Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as other products
Review: Having had a TIVO for over four years I was disappointed in this product. First, it is very loud! It hums and grinds all night and all day. The playback quality is much worse than my old unit. I have yet to find a DVD disc that it will copy shows onto, even the recommended ones do not work. Tivo will not transfer my lifetime membership over to the new machine, they want another $299 for another membership. If I had to do it over again, I would not buy this product.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy 510H-S for Editing Out Commercials
Review: I bought 510H-S (http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/product/detail/0,,2076_4139_37530022,00.html) and I am very happy with it.
810H-S has TiVo, which is why you cannot edit out commercials. 510H doesn't have TiVo, and you can edit out commercials. But since I already have a TiVo, it's OK to me. I set up the recording using Tivo's Season Ticket and wish list, and check ToDo list. If there are programs worth recording in ToDo list, then I program 510H using Timer. 510H's timer is not bad. Actually, as a simple timer its user interface is quite good. But it's no TiVo. You can also program using VCR Plus, which I don't use. Comparing video quality, I think that Pioneer is slightly better than TiVo Series 2. Since 510H-S has complete editing functionality, it is more difficult to use at first time. It was one of the electronic products that forced me to read the manual and take time to get used to it. It was frustrating for a few days. But now, it's OK. I know what is going on. While I can hear hard disk noise from TiVo, I cannot hear 510H's disk noise at all. I highly recommend 510H-S. But be prepared to read the manual and to have some practice time for a few days. And it will take a week or two to get used to it.
An ideal DVR would be TiVo's user friendliness and convinience plus 510H's full editing functionality. But unless TiVo relaxes restrictions on the rules of recording to DVD, it is unlikely to come. So it is your choice: Tivo feature or full editing ?
Rating:
Summary: Terrible picture quality
Review: I don't understand. I thought all of these Tivo products used the same software. But as the other reviewer said, the pixelation is AWFUL! My recordings are High Quality are worse than the Medium Quality recordings on my old Sony Tivo box. I'm returning it! TERRIBLE MACHINE!
Rating: 
Summary: Used this for a few months and like it
Review: I have had this unit for a few monts in my bedroom. Medum quality records just fine and makes DVDs that dont have any pixelization (basic quality sucked). I have used el-cheapo DVD-Rs and it has worked well. The unit is no more noisy than my 80 hour seris 2 in the livingroom and the wife and I never hear the unit. On numerous occasions I have burned a DVD while recording a show and watching another and the unit performed like a champ. A note: The burned DVDs use the Tivo interface for the menu which is neat but confusing when watching the DVD - we keep thinking we are in Tivo and wonder why the 30sec skip doesnt work.
Rating:
Summary: Used this for a few months and like it
Review: I have had this unit for a few monts in my bedroom. Medum quality records just fine and makes DVDs that dont have any pixelization (basic quality sucked). I have used el-cheapo DVD-Rs and it has worked well. The unit is no more noisy than my 80 hour seris 2 in the livingroom and the wife and I never hear the unit. On numerous occasions I have burned a DVD while recording a show and watching another and the unit performed like a champ. A note: The burned DVDs use the Tivo interface for the menu which is neat but confusing when watching the DVD - we keep thinking we are in Tivo and wonder why the 30sec skip doesnt work.
Rating:
Summary: Pixelation Problems With Pioneer TIVO TVR
Review: I have just returned my 2nd DVR-810H. This time I called Pioneer and, voila, learned from Pioneer Advanced Tech that there are intermittent pixelation problems on ALL the Pioneer Tivo DVR's. At the moment, there is no "fix" but Pioneer says that they are working on one. There is no pixelation if you record everthing on the "ultra fine" setting - but then you are down to a grand total of 16 hours recording time on the unit. Pioneer is not yet acknowledging this issue on its website. But they will tell you if you call "advanced tech" support. Other than the "ultra fine" recording quality, the recording cannot even compare to a regular TIVO Series 2. This is all very unfortunate - because the idea of being able to transfer programs straight to DVD-R is a great idea and you don't have to do it in "real time" -- as opposed to "saving to VCR" which does have to be done in "real time." Maybe Pioneer will straighten the record problems out one of these days, and if they ever do, this will be a fine unit. In the meantime, be ready to fall out of your seat everytime the picture pixelates on you (even watching "live" TV which, of course is recorded and therefore lags behind "live" be a few seconds...) and this happens about every 2-3 minutes. Very obtrusive, and certainly unacceptable in a unit with a high price tag like this one.
Rating: 
Summary: WOW!!! BEST PURCHASE I HAVE EVER MADE!!!!
Review: I just bought this thing from Amazon and all I can say is WOW!!!!This is probably the best purchase I have ever made. This thing is everything I ever expected and more!! It's easy to use as well - even my wife can operate it! I have to say, everyone out there who is thinking of buying this, stop thinking. I bought it and I am extremely happy with it the moment I powered this thing on. YOU ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY CANNOT GO WRONG WITH THIS PURCHASE! I GUARANTEE IT!!!
Rating:
Summary: GREAT!
Review: I love this product, I have been a TiVo user since 2001 and I have to say this latest TiVo is great. I travel a lot, and being able to take all my TiVo programming with me is a wonderful thing. I also saw the pixilation issue but I bumped up my quality (you can record TiVo at different quality levels.) and now I do not have a problem. And the higher quality does not seem to take up much more disk space. There was also a bit of flicker on one of my "lower" non-digital cable channels, but I was getting real poor reception, that has been fixed, and now I don't see it anymore. I would say if you want to easily record TV and then make DVD recordings of those shows I would say get this recorder now!
Rating:
Summary: Problematic
Review: I purchased this product in early February and have yet to be able to use it (it's now the beginning of April) for longer than around 10 minutes; this despite two returns to Pioneer for repair. In use the picture either freezes after a few minutes, or the unit resets itself. In addition, the picture shows high frequency flicker (I am using component video). The current thinking from Pioneer is that I need to plug the unit directly into the wall rather than into a surge protection power strip. I'll try that out.
I own a Replay TV unit and only tried this unit because it reduced the overall number of boxes in my living room (replacing the PVR, DVD and MP3 player with a single box). I hoped that Tivo would have better software than Replay TV (I had some issues with their unit as well) but it appears not. One requires a real telephone line to perform the initial setup (unlike ReplayTV) and apparently my Vonage line just won't do. I finally discovered that it is possible to use the broadband connection for the initial set up but the information was not easy to find. One Tivo tech. actually denied that it was possible and I only found the information after searching the internet.
On the plus side Pioneer support has been reasonable but I still don't have a working unit.
I regret having purchased this unit and would suggest that Pioneer should not have released something which clearly has problems operating in the real world.
Rating:
Summary: Problematic
Review: I purchased this product in early February and have yet to be able to use it (it's now the beginning of April) for longer than around 10 minutes; this despite two returns to Pioneer for repair. In use the picture either freezes after a few minutes, or the unit resets itself. In addition, the picture shows high frequency flicker (I am using component video). The current thinking from Pioneer is that I need to plug the unit directly into the wall rather than into a surge protection power strip. I'll try that out.
I own a Replay TV unit and only tried this unit because it reduced the overall number of boxes in my living room (replacing the PVR, DVD and MP3 player with a single box). I hoped that Tivo would have better software than Replay TV (I had some issues with their unit as well) but it appears not. One requires a real telephone line to perform the initial setup (unlike ReplayTV) and apparently my Vonage line just won't do. I finally discovered that it is possible to use the broadband connection for the initial set up but the information was not easy to find. One Tivo tech. actually denied that it was possible and I only found the information after searching the internet.
On the plus side Pioneer support has been reasonable but I still don't have a working unit.
I regret having purchased this unit and would suggest that Pioneer should not have released something which clearly has problems operating in the real world.
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