Customer Reviews

TVIX PVR M-6620N Duo Plus Over-the-air HD Recorder

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

 

 

I ordered the TVIX M-6620N on April 9, 2011 at Amazon Marketplace from the seller MediaConcept USA. Because I had been ordering so many items from Amazon, my credit card company thought there was a fraudulent charge, which was totally wrong. It took until Monday morning, April 11, to unblock the credit card problem. That same day, MediaConcept USA received the order, installed the latest software, and shipped the unit. I am extremely impressed with their service. I received the PVR at noon on April 14, installed the Western Digital 2 TB WD20EARS hard drive, and that same day I recorded three programs. This PVR is on my home computer network because an ethernet cable goes from my living room, where the PVR is, to my computer room. I can download the high-definition recorded programs to my computer, edit out the commercials, convert them to the AVCHD format, and burn them on DVD-R.

I have been experimenting with some of the other features of this unit, such as downloading music and pictures to the PVR. Since the unit is on my network, this is easy to do. So far, I have not found any problems with the PVR.

I have been searching quite a while for a digital video recorder that can record high-definition programs and offload them. This unit meets all my requirements. The only other DVR that can do this is TiVo but then you are stuck with a monthly subscription fee.

Great concept and nice-looking PVR. The machine is new so it's buggy but with the active development I am hoping that it has lots of potential after a few months. The remote is poorly designed. I bought it in anticipation that it would work with NetFlix -- but not yet.

This baby may seem pricy, but it does A LOT, and it does it well.
Things you want to know:
1) Before you can use it you must buy a separate hard drive, and the drive must be SATA with nomore than a 32 meg cache. 64 meg cache drives are incompatible as of this writing. I regard this as an asset, not a hindrance, as it allows you to choose your own drive size and swap them at will VERY easily. The drive just slides in, no cabling required.
2) This DVR can record TWO separate programs at the same time while you watch a third.
3) THREE ATSC HD digital tuners are built in.
The tuners are BETTER than the one that is built into my LG LED TV and better than DTV Pal in terms of responsiveness and ability to tune weak signals well.
4) It can output both digital and analog audio and video in a variety of resolutions up to 1080P.
5) It comes equipped with TWO USB ports where you can attach 2 extra USB drives and play their media files directly from the TVIX. This allowed me to eliminate my much buggier MICCA SLIM HD.
6) It has a USB interface port to connect with your PC as well as an ethernet port for network connections.
It also has RCA-type AV outputs (sadly no inputs).
7) The interface and tuner are both acceptably responsive and fast.
Almost every digital toy I have ever used to date has been slower.
8) The onboard tuners are very good at delivering quality output on imperfect signals.
9) CRUCIAL IN A DVR - You can power this baby down totally, such as if you have it connected to a power strip, or if there is a blackout, and when you turn it back on it will retain proper time, scheduled recordings, timer info, and USB playback resume positions.
10) The onscreen menu programming guide is FREE, unlike TIVO, and very fast. The player does NOT bog down downloading program guides into perpetuity like my old DVR. It does only show program info for the next 8 hours or so, but it also allows you to manually enter scheduled recordings, so you can use tvguide.com to get schedule info and just manually set them up.
11) Scheduled recording interface is very clean and easy to use, and flexible - you can schedule recordings once, daily, m-fri, sat and sun ETC.
12) One hour recorded in HD consumes roughly 6.5 GIGS on a hard drive. Bear this in mind. So you can record roughly 150 hours on a 1 TB hard drive. There are 1000 GIGS in one TB.
13) The box itself is very attractive and has a very small footprint -
8.5 inches wide X 8.5 inches deep X 3 inches high. The onboard hard drive goes
INSIDE the unit and there is a nice snap on cover that requires no screws and hides the drive inside the unit. The front face of the unit is a nice sleek black color with an LED display of unit status.
14) The DVR uses almost no power (1 watt per hour or so) in standby mode and doesn't make any noise at all. A very small red LED stays lit on the front panel when turned off.
15) The scheduler has a nice "Padding" option that you can set to any number of minutes you like to automatically add a few extra minutes to the start and end of each scheduled recording to adjust for station/clock inconsistencies.
16) It has a nice standard outlet to plug it in to AC power, NOT some obnoxious transformer.
17) The remote control is responsive, well-designed and a comfortable size, unlike the MICCA SLIM which has tiny keys.
18) You can scan programs at up to at 2X,4X,8X,16X,32X speed.
Another VERY nice feature is you can custom set any jump interval you want in seconds, and every time you press the JUMP key you instantly move forward, or backward if you press jump back, by the number of seconds you preset.
GREAT way to fly thru commercials instantly.
19) The firmware can be easily upgraded, so hopefully they will address any shortcomings soon.
20) DVR files are recorded in .tp format, using an H264 codec where 1 hour equals roughly 6.5 GIGS in file size. Unfortunately, the one key feature this DVR is lacking is the ability to edit these files (delete unwanted portions such as commercials). The workaround is to connect the DVR to your PC via a USB link and do the editing using a separate software package. A pain, but it gets the job done. I use VideoREDO to edit these files, which sadly is not free. If anyone knows of a free software package which edits .TP files please post it as a reply to this review.

21) DVR files get saved in directories by the CHANNEL THEY ARE RECORDED FROM.
A strange method of organization if you ask me - I'd prefer to see them all on one screen in order by date recorded.
22) I must reiterate: the remote control is very well-designed. Nice size buttons, and all the key features are there and easy to find in the dark.
You can even switch aspect ratios at blazing fast speed with one button to see what looks best for any given source program.

I am actually replacing THREE pieces of equipment with this one box:
1) my old DVR which does not record in HD and has no onboard
2) a MICCA SLIM HD
3) DTV PAL ATSC tuner which was always a buggy piece of junk

This is a very nice model - i like it a lot,
but i offer these ideas for improvement:
1) add a 1.5x and 2x fast forward WITH SOUND option so you can watch
videos in less time. My prior DVR had this feature which is a real
time saver, but sadly was not HD.
I find that in only a select FEW avi files 2x with sound is an option, but in programs the unit records you can only get sound at normal speed.
2) add the ability to have USB drive file listings DEFAULT to
ALPHABETICAL order, rather than date order.
You CAN get this model to sort the files by alpha, but it should DEFAULT to that without having to tinker.
3) get rid of that annoying red dot on the screen when recording and
watching the same.
4) add an EDIT function so that you can delete selected portions of
pre-recorded items.
5) arguably the MOST irritating feature is, if you are watching ANYTHING else when a timer recording starts, a dumb message appears on the screen saying TIMER WILL START in 15 seconds - and THEN it just stops whatever you are watching and switches you over to the just started recording - how dumb is that? timed recordings should just start quietly and not impact what i am watching.
6) Add ability to record THREE channels at once, better yet four.
7) Save all the recordings in ONE DIRECTORY sorted by date recorded. It is NOT helpful to put each channel in a separate directory.
8) Add INPUTS for external sources, both HDMI and RCA style AV, so that we can record from other than broadcast sources.

This unit is compact, highly effective, attractive and very responsive.
After over a month of heavy use I report no unexpected glitches, hangs, audio sync issues, or any other major flaws. So far it has played everything I have asked it to from both the onboard DVR drive and tw0 connected USB drives.
It has played, AVIs, MKVs, VOBs, and best of all it even will play full DVDs with menu and navigation features the same way a standard player does if you digitize the DVDs and save them to the hard drive.
All in all this DVR is a SOLID buy and the only game in town for those of us who do not want any monthly programming or TIVO fees. Now all I need is a 1MILLION TB hard drive:).

This item is advertised as a PVR with "over-the-air" broadcast recording capability. However, the device comes delivered without a hard drive, thus, I had to incur the additional expense of buying one. Nowhere in the advertisement is this mentioned. Once I received a new hard drive and installed it, the device still didn't work. I checked and rechecked the installation and setup instructions, but it did not work. At this point, I had shelled out 500 dollars for this DVR and wasn't willing to invest any more time or money troubleshooting an ostensibly brand new product. I contacted IPQUEEN for instructions on returning this item, but for two days their representative balked at and demurred at sending a return authorization, blaming first, the manufacturer of the hard drive and then me. When an authorization was finally issued, IPQUEEN charged me a "restocking" fee and refused to pay for the return shipment. After three weeks of dealing with this issue, I am now out more than 90 dollars, still searching for a DVR. If you are looking to tinker with a "Heath-Kit" type product, or want to pay to be IPQUEEN'S R&D engineer, this is for you.