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Agree with Michael
By: Harry Chappell
October 12, 2009 @ 11:49 AM
I have to agree this is the worst single purchase ever made in my lifetime – 60 years old. It is the most frustrating, useless piece of crap ever made anywhere by anyone. Had it for three years now and still can’t get it working.
Tried again today and all I can get on the xcreen is “Blocked” and nothing, not a single button on the machine or remote can change it.
Junk.
Rating: 2 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
The single worst equipment purchase ever
By: Michael
March 31, 2008 @ 4:44 PM
We bought on eBay and thus have limited recourse – so we bumble along with it.
The unit freezes, doesn’t recognize disks, loses recordings, loses audio, and can take a minute to power up. Yes we did the firmware update from the Philips website. I’ve never owned such a useless device. We’ll be taking a bat to this piece of crap soon. Shame on you, Philips.
Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Puzzled.
By: Richard Gorenflo
October 31, 2007 @ 10:17 AM
I have had my unit for about 20 months and lately when I try to archive a movie or program, it will not complete the process but instead goes to a disk error message and I have to unplug it to reset.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Frustrating
By: Ernie Carter
February 26, 2007 @ 10:00 AM
Great when it works, but freezes frequently. Every time it freezes I have had to unplug it to get it to reboot. Every time it happened, I lost any recordings already completed.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Ok, but needs work
By: pastor
November 24, 2006 @ 7:40 AM
when it works it works, but will hangup and may have to turn it off to reset it. Also will drop when making dvd and ruin the dvd installed. also will change channels on its own, that kills you when recording from an external device.
Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Good and bad
By: David
November 22, 2006 @ 7:47 PM
I’ve had mine for about a year now. The software is terribly buggy. It “crashes” and freezes all the time. Not reliable for scheduled recordings. Works well when it works, but software crashes make it a pain to use. Sometimes I even have to unplug it just to get it to “reboot”.
Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Very buggy unit.
By: bobbyboy
October 10, 2006 @ 6:28 PM
I’m a techie and work with all sorts of television, video, and computer equipment. This unit tops my list of the most Un-intuitive devise I’ve seen. Poor menu logic, terrible manual, and functions that just don’t work make this unit frustrating to work with.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Forever Changed How I Watch TV
By: John
January 31, 2006 @ 12:36 PM
I purchased this a costo also for $199. It is hard to beat at that price. The programing took awhile to master. The insturction book has some arrata sheets that gave correct information to the manual. The Phillips support webpage also gave some answers to problems not covered in the book. It also has a front panel connection for a video source (camera) that records video to the hard drive that you can then record onto DVD+R for perminent storage. There is enough recording capacity that I can set record times at the beginning of the week for shows we would otherwise not be able to see and then watch them. After using this DVR/DVD recorder, I will never go back to watching TV the old way again. So far other people can play the dvd+r disks I make with this device.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
decidely a tech nerd toy
By: ed
December 13, 2005 @ 9:53 AM
I bought mine about six mos ago (99$ open box no remote) after realizing that you cant do a thing without the remote . I was able to get one online for 40 . since then have constantly been having a great time with it . i record and burn nip/tuck for my wife . It is not as intuitive as some would like. Wife wont touch it.
All the better for me
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
poor quality and design - great ide
By: gary
November 19, 2005 @ 2:04 PM
Purchased this at costco for $199.00 and was real excited. The reality of making it work my my HD Cable Card TV was a royal pain. I almost got it all set (after 4 hours), then I decided to try to simply watch a DVD. I had a feeling – anyhow, NO DISK messages came up with every disk I tried. I called Phillops and was told :most likely a defective laser assembly”. Well I took it back and didn’t get antoher. I will wait a year for it to mature and for them to add an HD tuner.
The remote design was really bad – smmal buttons with illogical menues – so this device has a long way to go.
Maybe the DVR from the cable company makes sense after all – it can record HD.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Good but it has Limitations
By: Larry
September 10, 2005 @ 6:17 PM
The manuals are amongst the worst that I have ever seen. Nowhere do they tell you how to program the remote, (I had to go to the web site for that).
The manual is really vague and bad.
(Not to mention the grammar and spelling mistakes all over the place).
The biggest limitation for me is that the TV Guide is not compatible with Directv.
I was waiting and waiting for the guide to load. I finally called support who told me that the TV Guide only works with cable tv.
Other than that, the picture quality is good. It pretty much has the features of more expensive units.
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Great features but frustrating
By: Anonymous
April 19, 2005 @ 10:05 AM
I have had this recorder for less than a week. It has a great picture and most of the functions are easy enough to figure out but don’t rely on the manual for much help or examples with the more complex functions. My biggest problem with it is trying to get the TV Guide On Screen to load the program information. The manual is virtually worthless for this. Nowhere does it say you have to be tuned to your local PBS station to recieve the program listings. I spent 3 days trying to figure this out and when I did I only got 3 days worth of listings and no updates since. I’m probably doing something wrong but there is no way of determining what the right thing to do is from reading the manual. Tech support is nice but clueless and virtually no help! Recording from the TV Guide (if you can get it loaded) is relatively intuitive. But trying to setup recording a show on a weekly basis when you only have 3 days worth of the guide loaded doesn’t work. Philips could do alot of people a big favore by giving some step-by-step detailed instruction on haw to set up the guide and keep it up to date.
I do like the recorder and would recommend it but you have to have alot of will power to deal with all the shortcomings of the manual. I am still shocked that the process isn’t a little simpler.
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Good, but it helps if you're techy.
By: Tim Turner
January 5, 2005 @ 8:18 AM
I’ve had this a little over a week now. I’m still finding out that it will do things that I thought were impossible – some of the buttons, for example, do two different things depending on whether you press them, or press and hold them for a second. That’s one of the reasons it seems to be slow in responding – it’s waiting to see if the signal it gets is extended.
The manual is AWFUL! You really need to study it – and unless you’re a bit techy, you may never understand it all – there are things in there about what sort of Video settings to use that I have never heard of – they probably only apply in different European countries, but as the manual (you get five – each one is in two different languages) has to cover every country, you’re stuck with wondering what it is!
The Guide Plus is a bit lacking. As in, not all channels are there. And if you set something up to record using GuidePlus, and then the program starts a little early, you’ll lose the first couple of minutes. On my old video recorder, I used to regularly set it up to start a minute early, and finish two minutes late. I feel there should be some way of doing this automatically – the other day I recorded a whole day of a series using Guide Plus; every single one started two minutes in, and finished with the first two minutes of the next show!!
As a DVD player, it leaves a bit to be desired. But that, I think, is more to do with what you can fit on a remote. My old DVD player cost £30 and had a remote as big as the Philips – but it only PLAYED DVDs. This machine has to do a whole lot more, and as a result, fast forwarding is a little complicated, for example.
Having said all of which; it’s a life changing thing. I don’t doubt that in the coming months and years there will be much better machines, with much better manuals. But today, it’s simply awesome. I pause live TV, and catch up when the commercials are on. I record every morning’s edition of “Teletubbies” for my wife’s grandson; using a “set up once” schedule; and every morning, at 5.59 a.m., it turns the channel over to CBeebies, and records it for me. If there’s something on that I want my wife to see – I can record it, even if it’s finished. The quality of the pictures is simply as good as watching it the first time round.
I’m even using the “Guideplus” scheduling to update itself when we’re out at work.
Definitely no regrets at all!
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Excellent recorder
By: Lucky
January 1, 2005 @ 3:13 PM
bought it last week and I changed from Region 2 to Multi-region and it worked with all Regions – it great machine and very easy to use it. I set the numbers to enable multi-region so it can playback any region dvd films easily and can copies from vhs to hard drive and then either to dvd recorder or to PC via good graphic card like mine with ASUS Ati Radeon X800XT whichhas TV in and out – it very easy and great…
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Really bad
By: Ingvar
October 23, 2004 @ 3:40 PM
If you are a swedish this dvd recorder is really bad. It´s very importent that Guide Plus is avalibale if not forget to by this DVD recorder.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Poor support, buggy recorder
By: chuckevans
September 18, 2004 @ 1:20 PM
Bought this from Best Buy 3 weeks ago when it first was released. Had to call Philips for support … this model wasn’t even listed in their systems yet! Worse, I was forced to FAX them a copy of my sales receipt to PROVE I was in warranty (for a unit that was just released in the USA!!) I’m not sure who is running their support department, but they really need to treat their customers better if they hope to survive against their competitors with similar products.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Specs sound good, doesn't deliver
By: Tarrant
September 3, 2004 @ 4:46 PM
If you read the specs, this unit sounds excellent. However, it’s design and implementation could be improved. I’ve used this unit for 2 weeks, and have encountered a number of problems that Philips tech support haven’t been able to solve:
1. TV Guide On Screen listings is properly configured, and listings are successfully retreieved. But one week later they are lost for no reason. This erases all programmed recordings, and limits your ability to program VCR+ and timer recordings.
2. Unit fails to read DVD video burned onto Memorex DVD+R and DVD+RW media from a PC. It does not read TDK DVD+R or DVD+RW media either. It does read retail DVD movies without problems. And, it does burn saved programs on its HDD to DVD+R and DVD+RW without problems. It’s a mystery why it cannot read PC-burned, finalized DVD-video disks.
3. Response to commands sent from the remote is slow: averaging 2-5 seconds just to respond to a “next chapter” command while playing a DVD.
4. Boot-up and shut-down times are slow, taking 15 seconds.
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
More PVR than DVDR, but works well
By: knuddel13
August 9, 2004 @ 7:19 AM
The first DVD+R/HDD combo on the market, this is pretty much what Philips promised. Fast, flexible, pretty easy to use. Great compression gives up to 8 hours on a DVD+R/+RW with no noticeable loss of quality. It’s more personal video recorder than DVDR, though, with no direct-to-disc recording option. Nor can you move recordings from DVD to HDD. It’s just not wired that way. Philips manual is a real bear to get through. There are numerous options to hook this up and record from a digital satellite box, all of which work quite well. Programming guide (with option to shorten or lengthen recording times) is a dream. Bad news is that the DVD recorder part can be balky and give you a disc error, indicating the finalizing didn’t work, and the disc appears empty (but not really – computer software recovers files). Boom, there goes your recording. Basic editing functions are acceptable, but don’t offer you the option to join clips or files, only to split them. Should offer different templates or skins for disc menus. Bad news, guys. The red button problem persists at Philips. Lets you move recordings from video recorder or video camera to HDD and then to DVD archive via FireWire, S-video or cinch/RCA. One other confusing thing is the whole time-shift buffer. Sometimes, you just want to make a straight recording and be done with it. But this machine forces you to block off parts of the buffer before saving them to disc. Too cumbersome. Generally silent operation, but sometimes the drive fan hums loudly, even when the machine is off. I’d recommend this if you have a few days to understand how it works or if you want to record and play back from TV or to start archiving non-commercial videos in your collection. Macrovision inside, but can be busted. Region-free codes for remote available. European version can record and play back in NTSC and PAL (but doesn’t convert).
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No