Features:

  • Converts Over-The-Air Digital Broadcast to your Analog TV, Antenna out Analog Pass Through, Favorite Channel List, Parental Control Function
  • Auto Tuning, HDMI 1080P Output / YPbPr output / Coaxial Output, Closed Caption,
  • Real-Time Recording & Programmed Time Recording, Auto, 16:9 Pillar Box, 16:9 Pan G Scan, 4:3 Letter Box, 4:3 Pan G Scan, 4:3 Full, 16:9 Wide Screen. Recording function require users to use their own USB external hard drive or USB flash drive.
  • Real-Time Recording & Programmed Time Recording, Auto, 16:9 Pillar Box, 16:9 Pan G Scan, 4:3 Letter Box, 4:3 Pan G Scan, 4:3 Full, 16:9 Wide Screen. Recording function require users to use their own USB 3.5" external hard drive (Support up to 2TB) or USB flash drive (Support up to 64GB)
  • This product does NOT work with TIVO and cable company such as Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network, Time Warner Cable, Shaw Cable, etc. In general, this product does NOT work with encryped cable signal. This Box is NOT a replacement of a cable company's box.
For Manufacturers Who Hate Tuners

I purchased a high end 80" flat screen LED "display", ignorant of the fact there was no tuner and therefore no option to input OTA broadcasts via an air antennae. I discovered this while looking for an antennae input that does not exist - my bad. I grew tired of outrageous costs associated with cable and satellite options, so this was more than a little frustrating. Note to self: Display ≠ HDTV. The "Mediasonic HomeWorx ATSC Digital Converter Box w/ TV Recording, Media Player, and TV Tuner Function (HW-150PVR)" came to the rescue. This external tuner was easy to set up, has operated flawlessly, and functions exactly as described. Don't forget two AAA batteries are required for the remote and are not included. Speaking of the remote, it is relatively small for all the functions it incorporates. This means function buttons may be a challenge for those whose fine motor skills and/or vision are a challenge. Lastly, it gives you one more remote control to keep track of, no additional charge. Operation of the PVR function is a bit less than intuitive, but the included directions and onscreen prompts allow you to work through it. At this price point, it's obvious you must supply your own external USB powered hard drive for storage. I chose a very small profile 1 TB Seagate model. After formatting, it functions flawlessly. Programming the PVR function is a little tedious, since there isn't an easy channel guide integrated, but again, the price point makes this understandable and acceptable in my opinion. You also aren't paying a monthly or annual subscription fee for the privilege of such an enhancement. I would be remiss not to mention that the USB port is located on the front of the unit, as opposed to the back or side of the device. The exposed cord may offend those who are aesthetically sensitive. I should also mention the OTA antenna I am utilizing is an inexpensive "HDTV Antenna,Upgraded 2018 Version TV Antenna for Digital TV Indoor, Best 60+ Miles Range with UL Power Adapter & Detacable Amplifier, 10+3 FT High Performance Cable for 1080P 4K High Reception" and not some roof mounted battleship worthy unit. It's mounted on a south facing window and we live in the country. We get every OTA channel offered in central Oklahoma (42 total) and reception is crystal clear, thanks to the digital broadcast signal, antenna, and tuner box performance. When it comes to connecting the tuner to your display, composite RCA cords are included, but not an HDMI cord. At this cost, that is to be expected and many of us have spares aplenty laying around. This tuner is a great option compared to Tivo, Sling, or other far more expensive solutions. It delivers service and performance far exceeding my expectations. I am extremely pleased with the purchase and would do it again without reservation.

Highly Recommended for the price

GREAT product for the price - please read on. One of my obscure joys is watching the old Perry Mason TV series which is shown twice per weekday on ME TV. Unfortunately, when I switched cable services, I lost access to that channel via the cable. I have a TV hooked up in the man cave via an Over The Air (OTA) setup with a simple indoor antenna, and ME TV is shown on one of the extra digital stations attached to a local affiliate (major network) in Cleveland. That station is broadcast in the lower VHF range though, which means it is almost impossible to pick it up with "rabbit ears" on a MOHU or similar antenna hooked up to the TV. But when I ran the antenna through this device, the tuner - which must be superior to the one in the TV - easily picked up ME TV. So for the price, the TV tuner alone is worth it. The antenna goes into the HomeWorx, and that connects to my TV with HDMI cable. Picture perfect! The device is not the most user friendly design, but with a little patience, it really shines. The owners manual is useless except for kindling- but the company has posted some helpful items on their website and those are cited elsewhere in comments. Some tips and tricks follow... The remote and the on screen menus walk you through everything - just pretend you are learning a new language for toddlers and you will succeed. Remember that you would have to pay $200 or so to get a truly user friendly device. Set up the time zone, and be sure to adjust it when daylight savings arrives and ends or you miss ten Perry Mason's and be stuck with Matlock and Gunsmoke. Use the auto search for channels once - if there is a step in there to delete channels you don't wish to save, do it at that time. My only complaint is that there appears to be no way to list my saved channels, delete the ones I don't like, and mark a few favorites. The timer works well - just set up your program using the Timer button on the remote - I do them DAILY which means I do tweak the recording schedule once a week or I have to delete unwanted shows on the weekend. By the way, if your episode transverses midnight, you should record from 11:30PM (which is 23:30 - they use a 24 hour clock only) until midnight, then 12AM to 12:30AM the next day (yes, that's 00:00 until 00:30 - see? You're catching on fast!). If you intend to record, you will need a modern external backup USB drive - a terabyte costs about $50. You can tape all 271 episodes of Perry Mason using only about 40% of the drive. Leaves you lots of room for shows in COLOR! Maybe all the Hogan's Heroes episodes, too... Cable TV has gotten very expensive. To save money try cutting the cord. Antenna, HomeWorx and backup drive - all for the cost of one month's cable bill! You will need to buy this device to get the most channels (did I say the tuner is GREAT!) - hook it up to a backup USB terabyte drive, and you can save about 700 hours of shows. The company also sells a replacement remote for about $8. I am thinking of ordering an extra one - the remote is required to operate the HomeWorx device properly. I will probably sit on it soon. Oh yeah, your drive should be set to NTFS - NOT FAT32. I have no idea what that means, nor do I care. Just do it that way. There are folks as nerdy as I was when I used a slide rule in high school chemistry who have written about why, and recorded you tube videos about it. I am sure some find it fascinating. Enjoy.

Great for antenna tv DVR

Bought this thing and struggled to figure it out for a week. I’ve read the manual (which isn’t that great). I’ve read all forums I could find on the internet and reviews here on Amazon. I cancelled cable and WiFi in my house. I just wanted something to program and record antenna tv when I couldn’t stay up to watch it. I didn’t want to pay a subscription fee and like I said I don’t have home WiFi anymore. I hooked mine up with HDMI cables (not included) (included where red, white, yellow cables) to a smart tv, antenna and surround sound. Perfect picture. Follow the quick sheet for recording, laminated mine. I have found to program a recording session just leave the homeworx box on (green light). You can turn tv off. You can’t record two shows at the same time. Make sure you exit all menu screens on homeworx before you turn tv off. I also found out a usb thumb drive only works for a while, cuts time of show or doesn’t work at all. I purchased a portable hard drive and used it to record shows and it works flawlessly. You get a TV guide menu on screen with this box for 2 days out. It works exactly like an old VCR. You can pause, FF and rewind recorded shows. You go in to the EPG menu on remote (2 AAA batteries not included) and set up the recording. You press usb button or menu button on remote to retrieve recordings. It’s not at all user friendly but it’s definitely learnable over few times. The remote definitely lags with pressing buttons, commands must be done slow. I have no complaints now that I figured out I needed a portable hard drive to record and not a regular usb thumb drive which manual says. I’ll update if need be.

cannot understand how anyonw would give this product anything less than 5 starts

incomprehensible. this is one of the best bang for the buck I've gotten in years of purchasing stuff from Amazon. I was going to buy a small TV for $350 to put in the kitchen. Then I thought of an LCD monitor I didn't have a use for and looked for a product that would would work as a tuner for it. Now, I have a monitor-TV for channels over the air (which are all the channels I really need), radio stations, all beautifully displayed on the monitor that was collecting dust. And this thing even has an HDMI port out, which is exactly what I needed for the monitor. Oka -- it did help that I bought the best quality indoor antenna there is to use with it. But if you have a regular LCD TV, you have to have a good antenna to capture over the air signal any way. so no extra cost there. Image and functionality are impeccable. I cannot comprehend what else people would want from a 40-dollar gadget like this. okay, a VGA port would make it even more perfect... Still, I would give it an extra star for the value. 6 stars at least, to make up for some lunatic who gave less the 4 stars.

picture quality is excellent as long as the signal strength is above 80%

Have used the dvr for almost 2 years now, picture quality is excellent as long as the signal strength is above 80%. Lower signal strengths will cause the video or audio to pause intermittently. Here are a few features that I discovered not listed in the user manual- The dvr is able to record one channel while watching another, as long as it is on a sub-channel (that is, if you are recording channel 2-1 you can watch channels 2-2 or 2-3 without interrupting recording 2-1. However, you can not tune to a completely different station, say channel 11-1 or 54-3). While watching another sub-channel, the elapsed-time recording display will also show the channel number that is being recorded, i.e. c010 (the 10-th channel in units memory). While recording, you can turn off the elapsed-time counter on-screen display by pressing the Exit button once. Press the Info button to show the counter again, a second press will show detailed recording info (video stream bit-rate, record remaining time on the flash drive, file size, etc). When switching to a new channel, or when first press of the info button, a limited channel schedule is displayed for the current and next program. There is a bar graph displayed, unknown what the bar graph is showing?? (it is not the signal strength). The hi-def files can be viewed on many tablets or recent pc's, older computer may require additional software for playback or media player update. Bugs- Have noticed some bugs in the electronic program guide, show description text is repeated or displayed for the wrong show. This does not affect any performance. Sometimes a recording does not occur, the dvr loses the timed event for an unknown reason. Other times, the recording event runs but the unit does not turn itself off and the recording fails or is deleted. Sometimes the unit menu screen will freeze or lock up and you have to power it off. Both the manual and support feedback from the manufacturer recommends to use the unit with an external hard-drive and the NTFS file system. But in practice have used a USB flash drive with the FAT32 file format and the dvr is reliable with a few cautions. First, use a newer flash drive that supports USB2.0 or USB3.0 speeds, a hi-speed flash drive can keep up with the data stream. Second, only record programs in a contiguous fashion- record one program after another and do not delete earlier ones (with the exception of the very last recorded event, that can be deleted without issue), a fragmented flash drive can cause scheduled recordings to fail. Anything you want to keep can be transferred to pc or external hard-drive, then erase all the files on the flash drive and start recording all over again. One additional feature that would make the unit useful for cable owners would be the ability to record from either RCA video/audio cables or an analog RF channel 3 coax output, then it would work with cable.

Works as advertised.

Here is some of my thoughts about this box. TUNER- Scan more than once before you give up. I almost did and it would have been a mistake. With some work I got all the channels my Tivax box got. You might have to move the antenna around to bring in some channels. Remember you can add channels manually. I say this tuner is good. RECORDING QUALITY- I was worried about the video playback and audio/video sync but it turns out there is nothing to worry about. Picture quality fine and video playback smooth. TIPS: Use hard drive to record. I don't think flash drive were made to record on and the files are large. Update firmware. It will fix timing and EPG issues. When it comes to guide I do believe a channel is only obligated to give so many hours. Which mean some will give more info than others. So don't expect to have a guide that will show what's on for weeks out no matter what the OTA box is. With this box + an external hard drive you get DVR capabilities for half the price. At first that scared me but now I'm glad I at least tried it. I would buy again.

Exactly What I Needed

This product perfectly filled a gap in my digital recording capability. I have a TiVo box and use it for most things, but my cable provider has an ongoing pissing contest with the local CBS station over rebroadcast fees, so I had to figure out some other way to get CBS. I already had an antenna that was good enough to get the signal from the local CBS station, and I had both a USB hard drive and a USB thumb drive that were not in use, so this little item was all I needed to plug that gap. The setup is a little cryptic, and some of the remote control functions are a little strange, but overall it works very well, especially for the price. Once I got accustomed to it, I think if it as being very much like the digital version of my old VHS tape days, just that I don't have to mess with rewinding the tapes (i.e. setting up recordings is very reminiscent of the old days). One random bit of information that I would have found useful before buying it is that, at least on the default setting, you need a little more than 6 GB per hour of recording at what I think is 1080i. So, unless you record a lot of stuff and/or leave it sitting around for a week or two, even a relatively small thumb drive (e.g. 64 GB) should be plenty.

Best thing since the television

This unit has a more sensitive tuner than my television and paired with a WD passport (1TB), I can store many hundreds of hours of shows and videos. Using this box, I can record something and watch something else from OTA as I don't throw my money away to comcast or any other cable rip-off.

Batteries not included

For the price, this is an excellent value. I took it out of the box, plugged it in, found some batteries, and had it up and running (including doing the channel scan) in about 10 minutes. Good points: No hassle, worked out of the box. Firmware upgrade went in easy (you want to get the latest firmware on this, currently that's v10 for most people, a very few people need QAM which is v12 and you have to ask for it). Edit: ******* WARNING, newer units are starting to ship that look identical but use DIFFERENT firmware. Loading V10 firmware will disable the audio and your remote will work odd (they moved the buttons around on the remote). New units have serial number 13070001 and higher. Do NOT update firmware on new units! ***** Antenna feed-through works well, you have to set the mode for this in SETTINGS. You can swap out the external hard drive (not included) between shows and then use your computer to watch any shows recorded on it while new shows are recorded on the other drive. Things that could be better: Batteries for remote not included, I can't remember not getting (very cheap) batteries with any remote. You'll need two AAA batteries. You can NOT view something previously recorded while it's recording another program. You CAN use this to view a few other channels if they're sub-channels of the one you're recording. You just have to try and see. IF your TV has a digital tuner and you've hooked up the antenna feed-through, then you can use that tuner to see any channel you want regardless if this is recording or even turned on. It would be REALLY nice if there was a way to access more than one unit in the same room. Like an A/B button on the remote and some way to tell each box if it was A or B. To do it now, you have to block the IR signal to one box to use the remote on the other. I could easily see buying a second of these so I could watch a recorded program while another was recording on the other unit. Edit to add: I just added a $5 direct from China USB hub to this so I can leave a hard drive plugged in while being able to plug/unplug flash drives with shows I've grabbed from the web. Worked without any problem at all. It names the drives USB1, USB2, ... My hard drive is USB1 and it records/plays back from it just fine through the hub. I have no idea how it selects the numbers, it may be by position on the hub or hard drive first, flash drives second...or something else. I wish it had a MOVE command that would let me move files from one drive to the other. It also won't delete a file that you copied on, only ones it's recorded. One more edit: It doesn't seem to like more than 2 USB devices, but that's ok. Allows one hard drive and one flash drive.

Exactly What I Was Looking For, and more!

I bought this digital converter box because I found out it can record from the TV, and since we cut the cable and went with antenna, this is an option we lost. We have a digital Smart TV by Samsung, so we actually don't need a converter, but I saw comments by other reviewers that the digital converter in the Mediasonic unit handles the incoming signals better than their TV. Bonus! We live in central Phoenix, surrounded by high rise buildings that block our line of sight to the broadcasting towers to the south of us. In spite of this, we decided to go OTA, accepting that we might experience signal break up and occasional interference. The unit arrived today, and though I'm not a technical whiz, I can read instructions and a schematic diagram, so I was the one who unpacked the unit and set it up. I was very surprised and pleased when I switched the unit on and it worked first time! I had an HDMI cable available, so I used that for my connections between the TV and the converter box, not requiring the audio and video cables provided. Since my main requirement was being able to record, I connected a 500 GB portable hard drive (Seagate) into the USB port on the front of the unit and tried that out first. It started to record immediately and I was able to negotiate the menu to find where my recording was stored and play it back. I still have some experimenting to do, but so far I have been delighted. The added bonus is that we get a better signal overall on channels that can be unreliable and jerky. Even some of our local stations can be annoyingly erratic; cutting out and breaking up. It looks right now like this box is somehow strengthening the signal or decoding it better than our TV. I could not be happier.

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