HD DVR for OTA?

dcwebman

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jan 21, 2006
274
1
Spring, TX
I have looked through all the forums and tried to get the information I need but am still confused. My situation is that I have DirecTV ONLY for the Sunday Ticket and have subscribed for 11 years. I recently moved and unfortunately my cable system only has one HD local channel so I needed to find a solution to get my other locals. A friend had an old Panasonic TU-HDS20 receiver that I tried and I was able to receive the other local HD OTA channels. Now the problem is that I miss having a DVR like the cable DVR's that I have had so I need to find a solution for an HD DVR for the OTA.

This Panasonic receiver is really a DirecTV receiver and my friend never used DirecTV, just the OTA part. So I know I could get a new DirecTV HD DVR and pay big bucks because I'm not going to sign up for the 2 year programming in order to get the mail in rebate.

I don't want a computer sitting near my entertainment center in order to have a DVR (PVR).

So what other solutions are out there so I can have an HD DVR for my OTA?
Thanks,
Jeff
 
Thanks for the reply. It appears though that the cost of the LG is as much if not more than the DirecTV DVR. I can get the DirecTV one for around $500 on Ebay. It does appear to be interesting in features though. I already have a dual-tuner DVR from my cable company so that would in effect give me 3 tuners with this one being an analog cable DVR. :)

Any other brands/models or a cheaper way to get the LG?
 
charper1 said:
Try the LG LST-3410A

They are no longer for sale new and, at least according to the posters on a long running AVS Forum thread, most are problemmatic. On paper they seemed like an answer for those of us unwilling to shell out $700 to buy or $300 to lease a DBS DVR, and who primarily want to record HD from the major networks. Alas, new ones are basically non-existent and many re-sale ones are those w/ chronic problems no fixed until the final few models produced.
 
Sony makes a stand-alone DVR that will record HD, Model DHGHDD250. Sells for around $750.
 
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While you won't get true HD, you can use a Series2 standalone TiVo to pass your HD OTA channels through to your TV. You will get whatever quality level of signal that the S-Video connections can deliver. You can record them in the "Best Quality" setting for maximum signal capture. You will not be able to pass the additional "sub-channels" (e.g. 10.1, 10.2) using this method, so some features will be unavailable like "24 hour weather radar" that some OTA's feature on sub-channels. My understanding is that you will see you primary (XX.1) channels and that they can be recorded as well. I have an OTA that I have not yet connected in this way, but after setting up the s/a TiVo, it listed the channels as (ant) and (sat) in my program guide.
 
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