Visionsat IV200 PVR Plus

[SatinKzo]

Wow, the specs, review and screenshots just scream that it is a Coolsat 7000 without the internal memory for buffering

Nice review though.

[Larry1]

I would be interested in if you get a USB hard disk how that works out. Can you explain some more on the timer capabilites for recordings. Does it have selections to setup timers for every Monday to Friday, or a selection you can check multiple days of the week? e.g. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but not Friday Saturday or Sunday and of every week not just a one time recording. Can you leave the unit turned off (yes but have the switch on the back turned on) and it will turn on and off during the week for multiple timers? How many timers can you program into it?

How would you rate the tuner. Does it hold the signal lock with with week signals?
Could you post a picture of the 2nd remote?

Thank You....Larry

[Iceberg]

Larry
My unit did not come with a 2nd remote. From what I understand basically the buttons on the bottom are missing (where the PVR stuff would be). I am in the process of adding a HDD today to it and will check on the timers and report back.

I did set two timers and had the unit off (standby) and it does power on, record, then shut off.

[Iceberg]

I would be interested in if you get a USB hard disk how that works out.

I'll explain in another post my "experience" with a HDD

Can you explain some more on the timer capabilites for recordings. Does it have selections to setup timers for every Monday to Friday, or a selection you can check multiple days of the week? e.g. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but not Friday Saturday or Sunday and of every week not just a one time recording.

it can do one time, daily or weekly. Daily is 7 days a week sadly. No other options

Can you leave the unit turned off (yes but have the switch on the back turned on) and it will turn on and off during the week for multiple timers?

yes

How many timers can you program into it?

I programmed in 26 and it kept going. I honestly don't know how many timers it will do. It fits 10 on the screen then the screen will scroll so it might be a fair amount. The only issue is setting them up manually sucks

How would you rate the tuner. Does it hold the signal lock with with week signals?

the tuner is very sensitive. On my big dish aimed at G4 I can get KCSG on IA5 pretty good with the CS8K. This one I can get that and BYU TV both very stable. It seems to hold well with weaker signals which is very nice

[Iceberg]

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Well I tried to get it to work with a HDD...here is what happened

I went and purchased a Maxtor 320GB HD. Got it home and hooked it up to the receiver. Got it to recognize it and tried to format it. Box whirled for a minute or so then "Format Failed". OK

So I know you can format it on the computer then transport it to the receiver. You have to format it in a "fat32format". SO I downloaded the file to allow it to do that and formatted the HDD via the computer. System showed approx 319 GB

So I hooked it back up and it recognized it. Hit record and it showed 0:00:00 and 1:00:00...huh? The first number didnt move. So I let it record for a minute or so and hit stop

and the box froze.....grrrr....reboot with switch on back. Hit eject and the program is there but 0KB...hmmm

so I try to reformat...and it failed. DId some reading and found out the HDD is incompatible with the receiver. I read what drives are and it sounds like Western Digital is the big one and seagate is another.....

Then I found the bad news (for me at least)...when you record something it saves it as 2 hours max per file. So If you have a 3 hour ball game its 2 files.

I'll keep my box hooked up to the DVD recorder/HDD box I already have
It would work great for shows up to 2 hours but I record too many hockey games and I can't afford to have it on 2 files.....I probably will try a WD hard drive one of these days (have to see what's on sale)

[VinceT3]

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the file limitation is a fat32 limitation.. 4 gigs per file max if I remember correctly.. they just cut it in half probably to save on performance and just in case it accidentally goes over 2 gigs size on a 2 hour recording

Box sounds good though I'm waiting on a DVB-S2 box/pci card (preferably with blindscan).. I was hunting some euro sites (since they are plenterful over there).. nothing worth getting for the price yet..