Humax DRT400 40-Hour TiVo with DVD Recorder

• Digitally records up to 40 hours of programming onto the 80GB hard drive
• Playback for DVD, DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, A/V CD
• Control live TV by pausing and rewinding it, and create slow-motion and instant replays of any channel at anytime
• Season Pass function automatically records every episode of a favorite program all season long
• Browse up to 14 days of program data with the Electronic Program Guide

I am a very big Tivo fan; and had 2 original series 2 tivo's. So when my 1st Tivo went on the fritz I decided to buy this unit. I figured ease of use; one device, and a recorder something previous Tivo's don't have. I have to be honest the first unit I bought gave me trouble with the remote control and other universal remotes. After returning it the next unit worked fine.

Setup:

Setup is fairly easy; even though I wish the networking option would work straight out of the box, instead of connecting to the phone line for an hour. No Biggie though; I survived.

Configuration:

Standard configuration s-video; component audio. Eventually I am going to use HD component cables (but supposedly they don't improve video on regular tv signal on DVD)

Ease of Use:

It's Tivo thats a no brainer; there is a DVD button on the remote press it, move the selection to play or burn dvd and you are done. Very easy to use.

Positives:

Addition of LCD time on the front.

Fact that it is a DVD recorder

Fair Price

Negatives:

After reading alot of reviews regarding the DRT800; the people who complained about the blacks not being distinguished are right. The video colors suck! Especially When you have a seperate input with HD and you toggle between them.

There is no HD support (Tivo Doesn't supoort HD yet)

Support took a few days to get back to me.

All in all it is a fair price and I knew I wasn't getting an High Def picture out of it so the video doesn't burn me that much. It burns and plays DVD's with ease. It is worth $250-300. If I could give the unit 3.5 stars I would b/c it's better than 3 but the picture makes it less than 4!

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After analyzing the differences between Comcast DVR and TiVo, we decided a TiVo purchase would be best. And since we have a lot of VHS tapes that we want to save, the combo DVD-R was a great feature.

The setup was easy, it ran fine, but it had a whirring / clicking noise the fan was not spinning, although it was moving back and forth slightly, and this was the cause of the noise. Called Humax tech support, they said to return it.

Got my next one from Circuit City. After running fine for about 15 minutes, the same problems with the fan happened. Called Humax Tech support, again nothing to do but return it.

Went back to the store for one last try, but had them plug it in at the store so I did not have to bother hooking it up to my entertainment center. Same problem. Called tech support, and they offered to give me an address to write a letter of complaint.

Needless to say, I returned the product, never to buy from Humax again. A great product concept spoiled by poor quality.

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I purchased one of these units as my first foray into the TiVo world when my 15 year-old VCR started to die. I figured 40 hours seemed like a lot of TV to watch, and if I managed to get close to filling it I could download video to a DVD-RW and use those just like I used to use video tapes.

Alas, the "gotchas" were too much for me:

1) Video quality on the TiVo has 4 ranges: Best, High, Medium, and Basic. Shows recorded with Best looked pretty good, but anything less than that I found the video artifacts rather noticeable when watching the programs. I should note here that I was watching prime-time dramas, not sports (which, having more motion, should reveal more artifacts).

2) Recording time was not what I had hoped. The stated "40-hour" recording time is for programs at Basic quality. At Best quality the total storage was more like 13 hours.

3) The DVD recording function was disappointing. Not that it was difficult to do; it was really quite easy. No, my problems were with storage capacity and video quality. The first show I tried to move to DVD was an episode of The West Wing, and I found I couldn't store the entire show on one 4.7Gb DVD-RW (the one included with the unit, no less). Seven minutes of the show had to go on a second DVD-RW. Most of what I record is hour-long shows, so this wasn't going to work for me. I tried recording another hour-long show (again, a West Wing episode) in High quality and transferring that to DVD-RW; it fit with room to spare, but the quality on the DVD was really poor. Not impossible to view, but so noticeable that it was distracting.

I did record another hour-long show at Best quality and found I was able to get that on one DVD-RW (barely), so it looks like I was subject to the vaguaries of MPEG compression. Some shows might compress enough to fit on a DVD, others might not. In the long run that was not going to work for me.

Basically, if you're hoping to use this unit as a TiVo/quasi-VCR you're probably going to find it doesn't work as well as you expected. You may want to consider going with a unit that has more recording capacity, and if you really need to put programs on DVD try using the TiVo-To-Go feature. I haven't tried it and can't speak to the quality of the resulting DVDs, but I just can't imagine it would be any worse than using the DRT400.

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I purchased this 40-hr Humax with the DVD recorder on Oct 28, 2005. The manual indicates DVD-R compatibility with any type of DVD. However, the Humax began "eating" my HP 50-pack I purchased. I then purchased a 5-pack of Memorex and it began ruining those. It indicated "incompatible format" or simply gave a "write error" without completing the recording. In one case it went into a continuous write loop and required rebooting.

I returned the unit to Circuit City just over 30 days later and received a new replacement. Same result.

I then contacted Humax directly. Barbara recommended TDK, Sony, Verbatim and Imation DVD-Rs. I purchased the Sonys and they appear, at least for now, to work. I'm irritated that they do not specify the DVD compatibility in their manual.

In general the Humax is quite promising. The interface, especially for writing DVDs is very simple. The write speed, whenever it did work, was pretty fast. I haven't timed the transfer rate to a computer yet (e.g. TiVo2Go). The original Series 2 TiVo is fairly slow through a wired connection (approximately 3Mbps for me).

This gets one star because there is no lower ranking. Don't buy a Humax product unless you like paying new prices for used, rebuilt junk. Their new unit comes not working out of the box. The company sends you a rebuilt, used unit to replace your new unit that didn't work. When you object to paying new prices for used equipment, they just blow you off. Too much hassle. This company can't last long.