DTVpal DVR

I bought an HDTV about one year ago. At that time, they were being sold with an SD tuner installed as well, so I could still record broadcast TV shows on my old VCR. I only watch broadcast TV; I live in a rural area that has poor cable service and I didn't want to pay for satellite since I don't watch that much. At the same time, I'm not home when a lot of the shows I like are on the air, so I need a recorder. I thought I could get by with a converter box hooked up to my old VCR, but that only works when you're there to control it. Since the VCR is no longer tuning the channels, you have to be there to change channels on the converter box. Not a great solution, although it has limited use.

For a long time the only option available was TiVo. But TiVo charges you $13 a month for the "privilege" of owning a TiVo. I have friends who love TiVo, and if you're a real TV/cable junkie, I can see where it might be worth the monthly fee. But I already know what I want to record; I already know when the shows are on. Why should I pay TiVo a monthly fee to tell me what I already know?

This DVR is about $100 more expensive than the comparable TiVo DVR. But not having to pay the $13/month fee, you break even in about seven months.

Overall I'm very satisfied with it. I needed a digital, HD replacement for my old VCR, and this product fits the bill. And more. Here are my "Pros":

The advertisments state it has 20 hours of HD storage, but actually it has 35 hours HD storage, not the as-advertised 20.

Excellent picture quality. I see no difference between the broadcast show and the recorded show.

Very easy to set up recording. If you want to record a show one-time, you can just select it when you're in the programming guide, and press the record button. If you want to set it up to do a repeat recording (daily, weekly, etc.) it's only a few easy additional steps.

The programming guide is far superior to the on-air guide my HDTV provides. This DVR gets its program information from the on-air broadcasts just like the TV, but the presentation and ease of browsing is much better.

I love the ability to pause, rewind, fast-forward. Even watching live TV. My TiVo friends were all extolling the virtues of TiVo because it offers these features. Well, this DVR does it all for no monthly fee, and they are great.

OK. It's not perfect. Here's my list of "Cons" so far:

If you buy one, it will be delivered with an obsolete operating system. The very first thing you should do after the initial set-up is complete is go out to the web page and download the latest version of the DVR's operating system. Mine had several annoying issues that were resolved by updating the software, but when you do that you loose all the channel and programming information (though not any recorded shows) and it all has to be reconfigured. Update the software right after you plug it in. I will give 'em this it is very easy to update.

The Guide supposedly stores a week's worth of programming info, but in reality it only goes forward about 12 hours. Most everything else displays as "unavailable".

Part of the set-up is selecting a time for the DVR to update its programming info. You don't want to do this at a time when you would be watching or recording, because it interrupts everything, so I set it to 2 am. BUT, it also attempts to find new "services" (channels). 100% of the time, it finds poor signals that are probably out there but I can never watch, so I have to manually delete them. It's annoying. The software should give me the option of disabling that, but as far as I can tell, I can't.

It started up one evening with time set to 12 noon. The next day it was back to being correct, and it DID NOT mess up the scheduled recordings, but still that indicates an instability in the operating system.

This next one is particularly annoying, but requires some explanation. There are two HD tuners in the DVR so that you can record two shows simultaneously. This really is great, I love it. That's not the annoying part. You can also set a system default to start all recordings a few minutes early and end a few minutes late (you can select the number of minutes). This is also a great feature. The broadcaster's clocks don't always coincide with mine. However, when recording two back-to-back programs on the same channel, it temporarily uses both tuners for the 1-2 minutes of overlap most users set. It is recording the same show on both tuners. If you have another show on a different channel set to start recording at the same time as the second show on the first channel, one of them will not record because there are only two tuners. And it doesn't just not record the first few minutes because of the overlap. Once it detects that there are effectively three shows set to record at the same time, it cancels one of them and never starts it back up. The fix for this is to set a "timer" to record the two back-to-back shows as a single event instead of two events. Now that I have figured this out, I can live with it, but the software should be sophisticated enough to do this for me.

I keep getting an annoying onscreen pop-up message that the ethernet connection has been lost, and it can't check for updates. This happens once per night.

There is no off-switch (no kidding). The only way to turn it off is to unplug it. If your entertainment center is like mine, the outlets are all hidden behind the furniture. No problem when your amplifier or tuner, etc., has an on/off button. But a big problem for this DVR if you ever need to turn it off. Yes, you can hit the power button on the remote, but the hard drive runs continuously and the unit is always putting out a noticeable amount of heat. Also, twice (before I updated the O.S.) it has frozen up. If you read the user's manual, it tells you that the only way to reset it is to unplug it for 30 seconds, then plug it back in. FORTUNATELY, that is apparently not true. It behaves like a locked up PC. If you hold down the power button on the remote for about five seconds, it will reboot itself without having to unplug it.

Here are some "nice to haves", in case anyone from Dish NW reads this:

I would like to be able to delete segments (for example, commercials) from stored recordings.

Why does the DVR wipe out my live TV recording just because I change the channel? It's just a signal. I'm watching what I'm watching. Keep recording whatever I'm watching. I may want to go back to what I was watching (isn't that the point of recording it?).

This DVR is not attractive. Hire someone to design a decent-looking case.

I am disgusted. We bought the unit less than 1 year ago and it's worked fine, more or less, until yesterday. The box has suddenly stopped working and the warranty only 90 days is out. It's not a cheap unit and there's little that can be done to fix it when on the fritz. "We suggest you buy another unit," from customer service is, needless to say, less than satisfactory.

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Just dumped Dish Network with my 722 high def dual DVR. The rates were slowly increasing and it was no longer worth $60/month as most of what we were recording/watching was on local primetime channels. Plus we replaced our 2nd TV with a HD one so the dual tuner was producing a non-clear picture on the 2nd TV as the dual part only showed one in HD, the other in SD.

First we hooked back up our old TV antenna in the attic. This is NOT a HD antenna, just the old normal kind from Radio Shack. We were impressed with the reception since TV signals went digital. Picture was crystal clear.

We ordered this DPal DVR from amazon.com. Because it only comes with a 90 day warranty, we added a 3 year service agreement with Squaretrade Warranty for $33. This was also purchased through amazon.com.

Setup was relatively easy. There is a setup wizard which guides you through setup. I had trouble initially with trying to move through the setup wizard (so called the 888 number on the screen for help). The help number is basically to Dish Network (who originally sold this product). They were most unhelpful and kept asking if I wanted to re-activate my Dish account. I hung up. Turned out the batteries in the remote were not clicked in fully and once I did this, everything worked great. Upon installation it said it updated the software (not sure how as I didn't have it hooked to any internet). The software was the latest version (or at least the firmware).

I agree, there is no on/off button which would be nice to have. You have to unplug if you want to reset it.

Also, when recording, there is an option to choose ONCE, WEEKLY, WEEKDAYS. I'm assuming this means a repeat timer for weekly shows will be active. Will find out.

If you've used Dish Network's DVRs before, the remote is identical and will be easy to use.

I had to sync the remote with my Sony TV which was easy with their directions. I tried to sync my DVD player and VCR but no luck so far. Too many codes to wade through, so I gave up on that.

So far I've recorded 3 shows, 2 of them simultaneously, with no problem.

One annoying feature is that when you go to the TV guide, it stops playing the current show. With Dish Network's receiver/DVR I had previously, the show kept playing in the corner so you didn't miss anything while checking the guide. The volume goes off and you do not see the picture when checking the guide. I suppose though, you could just hit the back button and see what you missed. So it's really a non-issue, but different from the DVR I had before.

The DVR is quite user friendly, and it's nice to see everything in easy to read/understand format.

Yes, I recommend this product. But I recommend an extended warranty just based on some comments/reviews here. Worth the extra $ if I need to use it.

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Finally fed up with paying over $100 a month to watch tv, I recently ditched cable television. I bought an outside antenna and an internet connected Blu-Ray player with a subscription to Netflix. The only thing we missed was the convenience of the DVR we had through Verizon. The DTVPal is a wonderful replacement! True it might not be as fancy as the Verizon box but after being without a DVR for a month, the DTVPal sure fills the gap. Set-up was easy. A few cables to the tv and a few setup screens once the DVR was powered on and I was up and running in no time, recording our shows, pausing and rewinding live tv, etc. Somehow the box updated itself to the latest firmware after it was powered up so I didn't even have to bother with that! The HD picture on my 37 inch LCD looks great! The programming guide is impressive (even though it only goes about 24 hours into the future) and setting up events for recording our favorite shows is a snap. The remote is similar to most cable company remotes so it's easy to get use to. If you're like me and are making the transition to OTA television, the DTVPal is a great way to re-create the cable television experience.

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I love it. it updated itself in the first five minutes of being connected to the router. The video quality , in my opinion is great. The guide is really sweet. It goes to sleep on its own and handles DVR recording like a VCR only better. I was late recording the Mentalist the other night because I was wrapped up in a movie and it recorded the whole show, in spite of me being late by about ten minutes. You can zoom in your view to fill the whole screen on older tv's and the picture quality is still excellent. The HDTV picture quality on tvs fed by HDMI is unreal! The sound is incredible when you use it this way also. I am not sure about durability yet but I will comment later if anything changes. I covered this with a extended SQUARE TRADE warranty, which I feel was a good idea considering the technology used on this thing. All the features are well thought out, even without PIP you still get a great viewing experience. My old DISH 301 remote also controls this thing. I have a UNIVERSAL remote that controls it as well, only the POWERBLASTER does not resend the signal for some reason. I am looking into this right now and will report back if I get it working with this DVR. I am very pleased with this DVR and may even cancel my sattelite subscription if it proves to be consistent in delivering...