Finally, here is the review I should have written a year ago back when I got the thing.
First, just as a correction of the above, the CS7000 was the one with the built in flash memory for a buffer. The CS7100 has none but "new in the box" came with a 1GB USB stick. Most USB sticks or powered USB hard drives will work with this unit. The USB stick is also the preferred method for loading new firmware or saving and restoring channel lists.
It works really well as a PVR, at least as well as you can expect when there's no EPG available for 99% of channels. I prefer the lastest hackware over the factory version simply because it is better at supporting stacked LNBFs and a variety of switches. Had I known at the time what its real purpose was (stealing Dish and Bell) I probably would have chosen something else, but it really is a good receiver for true FTA regardless.
In November, this was discussed and I uploaded a few files that were relevant.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/194720-what-happened-coolsat-2.html#post2027778
One thing I have noticed, the box is kind of finicky if transponders are too "close" together. For example whatever satellite PBS is on now. There are several "feed" transponders if I remember correctly that are just a few MHz apart on the same polarity. I was only able to input one of those at a time, as the existing one would popup as a conflict if I tried to add another close to it. Speaking of PBS, the box has both coax and optical digital audio outputs that can connect to a home theatre and decode AC-3 audio streams.
Blind scanning seemed slow, but keep in mind this is the only blind scan unit I have yet owned, maybe they are all this way. Several minutes to scan the whole satellite looking for signals, then a few more minutes spent scanning whatever it found looking for channels.