Channel Master CM7400 1080p Internet Compatible HDTV DVR

I have used the Channel Master CM7400 for about six months now. It does excellent HD recording of TV programs I receive from (free) over the air channels in my area. If you are looking to dump cable and you live in an area with a number of local stations, then get this unit and a good HD antenna and you are set.The Channel Master has two HD tuners and two hard drives. You really can record two programs being broadcast at the same time. Also it has the standard ability to skip forward, rewind, pause ect. live TV (if you are watching it via the Channel Master. Amazingly, you can also save a program you are watching, even if you didn't initially program it to be recorded, so long as you hit the record button before the program is over. I discovered this one night while I was watching a show with a very funny skit I wanted to show a friend. I hit rewind and noticed that there was a track for the whole program. I simply hit the record button and found later the whole program was there, including all the parts before I started recording.There are several things other reviews have mentioned, so let me comment on them.Heat: yes, the unit runs hot. It doesn't seem to hurt it though. I read where one guy put a lap top cooler under his. I simply elevated mine on a couple of wooden blocks which gave about 4" below the unit for free airflow.TV Guide: The unit receives a free TV listing from the over the air broadcast channels, it is supposed to be about 2 days worth, but that must be controled by the station for in my area NBC, ABC and Fox have about 2 day ahead but CBS only has the current day. This is a pain because that is the easiest way to record programs. Just pick the program on the schedule and tell it to record either once or as a series. If the program does not appear on the schedule, or you want to record say an upcoming special you have seen advertised you can manually set a date, time, and channel to record and that works fine. The difference is programs recorded from the guide have their name listed in the catalog of recordings, the manual ones just have the date and time. So it is alot easier to find later than trying to remember which program is on which date.Channel Master offers a premium TV Guide service that you pay for. It is supposed to give you the schedule 2 weeks ahead. I haven't tried that. Also the unit has wireless capability and plays movies and programs from VUDU. I haven't tried those.The first unit I receive arrived DOA. Channel Master support replaced it with minimal hassel. The replacement has run fine ever since. They also provided ocassional software updates which were easy to download and install. I have found their support department committed to following through on anything I contacted them about.Summary: this is an HD DVR that makes excellent quality recordings from free over the air broadcasts, up to two stations simultaneously. In most respects this is better and cheaper that Tvio, but the free TV guide is not Tvio. It seems dependent on the local stations and at least in my area they are not always reliable. When recording a regular series, it must have received the guide ahead or it doesn't know that the program is scheduled. One station was very bad at this, so I just programmed that one show to always record at a certain time, not using the program guide.As for the heat, give the unit plenty of shelf space to breath, don't stack it with other AV equipment or put it in a closed cabinet.

This DVR has a lot of random problems. I was disappointed that it didn't include a hard copy of the setup guide or users manual, and mine was missing the USB key, but it was easy to set up and started up fine. However, after only using it a short while I had problems with it locking up, and was frequently unresponsive to the remote.It sometimes even randomly lost some of the programs I had recorded, or wouldn't play back some of the recorded programs. The problems were very random. Each time I used it, there seemed to be a different problem. I called customer support several times, and each time I called them it went to voice mail and I left a message, and they wouldn't call back for a couple of days. They did send me the missing USB key with no problems, and they were friendly when they finally returned the calls, but they weren't able to help with the problems my unit was having. I had already tried everything they suggested and none of the suggestions worked. Because the problems were so random it was difficult to come up with a solution. The only thing that would work sometimes was to unplug the unit for a while and then plug it back in. Unfortunately, this would make you have to reset the settings. I saw other reviews talk about better ventilation helping so I asked the support representative about that, but he said they shouldn't have any problems getting to hot. However, when I did raise the unit to provide better ventilation it did improve performance somewhat.I really wanted to like this product, as it was the only product I could find to record OTA broadcasts and it worked without the Internet. (I know I'm missing out on the Internet features, but I don't have the Internet at my place, so I needed a DVR that didn't need to access the Internet.) However, it was so unreliable I decided to send it back. Unfortunately they said I would have to pay for shipping to return it, and they said if they couldn't duplicate the problems they would send the same unit back to me, so I decided to give it more time, since there wasn't anything else affordable out there that met my needs. One of the technicians I talked to mentioned it might help to never turn it off, and this seemed to help considerably.The remote is o.k., but it won't control the volume. I like the skip and replay buttons. When entering a channel like 4.2, the "." on the remote didn't work. I couldn't find a resolution to this in any of the Channel Master materials, but accidentally realized that if I pushed the "." button twice, it would work. To get channel 4-2, instead of pushing 4.2, you have to push 4..2.I agree with other reviewers that the hard drive is too small. I'm also not sure how good the program guide is for those that have Internet access, but without Internet access, I find that some channels show a day or so of information, but other channels only have a few hours of advanced programming viewable, so I end up doing a lot of "manual" records. It actually might be advantageous to do manual records, because when the guide does have a program available and I choose to record the program, often the last could minutes of the program are cut off and do not get recorded.If you're like me and don't have the Internet, and want a OTA DVR, you might have to settle for this unit. If you do, make sure it is raised so that it has plenty of ventilation, and never turn it off. These two things improved the performance of the Channel Master 7400 DVR quite a bit, but it still continues to have some of the quirky problems, but not nearly as often. There is still frequently a several seconds delayed response after pushing buttons on the remote. Sometimes it takes it over 30 seconds to respond to some commands. Be careful of pushing other buttons while you are waiting, because it remembers some of them and once it catches up, it will process the buttons pushed.more responsive to remote, but still not

It has a quite weak tuner, unable to receive many stations that other tuners decode fine. My old dumb tuner got 4 to 6 stations at my location, this thing got ONE.