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Question: I want to use this to PLAY video, not record. What video formats does it support?
Document: Hard to believe this device does what it does. Easy setup,records locals to USB drive either thumbdrive or external usb drive. I record from XBMC in various formats and seems to play all you throw at it. HDMI nice feature and support is great for updates.
I bought this unit not for the digital converter function, but for the DVR function. Worked great! I want to thank previous reviewers for documenting the DVR function because I would never have discovered this little gem otherwise. Note: you need to connect a USB memory or hard disk to use the DVR function. It takes about 1GB to record 1 hour of video.I was able to use a WD MyBook 4TB HD with it, at first.
Very rarely I get a watchable picture on a highdef channel. (our local cable is mostly fed by satellite and the signal quality varies from day to day)I do enjoy the USB port and the ability to play all kinds of video formats and considering all the good reviews about the antenna use it wouldn't be fair to give it any less than 3 stars....
The unit is flexible enough to allow you to use either FAT32 or NTFS storage formats. The menu allows you to configure saving video files in 1, 2, 3, or 4G chunks when using FAT32-formatted drives.
As a bonus, this box lets you do something that most people tied to cable/satellite DVRs can't do, which is to easily transfer your recordings to another device. That's as simple as connecting the hard drive to whatever device you want to use for playback, such as a media player in another room, a computer (VLC will play the DVR recordings, and Video ReDo is useful for removing commercials on programs you want to archive).
Easy to install, came with RCA cables not HDMI. Picked up an inexpensive cable on Amazon. The unit picked up more channels than I was receiving with my antenna before installation. excellent image using HDMI cable. I had to use a portable drive to record because the thumb drive i used kept pixelating the video during record. The graphic interface is very simple but works. overall, I like the product. PVR records .mts format. Good quality. On a budget PVR or DVR.
Took me awhile to figure that out as I was thinking it was the computer that could not read the video. Once you get used to the PVR menu structure, you can move around quickly to what you need, responsive. Its not flashy, simple, but effective. Tuned to channels as quickly as other receivers I've used. The EPG only downloads a day's worth of schedule if that matters to you. Mediasonic hosts a lively support forum where plenty of help from users and staff is available.
But if you want to &#34;cut the cable&#34; (use and antenna, get free TV), AND be able to record it, ...THIS IS THE DROID YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!! !
(not to mention cable TV content quality is sub-par anymore)We have 2 TV's in our house: A Samsung 27&#34; LED TV in the kitchen (already DTV capable) and an old Sharp 27&#34; CRT Box TV that still works great. We didn't want to get rid of it due to the lack of digital support, which is what led me to this box.
Bought this for use with my PC capture card ( AverMedia HD DVR ) and it works great. It does take a while longer to tune than my TV using the Auto Tune but once it's done had no issues.Pros:-Cheap in price- Easy to setup- HDMI out- 1080P/I support.Cons- Takes a while to tune.- menu is just a bit sluggish no biggie for me though.- No HDMI cable included.
Answer: A better question is what format will it not play. I have been able to play divx 4.x and 5.x,asi .mp4,vob,mov and .mkv 4:3&16:9 video files off of a usb on it. This is very nice if you have a lot of personal video files that you want to watch on your tv without having to do extra work converting and burning the video files to disc. I use a 1 tb external drive for storage(to play) and I have an external WD 2.5 500gb for recording with no problems. Be sure to download and install the update software first thing. Also if you are going to record from it be sure and format the drive to ntfs or you will have multiple files for each recording.(unless that is what you want)