The over-the-air DVR space should get more competitive over time. It supports some major streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, but you’ll still need a separate streaming box to access others, such as Sling TV and Philo. In these cases, you can access all your favorite streaming services alongside over-the-air video without having to switch inputs. Streaming service integration: Many of the DVR products we’ve reviewed are whole-home solutions that you access via apps on your existing streaming devices. Whole-home support: Unless you only plan to watch on a single television, you’ll want a whole-home system, which means buying a networked tuner (Tablo or HDHomeRun) or setting up extenders (such as TiVo’s $150 Mini units). Storage options: With the exception of TiVo Roamio OTA, all the DVRs we reviewed support storage on external hard drives. Tablo has also started beta testing a cloud-based storage service, but we don’t yet know what it’ll cost, and we haven’t tested it yet.
Dolphin DVR Player is one professional H.264/H.265 video player and can play all H.264/H.265 video files smoothly. Support of more than 200 Audio and Video formats that allows you to playback any Audio and Video.
Extremely easy-to-use and modern design plus welcome screen with onboarding guide. TiVo requires a $130 TiVo Stream for mobile device access. Dolphin DVR Player is one very easy-to-use powerful but totally free player for DVR videos, NVR Videos, HVR videos and CCTV videos. We are delighted to introduce you 1 Media Player in Microsoft Store Seamless & Top-Notch Playback with the combination of Pure & Excellent Sound. Out-of-home streaming: Tablo and Plex both allow you to watch live and recorded TV from outside the house. TiVo has four tuners, Tablo has two- and four-tuner options, and HDHomeRun lets you daisy-chain multiple dual-tuner units together. Dahua Smart Player was reviewed by Alexandra Sava.
Number of tuners: More tuners means more simultaneous recordings or live viewings. Video player Capture frame Reverse play Player Frame Timeline Reverse. Live TV time-shifting and catch-up: Want to pause for snack breaks? How about watching partway through a program so you can skip the commercials? Most DVR solutions support this type of time-shifting, but HDHomeRun and Plex currently don’t.
Our full reviews will provide more details.
Not all DVRs are equal in the recording controls they provide. The Bosch DVR Viewer lets you watch video or still images from cameras connected to Bosch Video Recorder 400 and 600 Series in your home. Granular recording options: Perhaps you’d like to keep only a certain number of recent episodes, or replace your recordings with higher-resolution versions when available. Since 2008 the format was replaced by the WTV format. Tablo can operate anywhere in the house, HDHomeRun must be wired to your router, and TiVo and Channel Master are tied to your television. DVR-MS is a video format used by Windows Media Center for recording TV content. The best OTA DVR for most cord-cuttersĪntenna placement options: Over-the-air DVR is useless if your antenna can’t receive channels, so unless you’ve got coaxial cable wired to the roof, you’ll need to set up your DVR in a place with solid indoor antenna reception. Despite that drawback, it is one of the best products in its class, but it doesn't quite rise to top-pick status. On the downside, the Tablo Dual HDMI can't stream video outside your home or to mobile devices. That means you'll experience no degradation in video quality. If video quality is crucially important to you, this over-the-air DVR will record broadcast video in its native MPEG-2 format at a full 60 frames per second. Updated February 1, 2021 with our Nuvyyo Tablo Dual HDMI review. But if you want to start recording broadcast channels now, here’s a rundown of where the current products stand.
The good news is that the lowly antenna is experiencing a rebirth, and we’re likely to see even more over-the-air DVR products.
This post explains how to use third party tools to rewrap DVR-MS video.