Antenna PVR’s work are for pausing and recording your favourite shows on your HDTV antenna.
PVR stands for personal video recorder. Sometimes they are also called a DVR which stands for digital video recorder. Their functionality is very similar to a cable or satellite PVR except that they are not compatible. So, if you have a Rogers PVR or a Bell Satellite PVR it will not work on your HD antenna because its a totally different transmission technology. Most PVR’s have an EPG or electronic program guide. They can record, pause, fast forward and rewind. You can also setup different recordings.
There are a number of different antenna PVR manufacturers on the market.
Channel Master has a number of units that they have had on the market for awhile. TIVO is big in the US and they have some units as well. HomeworX is a basic unit which is fine if you want to just pause live TV and setup recordings. The guide is very basic on it. HomeRun HD is a networked based unit that can be used to stream the HD video to a number of different streaming boxes and streaming media servers. It requires some good technical knowledge to figure out how to set it up. A couple of other network based antenna PVR units are Simple.tv and Tablo.
Whichever unit you decide to go with make sure you do your research. My recommendation as the easiest out of box solution go with the Channel Master. For a basic and best priced unit go with the HomeworX. We sell both units and have installed and tested both of them.