LG HR650 3D Blu-ray Player with Freeview HD

I thought I share my experiences as at the time of writing there are no other reviews.
Overall this product does what it says on the box and for the price (I paid) it was very good value for money.
On opening the box I was suprised that there was no HDMI cable included, as this was my first HDMI capable product for my tv I had to then pop out to the shop to get one. Setup was easy and conected up to my wireless network without any problems.
1st thing I did was update the firmware which is very easy over my wireless network.
The online functionality works well, YouTube, iPlayer and Picasa were all straight-forward to use.
The DTV and recording left a lot to be desired. The guide display only has a 2 hour viewing window for 5 channels at a time, this results in lots of scrolling around to find things to record, even on my previous £20 freeview box I could zoom in and out of the guide and see a lot more channels at once. Also the guide information seems to repopulate each time you bring it up, sometimes I was waiting for about 1 minute to see the current listings.
Once you have found what you want to record, it is easy, as is choosing series link. However once you have set up a recording you get a 5 minute warning before it starts and then a warning as it starts, both with an annoying pop up over whatever else you are watching. The default recording starts exactly at the time the program is scheduled to start so a lot of the time you can miss the first minute or two of the program, I couldn't see an option to change this without manually editing the individual recording.
Lastly, after about 5 days of ownership, I found I could not turn it off, pressing the off button came up with "powering off", it would turnoff for a few seconds and then say "Hello" again and power up. The hard drive was constantly spinning whilst on, even with no recording taking place, it has a gentle audible hum which I'm sure would get to me after a while. I decided to return it after this.
Maybe all these issues could be resolved with future firmware updates, if they could it would be a great device.

I actually bought this product from a different company. However I felt that a further review here may be helpful, although I would tend to agree with most of the previous reviewer.

First, my unit developed the 'will not turn off' problem too. Twice! (I am currently still waiting, after 2 weeks, for the supplier to collect the unit for replacement. I won't mention the company but I have found Amazons returns to be no problem at all. It is sometimes worth paying a little extra so as to avoid problems such as delayed collections if the product does go wrong. I now wish I had!) I contacted LG about being unable to power off the unit and they had not heard of it before, but thought that it may be a faulty power switch. A 'factory reset' via the menu does temporarily resolve the problem - which to me more implies a firmware fault than an actual hardware fault. A reset also looses some of your settings though, so obviously this is not something you want to do often.

The first problem I had was getting the unit to recognise all the available Freeview channels. This certainly seemed to vary a bit, it found anywhere between 50 to 70 channels the first few times but none of the BBC channels. Eventually this settled down and found around 80 channels (including BBC). My Samsung TV, and previous Hitachi PVR, had no problems finding all the channels at first attempt. Possibly the HR650 tuners are not the best quality?

I would agree that the EPG can be slow and is not very configurable. To try and quickly scan through a days programmes on a single channel can take a while. To scan a day over all the channels can take some time. (My previous, cheaper and less functional, Hitachi PVR could 'squeeze' or 'expand' the EPG to show a longer or shorter time slot (more or less programmes respectively) on the screen.)

Recording programmes and series is easy enough via the EPG or instantly (to record the current program). Instant pause and playback were fine too. I too found that sometimes programs would be cutoff at the beginning, but this seemed to 'disappear' some how. In a series of programs some of the first ones were cutoff, but the latter ones were recorded whole. No idea why (unless the channel started to transmit the 'start' signal sooner.) In some instances, with other programmes, nothing was recorded at all. Since I was not watching the TV at the time I have no idea why. Again, hopefully this was one-off occurrences and not a 'fault' as such. I would agree with the previous reviewer that the popups that a program is about to be recorded (and it asks do you want to proceed with this recording) are annoying. I have told the unit to record the program, so just do it!

Playing DVDs, blu-ray and 3D blu-rays (to a Samsung 3D TV) was not a problem, and the picture quality was, to me, extremely good. However, even with playback of recorded programmes, the unit does not 'remember' where you got to in the programme. As such if you stop watching a DVD or programme half way through, then when you next come to play it back there is no way to continue from where you last were. (Again my Hitachi PVR had a 'resume' function to do this, and my Sony DVD player will do the same.) It is possible to jump ahead to a specific time in the programme, but that requires you remembering how far you got into that particular programme. Not ideal if you have watched only half of several programmes!

True the unit does not come with an HDMI cable - I had pre-ordered mine from Amazon :-)

I connected the unit via composite cables to my old DVD writer, and recording onto DVD stored programmes from the HR650 worked fine. Playback of the DVD from the DVD recorder itself or the HR650 were again both fine. However, an S-video connection from the HR650 to the recorder would have been better (it has composite and component sockets, but no S-video).

However, overall I thought the HR650 was quite good. It did what it said it could, but it does take time to get used to it. I would hope that some of the current 'problems' with it will be resolved by future firmware upgrades, and given that this is a new product I would hope that support for it is currently happening. I have to admit that I find it odd that a much newer unit than my old Hitachi seems to lack functions that were, and still are, very useful. This seems to be a problem not only with the HR650 though, but across manufacturers. Surely manufacturers see what the competition are doing and use those same good ideas in their own products? If they did then the EPG would (should) get better and better, rather than as seen here where it seems worse than an old Hitachi PVR.

Just to clear the issue with the won't turn off problem. I'd read some reviews but decided to give it a go. Well after around 4 days it decided to not turn off after recording something. I contacted Amazon who said they hadn't heard of a fault? I contacted LG who said the same. I updated the software version dubiously because under LG's own admission there is also a fault with the update for certain HD programs.
Well the outcome was worth it, it fixed the fault. It isn't as fast as the Sony it replaced, but hey it does a damn site more than the Sony also. The picture quality is better, the sound is louder. The menu does have some things lacking & it isn't as intuative as the Sony. But for the money & looking around very hard it seems to be the best hands down.
Give it a try, buy from Amazon with confidence, they do not quibble on guarantees. You won't regret it. Just remember to update the software as soon as you can.