It's a pretty good tuner for an analog TV or projector, especially once you find the rather hidden technique for programming it to skip channels you aren't interested in.

As a recorder, it's better than nothing, especially for the price. Just don't count on it, especially if you're trying to record something much more than an hour long. I've had two of these units, and on both of them recording anything longer than an hour is a hit-or-miss proposition. Sometimes it'll record a two-hour movie without problems, other times it'll end the recording somewhere during the second hour, still other times it'll forget to shut off at the end of the program (which means it never actually saves a recording). I've had somewhat better luck manually programming two-hour recordings as two one-hour recordings (using the timer rather than the EPG screen), but even this doesn't always work.

HD recordings longer than about 40 minutes will be split into multiple files on a FAT32 formatted drive. This means that during the first 40 minutes of playback, zipping through commercials will be a slower process at any speed above 2X. Also, on occasion the player will fail to find the second file and just drop the playback around the 40-minute mark. Usually this won't happen twice in a row, and you can use the "GOTO" function to pick up where it quit. Fast-forwarding often causes audio/video sync problems, and sometimes causes the volume to drop. Go figure.

So, overall a pretty decent tuner with a better-than-nothing recorder at a bargain-basement price. It also includes, at no extra charge, one of the funnier mis-translated quality-control stickers, which reads: TEAR UP USELESS QUALIFICATION

After doing some searching online, I found it's very common for these units to die at roughly the 13 month mark. The common failure is a blown capacitor (in mine it was the 1000uf 16v cap) which causes the unit to stop functioning. I don't know if this is a design issue where the capacitor is miss-sized or if it's just a quality issue of the manufacturer using cheap caps.

Either way, if yours dies, take the cover off and check for a bulging cap (in mine the bulge was very slight but still there).

If you have any idea how to solder (or even if you don't), this is an extremely easy fix. I have no clue what I'm doing with a soldering iron and was done with the job in about 5 minutes. After the fix, mine is functioning as well as when it was new.

I purchased this unit to watch OTA tv on a projector and haven't played with the recording features much, so I can't speak to the quality of them. For me, the unit does what I want and lasted over a year before needing a quick/cheap repair. Would rate 5 stars if not for the problem, but knocked it down because
1) it's obviously a problem the manufacturer is aware of
2) it should last at least a couple of years
3) the repair isn't within everyone's skill set

Knowing this, I would probably buy this model again if I needed another one since the fix is so easy.

If you cut the cord and miss your cable DVR then this is the unit you want. I don't use this as a converter for old TVs but like an old VCR tape machine. I can record a show while watching another.
If you use the HDMI output you're getting true HD on your TV. You can also get true HD with the 5 plug component output.
I like this unit so much I bought another for the bedroom TV. Now I can record 2 shows in the same time slot.
I use a 160 Gig USB hard drive on each unit and they format out to 149 gigs which allows me to record about 23 hours on each drive (a 1 hour HD TV show uses about 6.5 gigs). I've had no problems at all with the recorded shows as they play back perfectly in HD.
The unit finds all the same channels (over 40 in my area) as my TV tuner does and sometimes I think the picture is more vibrant than the TVs tuner.
I knocked off 1 star for 3 reasons. #1 The remote is highly directional and weaker than most remotes. #2 The onscreen interface is not intuitive and takes awhile to learn all the functions. #3 The list of recorded shows doesn't list the name of the show. They're listed by channel name, date and time and the time is in 24 hour format making it hard to find the show you're look for.
I really like these units and recommend them to anyone needing an OTA DVR.
UPDATE:
Solved the bad Remote control problem. I bought a Sony RMVLZ620 Universal Remote Control (Black) This is a learning remote and has powerful LEDs It was able to learn all the functions I needed. It also let me consolidate all my 6 remotes into just the one.

I bought this box because the tuner on my HDTV is broken. It's worked great so far. First off, it's advertised as a "Converter Box" and I'm not sure why, because that's just one of its functions. Yes, you can use it as a converter box for your old analog TV. But it works just as well with an HDMI connection to an HDTV. Anyway, pros and cons:
PROS:
Great tuner, more sensitive than the one on my TV was.
Easy interface.
Brings in a program guide for OTA channels (as the guide is carried in the signal, it doesn't show you all channels simultaneously- just the one you're on).
Has the ability to time shift (pause & rewind live TV).
CONS:
Just one tuner. If your TV tuner works, you can watch one channel while recording another on the PVR's tuner; if it doesn't, you can't.
Instruction manual isn't very detailed, so you have to figure most stuff out yourself, but it's not too hard.
USB recording only works well if your drive is formatted to NTFS (Windows). Doesn't work with Mac formatting. So, if you're a Mac user, you need to get to a Windows computer to format a drive for your PVR. Alternatively, you can get software to let your Mac format in NTFS. I used a free trial of Paragon's software.
Unless you have an expensive thumb drive, your thumb drive will probably be too slow for this system. It will record OK, but you will get some stuttering during playback. Luckily, I had an old 250GB external drive sitting around and that works great.
Recordings aren't compressed, so they take a lot of space. I've found 4-5GB an hour for 720p recordings; I haven't checked for 1080 yet. So I'm glad I have that HDD.
If you're watching something you've recorded and stop (not just pause) it in the middle, it doesn't save that point- you have to start it again and FF. But you can FF up to 32x.

I live in Portland, Oregon, where there are the main TV networks, plus PBS, plus a few awesome rerun networks such as MeTV, 'This' network, and Antenna TV. Direct TV, for which I paid $69/month, didn't pick up MeTV, This, or Antenna TV, so I had no option to record the great stuff on those channels. This little unit cost $38, plus I had to buy a $50 hard drive, but it's a lot better than spending $200 outright or better than paying $50 plus a $20/month subscription fee (cough, Tivo, cough). I tried this for a week and just called Direct TV to cancel the subscription. Free TV for me baby!

This unit is pretty bare bones, and the instructions are insufficient, but I was able to figure it out. It actually works a little better than I expected and it's great to be able to record The Outer Limits, Daniel Boone, Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the Addams Family, Hogans Heroes, and Green Acres. Besides these great shows and similar ones, if anything good ever comes on the regular networks, I suppose I could record that as well.

To use this to record TV, however, you need to buy some memory, and I recommend a portable hard drive. I got one at Radio Shack for $54. The other thing is that to play the shows you record, you need to push the USB button. I had to figure that one out, it wasn't in the instruction book. That shortcoming plus the someone clunky remote control unit are why I rate this 4 stars instead of 5.

If you were able to hook up and program a VHS player back in 1991, and if you can operate a PC with a Microsoft operating system, I believe you can figure out how to operate this unit. I highly recommend this unit for tightwads like me.