Digital Converter / Dvr Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)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.

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Product Description:
Watch one hd channel while you record another; it will record two different hd or sd shows while you watch a third previously-recorded show. You can also use pause instant replay and rewind on live programming. Recording capacity is 30 hd hours and 150 sd hours with the internal 250gb hard drive. The included ir remote has buttons for skip replay and supports four speeds of fast forward and reverse slow motion and frame-by-frame advance. Seven days of advance program details are available for most broadcast channels and there are never any subscription fees with this unit!

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Zinwell ZAT-970A Digital to Analog TV Converter Box Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased the two major timer event schedulable/programmable converter boxes available as of this date: the Zinwell and the DTVPal Plus (enhanced version of the DTVPal or TR-40 CRA). These are some of the major problems and advantages of each.

The biggest problem I have with the Zinwell is that the remote control is the flimsiest and cheapest control I have ever seen with any product. The down arrow button is already having problems responding to pressing after only a few days. It usually takes several years before buttons on a remote control begin to go bad, and I am concerned that this one will not even be working a year from now. The text labels on the buttons are rubbing off and becoming harder to read.

The biggest problem with the DTVPal Plus is the reception. The Plus is supposed to have enhanced reception over the prior models which were famous for bad reception, but in my area it gets a couple less UHF channels than the Zinwell and often has severe breakup on the ABC affiliate and two other channels (even with an amplified antenna). Perhaps this will be less of an issue if digital signals get boosted in February.

The Zinwell has 8 timer events to 5 for the DTVPal Plus. The Zinwell lacks a recurring M-F weekday scheduling option. Both devices make you go through several menus to get to the timer scheduling. The DTVPal Plus has an awkward event scheduling process that takes you through two screens. The Zinwell has its own awkwardness-it makes you choose a channel from a list of station call letters rather than channel numbers! The Zinwell also requires confirmation at the end of the timer scheduling process, and defaults to Cancel making it easy to accidentally cancel your timer event, so watch out.

If you like on-screen program guides, the DTVPal Plus has a fuller one than the Zinwell, and you can even schedule timer events direct from the program guide with the DTVPal Plus. The DTVPal Plus has an annoying download each time you turn on the converter box, but you can cancel the download.

If you get a Zinwell, do not throw out the manual. Zinwell has unfortunately set a password on some of the channel functions, so you will need to look up the default password in the manual if you try to access these functions.

Do not expect much support. Both companies took several days to respond to an inquiry and gave canned answers that did not address my question. After supplying follow-up information, neither company got back to me. There are several other issues and quirks with both devices.

(--some updated notes 9/16/2009 after a few months of using--)

The Zinwell picture quality has been nice. Occasionally, I have had an issue with the Zinwell audio and video getting slightly out of synch (as also reported by some other reviewers)-but doesn't bother me and turning off and on puts them back in synch.

The biggest problem I have had with regular use of the Zinwell is that scheduled recurring events (weekly, etc.) get messed up regularly so I have to constantly monitor them. The Zinwell loses the channel on the recurring events and resets the channel to the highest station number. (I believe this is the most commonly reported major problem with this device.) Periodically it loses the recurring events completely and they need to be reentered. One-time events also get corrupted sometimes, although less often. Even the most popular 5 star review of this box by couchbum, in the Comments link, acknowledges that the timers fail periodically.

The DTVPal Plus tends to run hot, so I have propped it up at an angle to give it some cooling space. I have had a disturbing problem a couple of times where the DTVPal Plus would not power on-had to unplug it from the power source and plug it back in again, and then it resumed working.

Since they boosted the digital signals after the transition, the DTVPal Plus weaker reception has not been a problem and it now gets all the channels that my other converter boxes get. (However, I live in an urban area and have an amplified antenna, so the weaker reception may still be a problem for many people.)

The DTVPal Plus regularly loses timer events and is very unreliable. I have found two specific sequences of timer events that cause it to consistently drop events. The DTVPal Plus timer issues have been far more numerous and problematic than those with the Zinwell. I used several VCRs over two decades and never had a device malfunction on its timer events or spontaneously change the selected channel. Not sure why it is so difficult for these digital boxes.

I get the best results with both devices by setting timers the morning of the same day as the programs. Setting timers a day or more in advance of the programs increases chances for timer event corruption.

Although the on-screen station program guide for the DTVPal Plus is robust, it has an inadequacy. The normal program guide access turns off audio and video while you are browsing the guide, so you cannot hear or watch television as you peruse it. To view television as you browse the guide, you cannot use the Guide button on the remote but must use the directional buttons to access the guide-but the guide still overlays much of the screen (semi-transparent).

In the clock settings, the Zinwell has no daylight savings on/off, while the DTVPal Plus does allow you to control daylight savings. The Zinwell has the advantage that you can manually set the time, while the DTVPal Plus does not allow you to. If you manually set the time in the Zinwell, I found it loses 1-2 minutes per week and also loses the clock time completely if power goes out even for a second (most devices will hold the time for 2-3 minutes in a power outage). I have mine on a UPS (backup battery) to keep it from losing time in a brief power outage. At least the Zinwell allows you to control the time if you want to. (Early in the digital conversion both boxes were keeping erratic time so clock options were important, but digital time signals have improved enough now that using automatic time is generally fine. This has made the options of manual time setting and daylight savings much less important but I have included this info for those interested.)

The DTVPal Plus has one bright spot: it handles poor signal quality well. The two aspects of reception are signal strength and signal quality. While the DTVPal Plus does not pick up low strength well, it does handle poor signal quality very well. There are a couple of minor stations with poor quality (but adequate strength) that my Zenith and Zinwell cannot receive but that the DTVPal Plus picks up. In my experience, it also has less dropout from other things that reduce signal quality, such as splitting the antenna feed or electrical interference.

One other small plus I have found with the DTVPal Plus: it operates from my old universal remote (as a SAT box), which allows me to control all my devices-very, very handy. None of the other converter boxes that I have will work with this old universal remote, although I have heard that some of the newer universal remotes can control converter boxes. This somewhat makes up for the fact that the DTVPal Plus has no buttons on the box and can only be operated by remote control. (However, it may be too sensitive-it also turns on when I press the fast forward button on one brand of VCR remote!)

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Product Description:
Digital TV Converter Box with Analog Pass-Through

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