Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Works perfectly
Summary: 5 Stars
My plan was to eventually get this expander all along. I have always been a fan of Tivo, and when the right deal came my way I got the new Dual tuner HD Tivo that only recorded 20 hrs in HD. Tivo at the time was selling a larger Tivo with I believe 40 hrs recording in HD for $400-$500. 20 Hours is definitely not enough in my house, and if you are considering this, it's probably not enough in your house either.
At the moment they are selling a beast with 150 hrs in HD recording for $600!
Bottom line is that this expander worked perfectly right away. Setup to the device is as easy as plugging it in. Then setting up the Tivo to work with it was quite simple as well. Now I can record 86 hours in HD which for us is way more than enough. We went on a 2 week vacation and still had room to spare when we got back.
In my opinion it is much more economical to buy the standard 20hour HD Tivo and just get this expander to go with it. 86 full HD hours is huge and in just standard digital I think it's in the 500+ hour range. But if you are like me, if it's not in HD now, I don't watch it.
Definitely worth buying.
Customer Review: Bigger is better!
Summary: 5 Stars
We have the Scientific Atlantic HD8300 DVR through Cablevision. When recording in HD, it holds a measely 20 hours of recording. Not much when you have a family of four recording things right and left! To keep peace in the kingdom, I gave this DVR Expander to my husband for his birthday, which added an addtional 60 hours of HD recording time! Yeah! Follow the instructions and set up is no problem. It works seemlessly with the DVR and all functions on the remote work just fine. Prior to purchasing, I did contact Western Digital because I had concerns about power outages. Many reviews and the instructions state that the Expander must remain powered at all times and that not doing so could risk losing recorded programs. We live in the north east and are subject to storm related power outages. The tech support person said that so long as the DVR and the Expander are powering back up at the same time, there should not be an issue and you should not lose any recordings. We'll see. Haven't encountered that problem yet. The drive does get a bit warm, so make sure all vents are in open air. Now if the price would just come down like regular hard drives...Customer Review: No Space Worries
Summary: 5 Stars
I added the WD DVR Expander to my TiVo HD DVR to increase the capacity from only 20hrs (HD programs) to something like 90hr. HD. Standard definition is 4 to 5 times that capacity. Now I'm able to collect all the programs I want without fretting about things getting deleted before I want them to or running out of space. It set up very easily and thus far (about 2 weeks of use) I've had no issues. It runs seemlessly with the TiVo without any user interface to decide what gets stored where. About the only concern I noted was that the unit must be "mated" with your DVR and that to ever move it to a different DVR you would need to undo this "mating" and you would lose all programming that was saved. Thus far I have had to reboot my TiVo on a couple of occassions and have had no problems with any data loss. The TiVo continued to recognize the expansion drive without issue. Do shop around for price, as you can save some money by doing so. I would most definitely recommend the product for anyone not wanting to worry about capacity issues with your DVR. Would have even consider a 1 terrabyte unit if it had been available.Customer Review: Works well
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought one of these in September 2009. Very simple to hook up, works fantastic. It's made my extensive time-shifting a breeze. In fact, I've gotten so used to it hooked up to my Comcast Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD-DVR, that I forget it is there. Which is a bad thing. Last night I had a problem with another device in my media room and I had to access the connections on the back of my TV. I had put the Expander behind my TV and forgotten it. Well, I moved my TV and caused the Expander to drop to the floor 3 feet below. I was horrified at my idiotic move, but relieved that it appeared to have not been damaged. Tonight my wife and I sat down to watch some DVRed programs. I could not access anything! I freaked out a bit. After finding the instruction booklet, I followed the disconnect instructions, and then the connection instructions. After the (seemingly endless) DVR reboot process, the DVR recognized the Expander and all our programs were back. I was really impressed that this unit recovered from my stupid mistake. I felt the need to post a review.Customer Review: Great gadget!
Summary: 5 Stars
Western Digital WDG1S5000VN 500GB My DVR Expander eSATA
Greatest piece of hardware I have ever purchased. I was forever getting "not enough space" warnings when trying to record HD programs. That is now gone. I didn't even need a "geek" to install it for me. Anyone with a Tivo HD DVR should make this a must have! You also have much more time to retrieve programs that you screwed-up and deleted. Following added about 4 months after above.
Whoops...I bought it in September, and it died on December 21...So far it looks like I will get a replacement at no charge, but that seems to up to the discretion of Western Digital who charges your credit card until they receive your defective drive and decide that indeed it is no good?
I did receive a replacement within 3 days, and everything is working fine, just like described above. The only thing it cost me was 5 bucks to send the old one back.