Customer Reviews

Gefen High-Definition Personal Video Recorder

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I owned the Gefen HD-PVR for several months. For the price is an absolute piece of junk.

For starters the audio sync is off by a fraction of a second, creating an obvious discrepancy that will be noticeable for many viewers. Second, the stereo-only audio recording results in harsh, brittle audio that does not accurately reproduce the stream of whatever content you happen to be recording. The internal hard drive is small and the transport-to-PC via SD/SDHC cards doesn't work quite properly either. Sure, the picture quality is fine, but for the $800 and up that this retails for, everything about it ought to work...and it doesn't. I wouldn't hold your breath on the firmware front either, as each update that came out when I owned the device added glitchy aspects that weren't there before. One update disallowed 720p/1080i recording to a SD card, another allowed it. One other update re-allowed it, but wouldn't let you transfer a hard-drive recording to the PC card. And on and on it went.

A much better, more cost efficient, and much more satisfying device is the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR. For about $200 you get a working unit that hooks up to your PC, records in 5.1 audio (that's in sync!), records in the same H264 quality, but gives you a lot more options, a lot more flexibility to fine-tune your recordings, burn to a dual-layer DVD+R for AVCHD compatability, and such.

$800 for this non-working unit or $200 for something that does, and does it better? It's a no-brainer.

Im using the GREFEN PVR to record all my laparoscopic surgeries from HD and no HD sources.
It works great!
H264 format has great quality.
I wish it would have more hard disk capacity and a USB connection to a PC to obtain all videos (you need to take them out through a SD card)

I'm really liking this product.

I have seen people comparing the hauppauge dvr device with this. The hauppauge requires a lot of wiring, uses computer resources, and I never got reasonable results. It came with "liquid tv" - a tivo program for pc and the hauppage device. Ugh. That program was uninstalled in no time flat. I would rather go back to video tape. Just look at the wiring required... and your pc is probably at a desk and not next to your home entertainment stuff - more wiring...

I would highly recommend adding the HDFury III to the Gefen box. I've had no issues as mentioned by the earlier review. The only "problem" is some of the remote codes are the same as some other devices I have. I've a lot of a/v stuff, so this probably won't affect normal situations.