We've been having trouble with our Channel Master DVR+ channel guide as it's no longer supported by Channel Master. Many times it's been missing recording an OTA program as the guide has not been updating and just says "No Information Available". A similar thing happened to our old Channel Master CM-7000PAL DVR that was our first OTA DVR that we bought about 12 years ago.
Our DVR+ is about 6 years old now and the hard drive was replaced about 3 years ago so I was thinking maybe it's time to upgrade to a new one. But which model? The choices are slim nowadays but the ones I liked were the Tablo models and the TiVo models. In the past I liked dealing with Channel Master but they don't make DVR's anymore. They do sell the TiVo Edge Antenna DVR though and you can get it with their All-In Service with no recurring monthly fees that TiVo usually charges. BUT...The price was $449! Pretty steep!
I started watching the Channel Master site almost daily for a sale and noticed they were discounting it to $349 recently. Not bad but still a good bit of money. Then about 2 weeks ago I received an Email that they knocked off another $100 while supplies last so I jumped on the $249 price.
The TiVo Edge came 2 days ago and I set it up easily and quickly. It seemed to me to be very similar to the Channel Master DVR+ but a little more advanced with more functions. The Guide works great and goes out to about 2 weeks in advance to set up recordings. One downside is that the storage capacity is only 500gb instead of the DVR+ 1TB. That should not be a problem for us as we are pretty good about deleting programs that we have watched or don't want anymore but some may find the storage capacity too small.
The TiVo Edge from Channel Master comes with a paper saying it's important to call TiVo support to request transferring the All-In Service Plan from Channel Master to your own personal TiVo account. Since it's the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend I have not done that yet but will do it next week when they're open for business.
So far the TiVo Edge works well and is operating pretty much the way I expected. I'll write an update after I call them to transfer the Service Plan and/or if I have any other issues that come up.
Update:
I called TiVo yesterday and transferred the service plan from Channel Master to myself. The only information that I had to give them was my phone number and the TSN number from the bottom of the DVR. After giving them that information they put me on hold for less than 5 minutes and the transfer was complete. Apparently all of of my other information was supplied to them by Channel Master. Easy Peasy as my friend Kim Komando would say. 👍
