Stellar Labs DT-1200 Digital Television Tuner / Recorder with HDMI and Component Output

Overall I would recommend against purchasing this product. PROS: Works great for playing pre-recorded digital media. Also works well as a digital TV tuner. CONS: Menus are difficult to use and counter intuitive. The manual that comes with the device is of little help. Despite what is advertised, two out of three antenna's I tried did not work. The device would not even power up. About every nine seconds the image pix-elates and about a second of the recording is lost. After exhaustive testing I have confirmed the recording process itself is extremely poor with this unit. The signal is good, there is no cross talk from the input cables, the same occurs with the poorest recording resolution (480i), cannot handle recording even one show at a time, and the drive formatting has no affect. Just to add one more nail in the coffin, the batteries that came with the remote only lasted about two months. My wife and I are extremely dissatisfied with this product.

Item purchased Feb 1, 2014 Very poorly done users manual. Tuner worked for about 5 weeks with very little usage. Then for 2 weeks the tuner would cut out (power off) sporadically while using or in standby mode. Finally stopped working entirely. 30 day return was of no help. Calling the company ( stellar Labs ) was a waste of time. 100+ dollars. Will NOT spend any more money at stellar labs, and will tell everyone I can to avoid them also.

This is the second DTV tuner I ordered that actually works as promised. The first item (iView) didn't work at all so it was returned. I'm using the DTV tuner to bring local OTA antenna channels into my HDTV via HDMI cable. I have standard cable TV and a DTV antenna for local HD. However, the tuner on my TV set can only received signals from one source at a time (antenna or cable TV) and requires manually switching RF coax to accomplish this. So this is where the DT-1200 come in. The cable TV input goes directly into the HDTV RF coax as usually but the antenna input goes through the DT-1200 and into the TV set using an HDMI slot. I am very satisfied with it's performance. It would be even better if the DT-1200 could handle two RF inputs simultaneously. Then I wouldn't even have to switch inputs on the TV set.

The DT-1200 video recorder and ATSC tuner of over the air broadcast digital television is precisely the device I wished to purchase. A separate USB storage device is required for operation; No device transfer speed is specified. The DT-1200 plays back recorded (*.mts) files in full screen mode using the remote's play button; An undocumented feature. These PVR files may be played back in full screen mode using Microsoft's media player. DT-1200's Time-shift recording and playback works well; Time-shift recording halts and the remote control become inoperable if the time-shift file fills; This file can be re-sized from the default 1GB or 10 minutes of video. The 1080p HD video output from the ATSC tuner is indistinguishable from the video produced by expensive TVs. Video recording (PVR) is initialized by selecting a program from the electronic program guide (EPG) and booking your selection; Initializing the start and end times and channel number from the booking selection would be helpful. I have only examined the HDMI output and have not examined the composite video output. The user's manual is 4x5 inches; I prefer the PDF version downloaded from MCM electronics. On my DT-1200(firmware:1401081.145505.1), time zone selection GMT-6(MDT) causes a 5 minute offset to most times. The remote is touchy.

The product will not work like I expected so I will be returning it. I expected to use it as a HD turner for my Time Warner cable. I had hoped to save some money by buying the cable box instead of paying Time Warner a large monthly payment to lease their box. This box will not act as a HD turner. The user manual is worthless. I am very disappointed.

Great little tuner, fast delivery, a little sparse with the documentation. But it's so simple to operate from the menus you really don't need much more than they provide.

This product was used to replace an old DVR in a motorhome that only could search for digital television broadcast signals we are typically dealing with these days. The product works fine and did what I needed it to do. I didn't test it yet for recording using flash or other storage media. I couldn't yet figure out how to program the correct date on the programming guide although programming the time of day was simple. We are replacing another DVR and may have found another brand on Amazon less expensive and are going to try that one.

A good tuner and will play back the TV shows you record but try to get the show to play back on another device is another story. It uses a mts file format and breaks up the programing by assigning different file extensions that your computer will not play. Can't get Windows 8 to do anything with it. Shame because it could have been great.