 Most affordable moderate capacity DVD HDD recorder. |
| Review Date: February 15, 2007 |
| Reviewer: FamiconGS, Richardson, TX |
For a remarkably low price, compared to other DVD recorders with similar capacity HD drive, this Philips model produced exceptional results. As stated by other reviewers, playback using the SP (2 hours on DVD-5) brings true the meaning of the 70's slogan "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" Of course now, it is "Is it live or is it Philips". On a non-HD TV display, I cannot tell the difference between a live feed and a SP recorded playback. Actually, even at LP (4 hours on DVD-5) the difference is still hard to distinguish. Playback on SLP (6 hours on DVD-5) is very decent as well, not as good as HQ-VHS but quite viewable. I have two other DVD recorders, a Sony DVDirect and a cheaper iLO and both
produced sub-par SLP recording compared to this Philips unit. Worst of all, they made recordings that skiped or stalled when playing back on other DVD players. That is not the case with SLP recordings from Philips.
This is not to say that the machine is perfect. I now have the unit for about 3 months and there are some minor
issues with it. Over the 2007 New Year Twilight Zone Marathon on Sci-Fi, I dumped 5 DVDs of the shows using SLP mode. Four of the 5 discs played back well. One of them simply will not read after finalization. The disc would keep spinning and locked the recorder which needed
to be powered off. It would not read on several other standalone DVD players and while PC based DVD players recognized the files and played audio, no video was available. To be honest, I have yet to come across a DVD recorder that yielded 100% success in recording
to DVDs ... be it data or video files on data recorders or on video recorders. Isn't it strange that you can get 100% success on VHS recorders (assuming that the is nothing wrong with the transport mechanism) but on digital recorders you cannot say the same.
Some discs would not read at all, some reads but skips, some appears okay but has some pixelation showing up on a frame or two ....
Returning to the unit under review, there were further occasions, when fully recorded DVDs would not finalize. It would not permit me to navigate to the menu finalize the disk. Although it would play back, there were no chapter markers at all (default was set to 5 minutes) and so viewing that DVD was a chore. As a result, optical disk recording success rate is roughly 90%. Kind of bad when you think of it, but then again, experiences with other recorders were worst. Despite the low success rate, I am still very enamored with this recorder.
Another quirk I noticed is perhaps a fault of the firmware. Even with the latest firmware (R19.10), the machine would occasionally think that it has only 30 minutes of recording time left on a DVD when it is paused and re-started even though it really has a few hours left. Because you know that it has more than 30 minutes of free space available, you are lulled into thinking that only the read out is incorrect and the recording will proceed beyond 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the recording does actually stop after 30 minutes, so if you had walked
away and not paid any attention to the information displayed, you would have caught only a half hour of programming. The way to correct this aberration is to pause the recording and re-start it again. More often than not, this pause/re-start sequence would correct the remaining time read out....of course then, you would have lost several seconds of program material.
The DVR is simple to use with fairly instinctive menus. It plays DivX files pretty flawlessly, from ones made several years ago using DivX 4 to ones downloaded from DivX's Stage6 show case. A some what obsolete feature is programming using VCR-Plus technology.
It really has seen its days. VCR-Plus code is no longer listed in our local newspaper's TV guide and with frequent
changes in channel line ups, it may be best just to program it manually. A further improvement would be
a battery to keep current time or time synchronization through the cable network. Thankfully, timer programming is preserved after
power is lost.
In summary, for those that do not own a DVR or Tivo and are thinking of getting a DVD recorder, a word of advice...spend a bit more, actually, 3x more, and get one with a HD drive.....it is so so so much more convenient to just hit the record button at the spur of the moment without
sticking in a blank DVD....it is well worth the extra cost. You can record to the HDD while at the same time dump recorded
HDD material to a DVD. Now that's parallelism. Philips have a good thing going here and perhaps a firmware update in the future would fixed the remaining time flaw.
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Exceeded my expectations
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| Review Date: September 11, 2007 |
| Reviewer: MATT L., Palm Harbor, FL |
| After reading all the reviews of this product, my expectations weren't very high at all. However, when I received the unit and installed it, I spent only about 1 hour figuring out the remote and setting up all the features. Very user friendly. I have been using it daily now for about a month, transferring home movies over to DVD, recording TV and watching DVD movies (I have an expensive JVC DVD player hooked up also, but have yet to find the need to turn it on.) The Phillips 3455 does exactly what it says it does and has exceeded my expectations so far. The only problem I have experienced (once only) was that after leaving the unit on for a couple hours w/ the screen saver on, the unit froze and I had to unplug it. |
PHILIPS DVD RECORDER W/HARD DISC
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| Review Date: January 9, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Benjamin Fuchs, Caracas, Venezuela |
Very good choice. With this one, just forget about changing VHS tapes when recording TV series. With the 160 GB hard disc, it has virtually unlimited recording space. Then delete what you do not need and burn a DVD to keep what you want.
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Great DVR
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| Review Date: January 9, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Daniel A. Mushegian, |
| This machine is intuitive to operate and has the TV Guide listings. Terrific! |
High quality images; nice price; interface could be a little better
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| Review Date: February 8, 2007 |
| Reviewer: rrgg, USA |
PROS: (1) This DVR is good for the money. (2) It has high quality recordings, (3) allows 20 timer entries, (3) and 80 hours of shows. (4) It allows me to watch recorded shows while it's recording something else. (5) It also plays back various AVI videos I tried putting on a CD. (6) Of course it also lets you pause rewind and fast-forward live TV. (7) Finally, while browsing your list of recorded shows, a tiny video plays from the first few seconds of each show. This helps when you're not 100% sure about the recording. (8) There are a few video editing features too. You can split a show into 2 with just a few clicks.
Contrary to other reviews, my unit does not "freeze up" at all. Also, if you name a weekly timer entry, that name IS used in the recording made. Someone mentioned he can't find VCR+ codes. If you want to use them, just look them up at tvguide, yahoo TV, or other websites.
CONS: (1) After using it a few times, it is pretty simple to set up a show and record. However, I have to say the user interface could have been simplified a little. For example, to select from recorded shows you press HDD. Yes it means "hard disk drive," but they could have called it something like "My Shows." The on-screen display uses a thin font that may be hard to read on a small TV. (2) The buttons on the remote are tiny. I don't mind, but some people might. (3) When naming a recorded show, you can use a keyboard that is displayed on the screen which is nice. However, when naming a timer entry, you must cycle through letters with arrows keys. It would be better if the keyboard were always available. (4) It can do something annoying while watching a recording. If you have a timer entry starting while you are already watching a show, the timer interrupts what you're doing. It switches to the channel it needs and posts a note that a timer is about to start. Once it does you then have to go back to HDD and start watching your show again. This seems like a bug they could fix in a later model. (5) It allows you to plug in a USB drive, but only lets you view photos and music files on the USB. This is odd, because if you insert a CD or DVD, it recognizes video, music, and photos. |
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