mStar PVR clones

Inexpensive Over-the-air (OTA) personal video recorders (PVR) are available under different names:

• Mediasonic Homeworx
• IView
• eMatic

mStar is a Chinese company that developed a reference design and firmware for a digital converter box/DVR. The design was an outgrowth of the old CECBs (coupon eligible converter box) that the government told people to buy to watch digital TV broadcasts during the transition from analog to digital… – broadTVviewer¹⁾

• decent tuner sensitivity
• consume ~6w, important for something that runs 24/7
• view OTA broadcasts
• record OTA when a usb drive is present
• schedule recordings once / daily / weekly
• play back recordings and other media on USB

If you are watching a recording scheduled recording is due to start, you can only

1. hit OK to start the recording
2. hit CANCEL to cancel the upcoming recording²⁾
3. wait for the ~10 second timeout to accept OK

There is no way to just back out of the dialog in order to exit recording playback so your playback position will be lost. For this reason, you may wish to only watch recordings when no other scheduled recording is due to start.

If you try to make a scheduled recording from EPG after the show has started the unit will say INVALID SCHEDULE. Try again, and advance the start time to a minute or two in the future.

If you try to make a schedule with a conflict it will tell you which schedule it conflicts with. You may wish to push the original schedule to a future start date so you can make the new single-recording entry.

Sometimes the electronic program guide is cut off after two entries. If you EXIT and re-enter EPG you can often see the entire listing.

• Homeworx HW-150PVR thread on AVS Forum.
• Mediasonic forum