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: Wish it worked
Summary: 2 Stars
I was so anxious to purchase this expander for my HD Tivo. I never have enough room for all of my recordings. I set it up with no problems. The installation is very easy and the Tivo recognized it immediately.
After 5 days of use I went to watch TV and the Tivo was frozen. I tried to change the channel and nothing happened. Then the Tivo shut down and rebooted. When it arrived at the "Almost there. Just a few minutes more" screen it again rebooted. After the 3rd time of repeated rebooting I pulled the power cord on my Tivo. I called customer service and they walked me through a reinstallation. I did NOT plug the expansion drive back in. After 5 days of using my Tivo without the expander drive (and no issues) I decided to give it another try. For the first 2 days I didn't have any issues and then the rebooting started again. I unplugged the Tivo and expander and restarted the Tivo without the expander. It's been 2 weeks and I haven't had any issues with my Tivo without the expansion drive attached. I'm returning the WD expansion drive to Amazon. It's been more than 30 days but they are being very nice about the return.
I will say that my dad has the same one and has had no issues. Howver, mine didn't work and by reading other reviews I understand that this might be a common problem.
Customer Review: One of the best purchases I've ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
Works great with the SA 8300 (mine is the non HD model) DVR with SARA software. Installation was easy, I just followed the manual. Performance is excellent as I have had no problems recording 2 shows at once while playing a third to an external DVD recorder. It's quiet & has lasted me 14 months now. The only very minor problem I have noticed is every once in awhile during high speed fast forward or rewind the picture shows tiling (blocks) however most of the time this doesn't happen. It never shows any tiling problems while recording or playing back though which is nice. This drive is so good that I'm buying another for the future when the drive ever fails. So far it's still going strong with moderate use. Last summer I ran it 24x7 for a whole month during TCM's 30 Days Of Summer recording every movie of the series & never ran out of hard drive space on my DVR by recording what I could to the DVD recorder as the drive recorded fresh movies. I think I recorded about 25% of those movies to the DVD recorder during that month & was very satisfied with the Expander drive preformance. They say it's not for long term storage but I've got TV shows that are 6 months old on the drive & they still play back fine. Would I recommend one of these to a friend? You bet!!!!!!Customer Review: Space...the final frontier
Summary: 5 Stars
I connected my DVR Expander to a SA8300HD (Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR from Time Warner) and had the same positive experience (so far) as ByTheShore did.
Turn off and unplug DVR, connect and power up My DVR Expander, power up and turn on DVR, and a couple dialogs later I was up and running.
I had a Cavalry 500GB external eSata enclosure that I am returning as I had frequent playback glitches (one to serveral times an hour the video would pixelate/skip and the sound would drop for a second or so). I'm hoping the WD My DVR Expander won't have the same issue...since it is specifically designed for external HD video recording/playback, I have high hopes for it.
[Added two days later] The WD My DVR Expander is performing very well. Dropouts/glitches during playback are mostly gone, to the point that they appear to be just the "normal" occasional transmission hiccups that I get from my cable company (TWC).
[Added two weeks later] I am unfortunately returning the My DVR Expander...I started seeing more playback glitches, fewer than w/the 500 GB Cavalry drive, but still too frequent. I replaced the MY DVR Expander w/the 500 GB Apricorn DVR Xpander and am have no issues with playback with the Apricorn.
Customer Review: THIS DVR EXPANDER IS A MUST BUY!
Summary: 5 Stars
To anyone out there with a TiVo HD, TiVo Series 3, or TiVo HD XL DVR and you want to add extra recording hours/capacity to your DVR, then I HIGHLY recommend that you purchase this Western Digital My DVR Expander.
At first, I was skeptical to buy this DVR Expander because of the product description stating that it will only add 60 more hours of HD and 300 more hours of SD recording space to a DVR. After I spoke with a TiVo Customer Service Rep, who assured me that the Expander would actually add 600 hours of SD recording space and 65 of HD, I bought the Expander to try it out.
To my surprise, this Western Digital My DVR Expander actually increased my SD recording space by 626 hours (instead of 300) when I plugged it up to my DVR, and the Expander increased my HD recording space by 72 hours (instead of 60). Without this Expander, my TiVo DVR originally held only 21 hours of HD recording space and 184 hours of SD. Now, thanks to this DVR Expander, I have 810 hours of SD recording capacity and 93 hours of HD.
Overall, this DVR Expander is a great buy, and it definitely adds MORE recording space to your DVR than the 300 SD hours and 60 HD hours that the product description states.
Customer Review: The easy street to Tivo hours
Summary: 5 Stars
You got the Tivo as a convenience - to allow you to watch shows when you want. Buying extra disk space for the Tivo is a logical extension of that idea - it lets you have even more control over when you watch shows. 500Gb seems to be enough storage (even for HD movies) that I never feel compelled to watch anything for fear of running out of disk space. I definitely maximize the value I get from pay cable channels by being able to select everything I want to watch from them & do it on my own schedule.
I was very happy to pay a little extra for this device instead of hacking into the Tivo to increase disk space. My former Tivo was a series 1 which I upgraded to 300Gb by cracking into the box & cloning the drive using my PC. Easy enough to do...but this time I don't have to void the warranty on my new Series3 to do it.
I also decided to go with this Western Digital device since it is blessed by Tivo & although chances are very good that I could solve the (possible) technical issues of a third party extension drive, I decided that I'd rather not spend time dealing with such eventualities.
This drive works flawlessly & was absolute simplicity to install (just plug it in).