched and also HD content like news I tried, no drop outs other then my weak OTA antenna setup sometimes dropped out from hour to hour with the terrestrial changes, I'm in a fairly dead OTA zone in Central Florida. I'm not sure if the sports will record as good but that may be the reason why they recommend an HDD and not a USB (speed of action is better, less blur?). On a personal note, while hooking this up, I wanted to use one antenna for this box and the smart TVs built in tuner, so I used a 2 way splitter (not included). I had a coaxial cable (not supplied) that was bad and the replacement I had at home was also bad, luckily the third cable that I had worked. Kind of scratching the head moment after the second cable. For its inexpensive price for a basic OTA DVR and decent enough remote (I've had some remotes for low priced equipment like this that were horrible ), I'm giving it 5 stars.

When watching a station live, there are no interruptions or dropouts, which is fantastic. However, when watching a recorded, there are many interruptions and dropouts, which is very annoying!

I bought this device mostly to record OTA programs. Setup was easy, and, as claimed, it does seem to have a more sensitive tuner than my TV (2022 LG). I like that it has a signal strength meter that shows on individual channels. It records well; I saw some reports that it might have trouble recording to flash drives (some reviewers recommended using a USB HDD) but I've been using a 256GB USB 3.0 flash drive with prefect results. The only concern I have is storage capacity - I can only save a few hours of total recording time with this capacity, but that's not a big deal for me since I mostly time shift some viewing. It does all that very well. The knock on this device is the remote/user interface. the remote is quite complete in functions, but the buttons and particularly the labeling, are very small and hard to read. This would be better if the printing was white, rather than gray, on the black body of the remote. I also read that this later version had an improved UI, but it still isn't great. I can make it do everything I want, but it's far from intuitive, especially when navigating the numerous menus. The record function would be better with more programming options. I can set it to record by channel, but only daily, weekly or once. I time shift a weekday show, but I can only set to record daily, so I get recordings I don't want every Saturday and Sunday, too. It is also a single channel device, so no watching one channel whilst recording another (they do make a more expensive dual channel device for that) Overall, though, I'm happy with it. It does most of what I need and is an excellent supplement to my streaming services, gaining me channels and shows I don't get otherwise - including a local channel that's currently in negotiations with my streaming service for licensing renewal. It's definitely not perfect, but for the price and my needs, it's tough to beat.