A lot of people have asked about converter boxes, HD tuners, and DVRs, and where to get them for cheap.
How about a device that does all that, and costs just $40? What if you could also play videos from a USB device, too?
Check this back panel out:
iview 3500STB Media player/Digital Converter Box with Recording $39.99 on Amazon
Okay, so it's a Chinese device and it suffers from some of the same problems most cheap Chinese devices have, mostly a poor remote, confusing interface and firmware bugs. But, c'mon, it's $40!!! That's even cheaper than the same brand iView "converter only" box. And fortunately, they seem to be releasing newer firmware to fix some of the bugs - and it's HUNDREDS of dollars less than the next-most expensive DVR solution, the Magnavox series of DVR / DVD recorders. And note that the Magnavox units are SD!
Features:
Converts digital broadcast to your analog TV
EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and program information
Favorite Channel List
Parental control function
Auto tuning (finds all digital broadcasts)
Signal Quality Indicator
Closed Captioning
EAS (Emergency Alert System) to alert emergency information from TV station
Advanced Video/Audio parameters adjustment
Full function remote control
Analog pass through Channel 3/4
Cable/QAM capability
Video Decoder: MPEG-2 MP at HL, MPEG-4 SP, ASP, H.264 HP at L4.1, DivX 3.11, 4.X, 6.X, FLV format and VC-1
Video Resolution: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p
Built-in HDMI Output
Here's the Pros / Cons of this device:
Pros:
1. Price (what else can you say here),
2. Power consumption; less than one watt off and 7 watts on,
3. HDMI & component outputs and coaxial audio out. Better than many others costing 4x the price. (it also has composite and RF for older TV's),
4. Front panel power & ch. up/dn,
5. Especially suited for smaller TV's in bedrooms and kitchens due to it's very small size. (see below),
6. This will power a 2 1/2" Laptop type of hard drive in an external enclosure WITHOUT a separate power supply,
7. Lightning fast boot time of 10 seconds. Surely beats TiVo's boot time after plugging one in (5 1/2 minutes),
8. Fast channel changes, a rarity with digital tuners especially with DVR's,
9. Ability to add (and completely delete) channels without doing another full scan. In fact, you can skip the initial scan and just enter only the physical channel numbers you want,
10. Picture quality and OTA reception are on par with most other tuners & DVR's
11. Using a USB hub allows access to multiple HDD's up to 1 1/2 TB each. The manual only states drives up to 500GB,
12. The Multimedia player portion allows playing audio files when viewing photos (as long as they are on the same drive).
Cons:
1. Channels numbers in the display and in the 'TV list' are just consecutive numbers starting with the lowest virtual channel number and ascending upwards. What on earth were they thinking here? This is the other serious shortcoming,
2. No ability to scheduled a recording directly inside the Guide. You have to do a manual entry, VCR style which defeats the purpose and convenience of a guide. This is a real shortfall as all other DVR's will schedule the recording by just pressing Ok/select or Rec button,
3. QAM channels all get listed as "0-0" making it useless for CATV applications. There is no analog capability,
4. Bright display. Surely can't use it in a bedroom at night,
5. The very small size doesn't allow it to be placed under any other equipment.There is also the probability of heavy cables pulling it off the shelve due to lack of size & weight,
6. The remote is just as small, so are the labels. Very hard to see and push buttons. The button layout is not logical either,
7. There is no indication on the display of recording status. Nothing preventing it from getting turned off which will cancel the recording,
8. The manual misses a lot of functions. It's too small to read (though you can download a full size manual off their website). Being written for the Chinese market with mis named terms is a major problem,
9. No skip function,
10. Clock can not be set manually. If the reference stations clock is wrong, you can't do anything about it. Also it is only a 24 hour format,
11. You can't playback and record at the same time,
12. Only one tuner,
13. The single USB port is on the front panel. While Ok for a memory stick, it surely isn't for a HDD connection with the cable hanging off the front.
14. Apparently, when a weekly recording is scheduled, the next recording will be 12 days later, not seven,
15. If you set a recording to span midnight (one day to the next), the system won't allow setting any other recordings and will just continuously record from the start time.
16. There is no mention anywhere other than in the system information screen that this has a ATSC tuner, only QAM. there is also little mention about the recording capabilities.
17. When recording, the record indicator is always showing on screen.
NOTE: There is a "midnight bug". If you schedule a recording to span midnight, it will prevent you from adding any other entries AND when the recording does start, it will NOT stop! The workaround is two split recordings, one ending at 2359, the other starting at 0000.
update: drive size capability now up to 1 1/2 TB, but added a possible "12 day week bug"
Here's a link to the iView product page.
IVIEWUS - Digital Converter Box (Media Player / Digital Converter Box + Recording, MKV format compatible.)
