Box Pro, 1080p@60fps Video Recorder, DVR with HDMI Capture, Playback on TV. RCA/YPbPr/VGA to Digital Converter. Schedule Recording. No PC Required.

I LOVE MY CLONER BOX PRO!
I initially purchased the HDML Cloner Box (non Pro) because of the good Amazon reviews. I was looking for an HD DVR device and the HDML Cloner Box reviews said that it would record virtually anything across an HDMI connection with excellent video quality. I ran into the common issue of the “blank screen” after hooking up the Cloner Box and went the manufacturer web site (Cloner-Alliance) for help and found the “Pro” model with Remote Control, Timer Recordings, and Instant Playback. The Pro being a new product had no reviews on Amazon so I didn’t see it on first pass. After testing the Cloner Box and seeing for myself that recorded everything I tried (CATV, Blue Ray, PC Stream) with Excellent Quality, I instantly purchased the Pro Model and arranged to return the Box version. The blank screen on the Box version was resolved by pressing the 1080/720 button for 5 seconds (you do the same with the Input button on the Pro).In addition to wanting an HD DVR, I also am in the process of moving my owned DVDs and Blue Rays to MP4 files for my Home Theater Server. I have another software solution for moving my Blue-Ray movies to MP4, but the Cloner Box can do that too. I have found using the Cloner Box for the “Extras” is nice because I have to view them to choose which one to copy and it is easier on the Cloner than the software solution.I LOVE the HDML Cloner Box Pro. Similar to the non-Pro Box, it records EVERYTHING coming across the HDMI port with EXCELLENT Video quality. The Remote functionality is fantastic. I have yet to test the Timer recording, but understand how it works. The Pro also allows you to Record on the PC through a 2nd Mini-USB port using their HDML-Cloner Pro Helper Application. The PC recording functions worked perfectly, giving you a mirror image of the HDMI stream on the PC (with a slight delay) and full recording control (with the addition of a Pause that you do not get on the USB Drive recordings). The recordings on the PC were as perfect as the ones on the USB flash drive. I can see one advantage of the PC recording is that you can record without having an HD monitor handy. I’m going to test recording from my DSLR Camera where that functionality will come in handy. The Cloner Box Pro Also has a Mic AND Headphone Jack (Mic Jack also on the Box), adding a headphone monitoring capability I currently do not have on the DSLR. The PRO also allows you to control the volume of the HDMI stream and Mic to get a perfect mix. One thing I noticed is my initial recordings had low volume (the Box recordings were slightly louder than the original program). I had to adjust the HDMI volume higher (controlled via remote) to get my recorded volumes back to “normal.”The file sizes on the recorded videos are very large. Cloner-Alliance obviously made a decision to provide the best possible MP4 video quality and did not try to over-compress the video. I’m seeing that the Pro files are about 2G per half hour of video. You can choose between 1080 or 720 recording quality, but the file size does not change a whole lot. The Pro also has a 2G file size limit so it creates a new file every 2G (or 30 minutes). Cloner-Alliance recently removed that restriction on the Box version and is promising new Pro firmware soon that removes that restriction. I had a problem trying to record baseball games where the recording stopped after 1 hour and it appeared the Pro had trouble creating that 3rd file after filling 2 2G files. Cloner-Alliance support was excellent and suggested a different USB flash drive. That appears to have been the problem. Since changing flash drives I have been able to record two 2 hour movies without issue. After the All-Star break I will try baseball again.Cloner-Alliance also provides another software application “MP4-Cloner” which allows you to “Trim” “Combine” “Convert” and “Burn” (to Disk). The Trim and Combine function do not re-compress the video so they work very fast, and do not diminish the quality. “Trim” allows you to remove extra things that are recorded at the beginning or end of the file (lead-in and recordings after the program had ended). Trim on a 30 min 2G file only took a few minutes. Combine allows you to combine the 2G MP4 files together into one file. The last 1.5 hour movie that I combined only took about 10 minutes to complete. “Convert” allows you to convert the native MP4 streams into other formats, although what I used it for was to reduce the 6G movie file down to 3G by decreasing the BPS setting. “Convert” does re-compress the video so it takes a bit longer. The video quality of the 3G file was still very good.The Pro also allows you to record from various other input types: VGA, RGB, and standard AV signals. This is accomplished by a provided cable with those various plugs that feed into a multi-purpose plug (reusing a 2nd HDMI-looking physical connector). Of course I purchased the Cloner-Box to get away from an older RGB recorder so I don’t see using anything other than HDMI.If you’re looking for a device that will record Full HD Video from your Game Console, Cable TV Box, PC Streams, or Blu-Ray Player, the Cloner Box and Cloner Box Pro is the device you have been looking for.

Une pépite ce boîtier. Je recommande.

Non avendo più la possibilita di salvare il mio contenuto sul DVD perche i registratori DVD non esistono più non sapevo cosa fare.Ho trovato questo goiello quest’anno, registra da qualsiasi fonte, DVD player/recorder, VCR, Decoder satellitare e persino l’Amazon firestick.Ottimo, 5 stelle.

I have spent several days trying out a few different ways to get the best out of this clever little ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro recording device to suit my specific needs and now I feel that I am in the position to write an honest and detailed review of it to the best of my ability – something I think is really important as this device may be able to help many people looking to record video from sources they can find no other way of doing currently.The first thing to say is that the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro product is a fantastic bit of kit that has made something possible that I feared I would be unable to achieve – namely recording a video stream from NowTV.But it actually works better than I hoped it might and I have been really enjoying using it.This review will be mostly created by the notes I have been making about the various ways I have tried and prefer recording with it, and I know that anyone wanting to record streams will benefit from reading this and trying out such a great gadget as this.Firstly, I want to mention something that did put me off when I first used it – that annoying “Och, something wrong!” message that appears when you first try connecting the device to your tv and video source.It turns out that it really is a simpler fix than even the instructions lead you to believe – you just press and hold the “Source” button on the front for 10 seconds to really sync everything together and then they just work together again forever without any further effort from you.Until I knew that I kept on having to disconnect and reconnect everything to the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro every time they were powered down. Now, no such problems and everything just reconnects and works each time I switch all the devices back on.I will now explain my exact use of the device which may give you a better idea of whether it will be of use to you.I have been trying to get high quality versions of the episodes of 2Point4 Children as streamed via NowTV because I know that they will never be released by the BBC on DVD due to a licensing issue with Lady Penelope’s pink car from Thunderbirds (if you can believe such a thing.)In my tests I found the best way to record them was to first fast forward the episodes to the end of each clip, cancel that annoying “watch next episode now” message that would otherwise appear at the end, rewind to the beginning once again, then cancel the play positioning bar by using the rewind 10 second button and press record on the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro at the same time to enable me to get a perfect recording from start to finish without any more annoying pop up or display bars on it.The ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro enabled me to do exactly that and get the episodes I wanted recorded perfectly (I now need only hope that more episodes get shown on UK Gold to allow me to get the entire series recorded!)However, with the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro it goes without saying that you only get out of it what you put into it.By that I mean that you should have the following:1. A good stable internet connection and being prepared to record late night/early morning (if using the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro to record from a streaming service such as NowTV to prevent buffering/jumpy playback/audio issues.)2. A high quality stream or video input such as 1080p as the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro will not provide HDMI upscaling.3. A decent quality flash drive/external hard drive (unless using the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro to record straight to pc.)I tend to record with it earlier on the morning when my internet connection is at its best to ensure the optimum achievable rate of transfer, plus I have NowTV boost to receive all content in 1080p.That being the case my ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro is able to record in perfect clarity with the files looking great in playback once transferred to my pc (I usually don’t check the playback on the device itself, although it does have that ability.)When it comes to playback of recorded files, I have adopted the method of recording straight to a flash drive and then simply copying files across to the pc after I have finished, and so I cannot comment on connecting to PC via HDMI (even though I bought a long enough high-quality HDMI cable to do so) or really even using the software to edit/combine files – apart from one minor thing I will mention in a moment.The software that you have access to with a purchase of the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro does seem quite good, but I only tried editing a file recorded with it once as I changed my recording method after that.(I just know that something will likely always go wrong if using software on a pc due to the constant updates computers get – so even if the software provided with ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro works now, it won’t be long before Microsoft comes along and breaks something, hence my reason for not really trying it too much.)When I was first recording with the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro, I had my flash drive formatted in fat32 rather than NTFS which I now prefer – fat32 is apparently more stable for recording with it, but NTFS records files record in one piece rather than splitting anything over 2GB into multiple files.I decided I would prefer single files due to a slight “audio drop” issue at the point of split I noticed when using the provided MP4-Cloner software to merge split files back into one file.However, there is another important choice to be made regarding the formatting standard if using an external drive to record to, because the same quality and length of 30 minute episode recorded on a fat32 formatted drive which comes to around 2GB would be around 3.2GB on a NTFS formatted drive.This is all due to the size of the default allocation unit size used in the drive formatting, which is something you will have to search for yourself to get the best results for you – however it is of little concern to me really because I plan on storing my precious recorded files on my large 4TB external hard drive connected to my TV for later playback and for burning straight to Blu-ray discs for long term backup, but for those with limited space requirements you may wish to take care with your choice here.Apart from the slight audio drop out issue I mention above during the only time I tried file merging and possibly the slight moment of panic caused by that initial “Och, something wrong!” message that was solved after a quick online search, I cannot find anything I do not like about the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro. It performs better than I had hoped it might when ordering and right now I think it may well be greatest electronic gadget I have ever bought.(And yes, for those that are inevitably going to ask if the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro can be used to record from copyright protected DVD’s and Blu-ray, I can say during my test it did so perfectly and made an excellent recording, as you might expect, because it simply records whatever video source it receives to a file. Just please only use it for whatever you might legally have the right to do so, okay?)In the added pictures you can see my current setup with all my various devices for watching content, my NowTV device for streaming and the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro itself (with the flash drive removed as it was connected to my pc at the time.) It is now just starting to look a little dusty, I really must do some cleaning – the other little marks on the rest of the devices are just emulsion paint from my roller when decorating I promise!I can happily rate the ClonerAlliance HDMI Pro 5 stars and recommend it to anyone wanting to find a way to record HD streams that other devices will not accept.