Better Than a TIVO and Without a Subsciption Fee

Bought this HDD-DVR on Tuesday and it worked right out of the box. It's fantastic and couldn't be easier to set up and use. You can also get the best of both worlds, if you set it up properly. Let me explain ..... It has a self-contained signal amplifier and splitter, so I connected its coax input direct to the incoming cable and its coax output to our cable box. The coax output from the cable box goes to the coax input for the TV and the RWY audio/video output from the cable box goes into the RWY audio/video input in the back of the HDD-DVR. This means that the HDD-DVR can accept the analog and digital signals direct from the incoming signal (giving me twice the channels that the cable box decodes) PLUS the decoded signals from the cable box. It also means that you can watch one channel while recording another. Brilliant ! Of course you have your choice of connections for the HDD-DVR signal to the TV. I recommend HDMI, but unfortunately this unit only comes with one set of  more

Great unit but do research

I was fed up with paying $97 a month for my basic cable so I did some research on the available DVR options, which is the only reason I stayed with cable. This one seemed to stand out above the rest in the price range because of the DVD recording, the digital tuner and the DVR functionality (pause, play, record, rewind, fast forward live TV). There are two things to watch out for with this unit. 1. Finalizing a DVD requires a few extra steps (See the post by Jeff4U) 2. The Auto-clock feature will screw with your system (again, Jeff4U's comments has the fix) While they do add to the complexity of the unit, they are able to be overcome. I've read that a lot of people don't like that it only has one digital TV tuner. So you can't watch one program and record another. With my setup I have an outdoor digital antenna that I patched into my existing cable coax, so I didn't have to run any new cable. Then I split the video signal before the TV so I have one line going to my TV and one to  more

Great unit, yes some limitations, but...

The Magnavox H2160 is the only game in town. After having a DVR with DVD read/write as the storage mechanism (which recently gave up the ghost), it is so much better to have 160MB of HDD storage without having to mess with discs in and out. We use it to record programs that are not convenient for us to watch, then play them back - after which we usually just erase the program. If we do want to save a program for posterity, we can easily dump it (oops, I mean dub it) onto a DVD+-R or +-RW. Works flawlessly. Performance of the unit is very good - not HD of course, but still a good quality picture. Setting up recording time is straight forward and works well. Good flexibility in configuration with the built-in Tuner - I hook this up to cable box plus raw cable to be able to watch 1 show while recording another. The DVD player works very well with commercial DVDs. Some problems matching the Aspect Ratio to fit the screen on my TV, haven't yet figured out how to solve this. A limitation  more

Failed with digital cabel box

I spent more than three hours to test this unit to do the timer recording through Time Warner cable digital box, it failed. Called Magnavox tech support ( you may reach them easily), they confirmed when you connected a digital cable box, you could only record whatever the digital cable box was playing. While recording, you cannot watch another channel and cannot turn off the digital cable box which means if you want to record one show in the early morning, you have to leave your cable box on and stick with the channel you want to record for the entire night. Magnavox tech support also confirmed if I disconnected the digital cable box or connect this unit to the wall first, the timer recording would work perfectly though you could not record digital TV programs. But it's not meaningful to me any more, so I returned it.

Great dvr.

This is a great unit. No media is necessary. Just record to the hard drive or dvds. Pause, rewind and fast forward past commercials during live TV. I have an antenna and the tuner picks up all channels near me. My only concern is how long will it operate problem free? Hopefully a long time. It is cheaper at [...]. where I bought mine.