I can't thank you enough! My antenna just came last week and I've been looking at ordering this DVR, but waited until the antenna was mounted. Needless to say, I took advantage of this sale.
Are you able to stream recorded content to other TVs in the house? I'd love to know how you're set up to do this. We're cutting the cord soon, but I haven't figured out how to watch something recorded on this DVR in another room.
Glad the timing worked out for you!
No unfortunately the only real nitpick I have with this device is that it is not designed to serve multiple TVs. You'd basically just have to buy one for each TV in your home where you want the DVR capability. And then it's a hassle of remembering which program you recorded on which DVR, and that limiting where you can watch what. (unless you record all your shows on BOTH DVRs, which I suppose is easily done, but requires you managing your recordings twice).
My previous setup was the following:
A HD Homerun "Extend" (formerly called HDTC, or HD Homerun Transcode) is a dual-tuner device that accepts OTA broadcast channels (co-ax from your antenna) and transcodes them to H.264 streams, which it then sends over my LAN to my Mac (it plugs into my router). My Mac, alway on, runs Elgato's EyeTV software, which controls the HD Homerun tuners and stores the recordings. EyeTV is basically the DVR interface on my mac. Once a recording is completed, EyeTV automatically "exports" the recording to iTunes, complete with Title, screenshot, and metadata (show description, date, etc.). Once in iTunes, the show is accessible to either of my Apple TVs (living room and bedroom) via Homesharing like any other media in iTunes.
When it works, this system is ideal as a whole house DVR. You only store a recording once on your mac, and you could expand to any number of TVs for only the cost of adding another Apple TV. And I'd say the system worked 85%+ of the time. But occasionally EyeTV would simply record the wrong channel, and other times the exporting (from EyeTV to iTunes) process would not work automatically and I'd have to go and tell EyeTV to export manually, which would take a few minutes but was still a hassle. The bottom line was that Elgato did not officially support SiliconDust's HD Homerun hardware. So it worked most of the time, but when there was a bug, Elgato would provide no support or fixes to get it working. And SiliconDust is mostly just the hardware provider. So, in practice, making the system work required a low level of maintenance on my part. This was enjoyable at first when it was novel ("Hey I have the best and lowest-cost system! I can spare a half hour here every couple weeks to trouble-shoot it!"), but after a couple years of occasional but persistent issues and no sign of improved support from Elgato, I got interested in a simpler solution.
The DVR+ is that simpler solution. It takes my computer, iTunes, Elgato, and SilconDust completely out of the loop, and puts all the software and hardware involved in recording and playing shows in the hands of a single company: Channelmaster. In addition, the electronic program guide service is bundled into the upfront cost, so you never pay a monthly or yearly fee for that service (like you do with Tivo and EyeTV). No recurring costs is nice.
When I got the DVR+ last November I thought I'd set it up as a trial and see how my wife like it vs. my complicated HD home run / EyeTV / Apple TV system. Within a week she didn't even bother checking the old system for new shows any more. She just used the DVR+ exclusively. Since we only have one DVR+, and it is in the living room, I thought maybe she'd still like the EyeTV recorded shows to watch in the bedroom. But what happens is that she just relegates all the OTA-recorded shows (i.e.: Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS) to the living room, and if she wants to watch something in the bedroom it's usually netflix-based, or from some other Apple TV app (like Downton Abbey on the PBS app). I actually asked her if we could/should get another DVR+ for the bedroom for this one-day sale, and she said "Meh, we don't need it."
So, for what it's worth, the spouse acceptance factor (SAF) is pretty darn high for the DVR+. Simpler is better.
