Home > Consumer Reviews > Ellion HMR 351H HD Media Recorder/Player with DVBT & EPG Scheduled Recording

Just reconfirming the previous reviews regarding the rebooting issue. I have now had 2 units and they have both done exactly the same. I returned the first; Having spent ages setting it up and transferring files onto the hard drive it just started to reboot itself every 30 secs. I didn't faff around with firmware because I am firm believer that if you buy something new it ought to work without intervention. Second one arrived, I transferred the hard drive in. it worked for a while, great, and then off it goes again - exactly the same problem.

I choose this one because it had a lot more inputs than it's competitors and the timer record DBTV function but it is clearly deeply flawed. it's a shame because in principle it's a great unit. But having wasted nearly two months on it it isn't worth it.

I am under impression that HMR-351H is a best option when it comes to recording features as it has got all different connection ports such as two scarts, component, i-Link for camcorders etc. Specially two scart ports make it much more compatible with other set-top boxes like dvd players, sky boxes and so one and at the moment it is definitely an easiest option to connect two different set-top boxes for recording and other communication. As expected thru Scart connection, all recordings from my sky box have been well made and qulaity of picture/sound is excellent. I have done so many recordings and HMR-351H has never let me done unlike my other one which i bought at a cheaper price but seems to be becoming useless.

Firstly OSD GUI is designed quite user-friendly and One-touch guide button on the remote would make me access a main menu screen where I can do all necessary settings. There are quite a few One-touch buttons such as USB, HDD, Lan etc and all these save time /trouble to let me go straight to a certain menu I always wish to move over. I had had freezing issue however since I upgraded the unit with the latest firmware B435HP_S1001_090316a.zip which I obtained from the Ellion service center and formatted the HDD as per their instruction, it has been working all ok on DVBT, Timer recording on DVT channels, Wired Lan network & copying from my camcorder to a HDD. This is still one of the best media/network players including such complicated feautures in the market.

After researching the market for a multi media player to replace my CD collection with MP3s, my DVDs with hard disk DIVX versions and store all my photos, this fitted the bill perfectly. With every possible I/O you could ever need. The inability to see it's hard drive over the network connection was a negative point but one that wasn't that important.
Now for the bad bits.
It frequently fails to recognise it's hard drive making recording impossible.
It freezes, normally whilst browsing the recorded programs.
It also wants to preview the recordings as you browse them which means the hard drive is hardly ever at rest.
The partitioning of the hard disk is not the most logical.
Now for the worst. It frequently reboots. Once it starts this it does it every 2 minutes or so until you turn it off. When back on again the problem seldom disappears. The only way I could find to stop this (albeit temporarily) was to reflash it's firmware. This was done numerous times over the 3 months I put up with it.
Finally it was returned to Amazon. The customer service was excellent offering a refund or replacement and a collection service for the faulty box. As this was just what I was looking for I was prepared to give it a go with a replacement. Bad decision. Although the replacement booted up much quicker (a weak point of the original) it failed to see it's hard drive (the fully functional one taken out of the 1st box).
This will now be sent back and a refund requested.
Having found a number of forums on this device it seems I'm not the only to have found it lacking.

I was very excited when I received this product and initially very please with it. The quality of the picture, upscaling, programming and watching DTV (Digital TV) was all top class.

Then on day 2, I installed the hard drive. Partitioning (3 partitions - 1) Internal format for DTV/editing - 2) Fat-32 for Multimedia 3) NTFS for Multimedia files > 4Gb) and formatting was painless. The drive is extremely quiet and works well.

On day 3, I threw several multimedia files at it, different formats. All played well.Good quality.

So far so good. So what's the real problem?

Well if the above is all you're looking for then it's great. But my main reason for buying this was to record an external signal (FTA digital satellite coming into the SCART input) and use the timer to do it - I record 2 hours of European sat.stuff every morning (childrens TV for my kids). That is really all I want to do but it can't manage that. All the other stuff was supposed to be just a bonus for me.

So on day 4, just when I thought I could sit back and let the HMR do all the work, it was not to be.

Problems:
1) If the satellite receiver (also controlled by timer) is not already on by the time the HMR timer kicks in, it doesn't find the signal and the HMR decides to switch itself off - so you have to make sure that you program the external source's timer to kick-in before the HMR - ok not a big deal
2) Much more serious - I've not managed to watch more than 1 minute from SCART - the HMR reboots itself constantly when watching from SCART. So even with problem 1) circumvented, I only end up with several seconds of recorded material - there is a log of all my recordings - it simply tells you they have failed - no reason. I have tried every combination of settings (not many to control AV input) and nothing has helped. I've even tried a different AV device (an old analog sat receiver which still works perfectly) - same problem. you can watch 15s-60s before the HMR reboots.
3) The troubleshooting guide is pretty useless - it's really really basic.
4) The online website isn't any better
5) I've mailed support. They have not even acknowledged my email.

What's left to do?
Work out how to return this product via amazon...

If you want normal DTV, recording and multimedia handling go for it.
If you expect to use SCART input ... think twice.