Channel Master TV CM 7400 HD DVR - OTA, Clear QAM, Internet Content - Page 51

I agree. Too bad the reviews are also lost unless it is placed back in stock.

The link on the CMTV page takes you to the Walmart "not available" page too. I should not have used the word "price", since it has been out of stock for several days.

The extended guide will last as long as the contract to provide it is valid. It could be ten years or one month.

I expressed my concern since Vudu is a Walmart company and the CM-7400 shows Vudu prominently in their specs and advertising. It's also in the stores now. To not carry a box that can be used to display Vudu content seems illogical. Vudu has never been added to my Sony TV, only Hulu+. It's like a battle of content that nobody wins. If it's a battle between Sony and Walmart, Sony has already lost.

My local Fry's appears to go through them rather quickly... much faster than TiVo (from what I can tell). Although, for whatever reason they hardly ever push TiVo and for long periods it is out of stock. Quickly being running through a dozen or so units within several weeks... with your typical Fry's return rate. I asked one of the computer guys (help/ticket writers) and he stated it has run 24/7 for months... never one up-time issue. He must know them fairly well or has one as he mentioned some fast forward bug being his only complaint.

In Bay Area Fry's still selling CM7400 for $399 [and TiVo, I saw a couple models].

Just bought one at Antennahub.com for my parents. They have a nice little 10% discount through May bringing the total down to $359 with free shipping. I'm going to play with it first for a few days and then set it up and monitor its use with them. I'll post a review after its been in use for a few weeks.

Here's a polite bump to this useful and informative thread -- with the sideways intention of pointing out the new AVSForum format... as if you hadn't already noticed. Lettuce always be entertained, even by our forums, eh?

PS -- Anyone else but me using their CM-7400 with a CableTV QAM channel provider? Via Cox Cable in Las Vegas, mine has so far scanned and logged 1217 channels, of which 48 aren't scrambled, of which 40 are useful.

Comments?
Edited by BenCartwright - 6/6/12 at 9:31pm

I'm using mine with Comcast cable in Seattle. Don't remember the total number of channels it scanned, but I have about 58 that are viewable. That includes the dozen or so music channels.

I've noticed that it seems to do a rescan on it's own as it adds new channels (albeit blank) that I need to disable every once in a while. Some of the channels came up with Comcast numbering but others did not, I manually changed those and the EPG is providing scheduling for all the channels.

Recently I've had an issue where it doesn't tune to a channel. The signal strength shows as 0. I was in the habit of putting the 7400 into standby when not in use. I'm going to leave it on all the time to see if that resolves this issue. I restarted the 7400 and all the channels came back at their normal signal strength. And no it can't be a heat issue as the box is on a laptop cooler.

Otherwise it is performing well. Just wish Comcast would put more channels in the clear. There are a couple of channels that I would like to watch but I'm unwilling to pay them the 10 bucks a month for an HD box.

From my observations in December:

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Good: It found my clock as soon as I setup the wireless network. No problems there even though it failed to perform the update. I had to use a USB memory drive.

The PQ is great.
The remote, while not high quality, is ok. I like the lights.

Bad:
A channel scan found 391 channels and one mapped. However every channel number was a scrambled channel. Every clear QAM channel was mapped to a scrambled channel. It must be my cable system. This happens with the BV-980H too, but it also enables the clear channels along with the scrambled channels.

After a channel scan, all the channels were marked off. When I enabled the first one it was my first clear QAM channel. I enabled a few channels for testing. There is an option to enable/disable all channels. When editing the channels the channel window is static.

Run power is 23w, vampire power is 23w. Draw your own conclusions.

Output resolution supports 480, 720p, 1080p/30, 1080p/24 but not 1080p/60. My Sony TV will not display 1080p/30. No pass through either.

I saw the manual recording issue. That sucks and is the main reason I'm sending it back. Channel mapping I can live with.

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My review on Amazon is similar:

http://www.amazon.com/Channel-Master-CM7400-Internet-Compatible/product-reviews/B0065EQ45U/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_link_6?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=6&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Interesting that Amazon.com is trying to sell it for $430.

Have had this unit for nearly two weeks. A little dissapointed with Antenna Hub right off the bat as I can tell I got a open box unit. Thought I was getting a deal with the $359 but it seems as though I didn't get a brand new unit. Plus it took over 2 weeks for them to ship out the unit. I should have figured that. That being said here is my review of the cm-7400.

The unit was very easy to set up and get installed. Found my home wireless network right away and had no problem with signal (save one) and the wireless router is on the other side of the house. I have had no lockups, freezes or reboots. The DVR functionality seems a little better than my PAL-DVR but I would say the program guide on the PAL is superior as it still receives TVGOS. After I transfer this unit to my parents they may purchase the enhanced guide but the free guide was fine for me. I purchased a movie via VUdU and that seemed to work fine. I did have one lockup during watching the movie that I attribute to loss of signal as it indicates signal strength at the lowest bar. The unit was very warm as advertised. Enough so to make me install a USB driven laptop cooler. Now the temp is fine. Still don't undertand why they didn't make the box a couple inches wider and install a fan. My biggest complaint is that the tuners failed to pick up 2 channels (ION and QUBO) that every other tuner in my house gets including my PAL-DVR. Signal strength is low but if all other tuners can pick it up (some of which are downstream of a couple more splitters) I feel the 7400 should get it as well.

Overall, I am satisfield with the unit and would consider recommending it to others who wish to cut the cable and sat. Had the engineers just installed a cooling fan and the same tuners as the CM-7000 PAL this product would be hard to beat as an OTA DVR.

Thanks for the update GopherClone. With all the negative feedback about the OTA reception performance of the 7400 and the Tivo Premiere, I have to wonder if the amazing tuners that were used in the best CECBs a few years ago have either been discontinued or have become too expensive for manufacturers to include in current products. You'd think that reception performance would be priority #1 with any development team working on an OTA DVR, but I guess it's not.

On or off likely won't make any difference. I never turn mine off. My solution is to Restart it every day or two or whenever a channel being viewed appears glitchy. This unit seems to benefit from Restarts in other ways too. Among other things, mine seems somewhat less likely to become sluggish in response to remote inputs, for a few hours anyway.

Are you OTA guys seeing this reception defect as well, or is it only we QAM users?
Edited by BenCartwright - 6/8/12 at 2:39pm

The OTA tuner in the 7400 is problematic and a major reason I returned it. Amped or unamped, it made no difference. The previous CM7000 DVR had a better tuner, according to most comparisons and reviews. And according to videobruce, the new Prime DTV VRX DVR from ePVision has a very good tuner and has just been finally released.

I installed the new update and so far the skip forward and reverse are behaving quite well. I've watch two recorded shows and skipped through the commercials without any skipping to the end of the recording. Rewinding seems to be working correctly now also, each time I wanted to rewind it did without issue.

Not sure what all of the fixes were suppose to be but this was the big bug for me and I'm quite happy.

Firmware version 10.1.97 is now available for everyone. I've been beta-testing it for several weeks now.

I still have no Slo-Mo.

Mine still becomes unresponsive for a 60 second time-out after bringing up the Guide, mostly when the program selected is longer than an hour. This mostly seems to be a problem for users tuning CableTV QAM channels.

I still have to Restart it every other day to freshen the tuner's channel acquisition.

When recordings end, the unit sometimes FULLY locks up at the 'Delete' prompt, requiring unplugging to restart.

Channels I've disabled often re-enable themselves.

At least it's no longer randomly jumping to the end while skipping through ads. There's a plus.

I expected more though, especially a fix for the Slo-Mo function.
Edited by BenCartwright - 6/11/12 at 8:28pm

BenCartwright; Does all of that happen with the cover removed??

I purchased a 7400 a few weeks ago from Fry's for $399. after reading most of the posts here.
Well it did freeze up a few times, after unplugging the power supply and replugging it in, it started up again. Then I noticed it was very hot because I set it on my bass speaker just to test it out
and it was sitting between the rubber feet. So I found some rubber grommits and raised the unit up around 1/2" off of the speaker and it fixed the freezing.
So far I am very pleased with the unit.
Didn't know it had Slo-Mo function????

I like the easy setup of wi-fi, de-activating channels you don't want to watch, and recording/playback.
I use the USB input for videos and the playback it a lot smoother than on my WDTV unit.

OTA or Cable?

OTA

I have cable but just for internet....

I haven't removed the cover, but it does have a 6" 'face fan' blowing on it from 8" away, which keeps the case (and innards) at ambient room temp.

I must admit that after paying closer attention to the occasional need to Restart to freshen the tuner's 'lock' on channels, it actually appears that it's almost always only one channel I have signal strength issues with -- Nat Geo -- which sadly is one of my favorites.

Whenever it fades now I'm gonna look at all the channels to verify if it's just that one. If in fact the other channels look okay then it'll clearly not be a CM-7400 issue but a Cox Cable issue, which would be no surprise to me. In Vegas, Cox Cable SUCKS. Have I mentioned that before? (If Cox Cable wasn't automatically included as a bulk account with my condo association fees, I'd be using this CM-7400 for OTA.)

And quite frankly, I haven't seen it lock up at the 'Delete' prompt at the end of a recorded program since the firmware upgrade, so maybe that got fixed along with the Jump-To-End issue.
We're supposed to be able to press 'Pause', then use the 'Rew' & 'FF' buttons to Slo-Mo.

Dincha read yer daggum dang-ol' manual?
.
Edited by BenCartwright - 6/12/12 at 5:24pm

Read the Manual????
I am a guy!
Only read it if I have too!
did just register it, thought I'd try it out before returning it, or keeping it!
I've had 2 DVR's in the past, old Panasonic and still have a Phillips, but low res.....

I did the new firmware upgrade and lost two of my channels along with their sub-channels. I lost 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 51.1, 51.2, 51.3, etc. in the Phoenix area. Anyone else doing OTA in Phoenix and lose these channels due to the firmware? They were working fine before, and they still come in fine on my TV tuner, but not on the CM 7400. I think I would rather have the old firmware back and live with the jump forward and jump back bug rather than lose these channels. Is there a way to do that?

Can you enable them manually?

There is something very buggy about the tuner in the CM7400. It will not receive several signals that my other TVs and tuner boxes receive well. I don't know if it's due to error correction, or sensitivity to amplification, or what. But it is very frustrating, and I would hope there would be some sort of firmware update that could correct it rather than make it worse.

Are you OTA or cable? If OTA, there is such a thing as too strong a signal.

The top cover on my Cisco DVR had so many holes that it was more like a screen enclosure than a cover. All the electronic parts were clearly visable from outside the box. Perhaps folks (after warranty?) could drill a bunch of holes in the top of the 7400.

Question, trying to decide between the CM-7400 and a Magnavox MDR515H/F7 for strictly OTA use. Can the CM-7400 record and play my local HD OTA channels in 1080 or 740?

I did a bit more playing and had to adjust my amplifier from what it was set to before. The setting before enabled me to see all of the available channels though some would pixellate occasionally, but not too bad. But now, I had to adjust it up for it to even see these channels and they are terribly pixellated or don't play at all at any amplification level. And a level that makes one channel start to come in, totally messes up another channel. It was better the way it was before, and I think I would like to go back if possible.

It's rare that a firmware update can be backed out, but not unknown. If that is your goal I would email/call CM for an answer if there is no post on this thread providing the answer. It may not correct your problem, but what's to lose? Good luck.

It may mean nothing, but your channel 51 is ION, and that has been a problem for other devices in some locations.

Just finished another phone conversation with Jeff Brown at CM in Arizona, in which my problems listed above were discussed while one of their Techs had remote access to my 7400 from San Francisco.

It's worth noting how much easier it is to be patient with these minor problems when the guys at the helm are as eager as the end users to get them fixed -- ALL of them.

Without their help I'd've returned this unit long ago. WITH their help I'll be a fan forever.
Edited by BenCartwright - 6/13/12 at 2:52pm

It can be done with a computer motherboard, I don't see why not with one of these. HD or SD?
Paid Guide or no Guide at all (unless I missed something with the newer version of this deck)?
Edit recordings inside the box or not?
DVD record & playback or not?

Biggest question is is SD all you want w/o any Guide at all. IOW's VCR style programming with SD quality playback?