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89 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much better than a VHS, but beware of problems, 5 Aug 2003
By A Customer
My first impression of this DVD Recorder was that it was truly excellent. Even on the lowest quality setting (4 hours per DVD) the quality was far in excess of my SVHS video recorder. The ability to instantly play any recording without having to fast-forward through a tape was outstanding. I also discovered I could easily copy the video file (or parts of if I wished) onto my computer for further editing. I was a little disappointed with the fact that I was told that the DVD+ format was compatible with most DVD Players. DVD+Rs seem to play fine on my friends Playstation 2, but not on my LG or Toshiba DVD Players. DVD+RWs don't seem to play on any of the 3 DVD Players I tried them on (PS2, LG, Toshiba). New and future DVD Players should work fine with all formats. Given the advantages that my DVD Recorder had over my video recorder I was certainly hooked for life. I did have one minor complaint, and that was that even though you're using a DVD it still acts somewhat like a tape. If you start recording at the start of the DVD you will erase any programs already recorded that overlap, or put more technically, even though DVD is a random access format, when recording it's treated like a sequential access format.However, after a month I started noticing problems. The DVD Recorder started failing to accurately detect the type of DVD inserted. It would detect DVD+RWs and DVD+Rs as either "no disc" or a normal DVD. The failure rate for writing to DVD+Rs went gradually up from an occasional error to failing to write to the last 18 DVD+Rs that I have tried. I decided to stick with DVD+RWs as these seemed to mostly work. After a further month the machine started failing to detect a DVD+RW most of the time and eventually stopped being able to detect or write to any DVD at all. On searching the internet for advice I found I was very far from alone with these problems with this DVD Recorder with many review and help websites quoting identical problems. Philips suggested various sensible options, such as trying their own brand of recordable DVDs, making sure the DVDs aren't dirty or scratched (which they weren't being brand new and straight out of the box) and they even sent me a firmware upgrade CD. None of this solved the problems I was experiencing. I have since bought a Panasonic DVD-RAM. Although the DVD-RAM format is not compatible with most DVD Players you can at least record on whatever free space is available on the DVD without recording over your other recordings. It's also much faster. When you press stop it stops almost immediately, with DVD+RW it takes about 20 seconds. For me, I feel that when most people review a DVD Recorder they're comparing a DVD Recorder to VHS. It's obviously going to be a lot better. I personally found that the DVD+R/RW format wasn't anywhere near as compatible with other DVD Players as some people claim. It takes a long time to finish recording after you press stop, and with this particular model there are some very serious reliability problems which are far from uncommon. I found DVD-RAM to be a far superior format, faster, more reliable, but with the trade-off of being incompatible with most existing DVD Players. However, the way I see it is that most DVD-RAM recorders can record to DVD-R as well, which is more compatible than DVD-RAM and cheaper than DVD+R, and most new DVD Players that are coming out can play all formats of DVDs, so in a few years compatibility won't be an issue. I have confidence in DVD-RAM remaining a viable recording format for the foreseeable future as it has many advantages over DVD+RW and DVD-RW, and any disadvantages with compatibility issues are being dealt with by new DVD Players. If you want a Philips DVD Recorder, I'd recommend trying one of their other models (such as the DVDR70, 75, or 80). Personally though, I'd go for a DVD-RAM recorder.
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