Channel Master TV review

In the event you prefer your DVR without strings attached, your choices are pretty limited nowadays. It is easy to in fact roll your individual , but admittedly, that may not for every person. Channel Master does plan to switch that, though, as it’s currently accepting pre-orders for its over-the-air DVR with over-the-top features that does not require a subscription. The Channel Master TV ($399) must be hitting retailers and houses this week, and because we adore DVRs, especially when they’re free from commitments, we decided to take it for a spin. Click through to look the way it stacks up.

Hardware

This isn’t a local where the $399 Channel Master TV shines. We wouldn’t go so far as saying it feels cheap, however is not the best looking (or feeling) hardware we’ve ever touched. After all, it’s on par with many other media streamers we’ve used. The box is small, light and mostly made up of plastic. It has a single physical button up front for power with a number of touch sensitive ones for the rare time when one must navigating an on-screen menu with no remote.

At 320GB, the inner hard disk is greater than most provider’s DVRs. The inbuilt 802.11N will come in useful for many most since network drops aren’t exactly common place behind TVs. And dual tuners are pretty standard today — the one coax inputs limits it to either ATSC or QAM, not both whilst. The inclusion of an eSATA port makes for straightforward expansion, if 320GB isn’t large enough for all of your shows. Finally, the included remote is back-lit and somewhat serviceable, and although it’s programable, we do not foresee you ditching your Harmony for it.

The DVR experience

The Channel Master TV is certainly what we’d describe as a DVR first and a media streamer second. The menus and guide are serviceable but nothing we’d write home about. The humble grid guide is there, but so is the 0 spoiler window 0 . The guide indicates what will be recorded in addition to what’s on in HD, but only displays six channels and two hours, and there are no optional views. Unlike many provider DVRs, you may remove channels you will not watch from view, that may also filter the quest results. Speaking of which, the quest is quick and we actually like the way it grays out letters, like a GPS, that can assist you quickly find shows. That groovy search isn’t exactly included, though, because the real guide data will run you $50 per year, per box — ATSC or clear QAM — and naturally does require a network connection. Without the Premium Program Guide, you’re stuck with 1 PSIP 1 data which at best is 2 days worth of knowledge, assuming it’s actually present and accurate.

Recording a show after you’ve found something worthy by browsing or searching the guide is pretty easy due to recording defaults. After all you may schedule a recording with a single press of the record button; but two presses doesn’t automatically schedule a chain recording. Another feature this is appreciated, but not on every DVR, is the power to record time beyond regulation before or after a show.

Playing back content isn’t quite pretty much as good, though. For starters, there aren’t many options on the subject of sorting recordings and also you aren’t capable of break shows out in their folders. Worse even, is that while the show names are displayed, the episode titles aren’t, making a whole season seem like much of an identical. The scrub bar can also be nothing special, only showing the present time of the show and never how long the show is. Overall, the trick play and responsiveness of channels changes is on par with what we’re used to, but there have been a couple of times when the box would get laggy and once it even locked up, requiring a reboot — we kept the cupboard where it lived open after that. Something sports fans won’t appreciate is the only live buffer which could make it more challenging to replace backward and forward between two live programs without missing a play.

Vudu and other media features

One of the crucial compelling features of the Chanel Master TV is the merging of a conventional DVR with modern streaming services. The headliner here’s needless to say Vudu and its portfolio of 8 Vudu Apps 8 . As HD snobs, we’ve always been impressed with 9 Vudu and its Blu-ray comparable video and audio quality 9 , but many would like not to pay per view. The issue is that Vudu Apps themselves have never been that compelling and lots of any other services you could possibly hope for are missing-in-action. Netflix, Hulu, ESPN3? No, no and no. The list of over-the-top services that other streamers offers, that the Channel Master TV doesn’t, is long and compelling, but on the other hand the list of DVRs with Vudu built-in is exactly one. We did reach out to Channel Master and they told us “we are working diligently to add more streaming content partners,” and that it is the company’s goal “to have several other content options.”

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The lack of other services isn’t the only problem, however. The other big concern is the lack of integration between Vudu and the DVR. You’d think that by buying one box that did both, you’d get an integrated experience, but you’d think wrong. There’s no unified search, and a few little annoyances make it worse, like the guide button on the remote doesn’t work when you are in Vudu. The live TV buffer doesn’t even build while you’re watching a Vudu movie. Sure, you still have one less box under the TV, but if you already own a Blu-ray player or game console with Vudu, the benefit of having it also in-builtto the Channel Master TV is nada.

Wrap-up

There’s no doubt in our mind that the future of TV is a mix between live and on-demand programming. And since we love 0 free over-the-air HD 0 and the quality and selection of Vudu, this is a great combination. Then again, at $399 the hardware and specs aren’t looking that appealing when you compare it to picking up your provider’s DVR and a sub $99 Blu-ray player with Vudu. But that really isn’t the point. This is directed at cord-cutters and the loss of a cable bill will make it easy to save $400 in about six months time. The Channel Master TV does have a long way to go to being a cord-cutter’s dream, though, but with the promise to roll out new advanced features in the long run, it does have the prospective to be just the fitting fit for people who desire a DVR, sans the strings, and are not willing to roll their very own.

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This post is tagged: commitments, hard-drive, inclusion, media streamer, rare time, screen menu