Receivers » CW 800 Reviews

Intro
This is the best bang for the buck when it comes to receivers. It is at rock bottom prices but with PVR. The support for captiveworks has proved to be great of late.
I purchased this as my first PVR fta receiver and I was pleasantly surprized. It has very reliable recording and has a USB port to either connecte an external hard drive or update with USB stick to the receiver.

Recording:
Recording is relatively reliable but in some cases the receiver will not turn on to record, this is not a problem just never turn off the receiver. I ran into problems early with this receiver because my hard drive would go to sleep, so make sure you buy a hard drive with the ability to never sleep or at least software that enables this ability. I bought the Maxtor 500 Gig One Touch (worked great and cheap) Don't worry about hard drives getting hot, they are made for it, and covered by the warrantee if any of those problems should arise. I had problems doing timed recordings on beverly but I believe this is because everytime my Captive works changed to beverly to do an autorecord Beverly need a minute to autoroll. For some reason my captiveworks would not let it auto roll.

Limitations
-you can record something and watch something. But both channels must be on the same transponder. You can not change the channel once You've started recording no matter if you are recording the current channel you are watching or a channel on the same transponder you are watching.
-the unit is a bit slow, most likely due to the parts and a good reason why the unit costs so little, it is a bit of a downgrade from the VS ULTRA but obviously the ultra has no PVR and also costs more.
-Once in a while you will face a problem with a recording where it did not record properly but this was rare for me
-Time shifting is limited to about half an hour, then it will go straight to the live feed. This is a problem considering if you pause for ten minutes a show to do something, you continue to watch, but time shifting does not let you watch the last ten minutes, so it is actually better to record than paus.

My Advice:
-Though this is a great little pvr unit for those strapped with cash, I advise not actually getting it for those who can afford to spend a little more.
-Other higher end receivers can give you so much more when it comes to speed and quality. (Personally i'm using the VS7k Dual Tuner)
-This is still a great option for those looking to get a very simple pvr.