Page 1 of Philips DVD Recorders - what a farce!

Before deciding to buy a Philips DVDR75 I read an awful lot of criticism of the marque on here, and other forums. However as the rest of my home cinema setup is Philips and has served me well, thought I`d go ahead anyway.

How stupid can you get. Straight out of the box, all it would do is display the menu. The channels installed OK, through the "Easylink" system. But all that happened after inserting a disc was error messages or corrupt memory addresses. On the 5th attempt, the DVD+R icon finally appeared, then... the dreaded disc error came up. Tried Verbatim, TDK and ZeroDefex discs, all with the same result.

To avoid the inconvenience of asking the mail order company to arrange collection and subsequent redelivery, I took the advice of the Philips website. Downloaded the firmware upgrade, wrote it onto a CD-R and whizzed the disc into the machine. Instant results! Accepted discs as empty DVD+R`s. Even started recording! And the timer worked! Great, I thought...

Until putting the discs back into the machine in order to finalise them. Ten minutes of whirring and - "unreadable data on disc.Press OK to eject". On every single disc...

What a pile of garbage. Now I have to ring 24-7 Electrical and take at least 1 day off work in order to get the thing back again. And even then will it work properly?

From a meaningful existence

I got a sony and ive never had a problem.is it too late to change.

I got my multi-region Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD recorder in April 2003 from digital-point.co.uk. It`s been as reliable as clockwork (just like other Panasonic products I`ve got including my 6 year old Television set). Philips products have got a big reliability problem, judging by the messages posted in this and other forums.

It will be a cold day in hell before I even consider any type DVD recorder, the way they are at present.

Well overpriced and so many different formats causing much confusion.

At present VIDEO is so easy, especially when you want to tape programs when your out, and you can use the tape over and over again.

So when the day comes that VIDEO is no longer the king of recording, then I will pickup a few new 4 head VIDEO recorders cheap, with a very large box of 3 hour VHS blank tapes.

Hard to teach an old dog new tricks, eh !

Quote:
So when the day comes that VIDEO is no longer the king of recording, then I will pickup a few new 4 head VIDEO recorders cheap, with a very large box of 3 hour VHS blank tapes.

video is already dead. You can now pick up a 4 head unit for £40 and a six head for £70.

Tapes are a pound a throw, but they still have the same inherrant differences, like quality etc.

you`re happy with VHS, so stick with it. Personally, I`ll stick with my under 50p a throw DVD-R`s that don`t lose quality over time ;)

Jimbo : oÞ

got my panny dmr-e30 a year and a half ago :) burnt hundreds (probably over 1000) discs no probs whatsoever :D as for vhs, well they are just total s*** and most entry level dvd recorders can be bought for the same as a top end vhs recorder :/ AND blank dvd`s are much much cheaper than blank vhs :/ :/ i have not used vhs for well over a year and would not go back if they were free and i think anyone who has used dvd recorders will agree :D

Anyone who thinks vhs is king has obviously never looked into dvd recorders properly(or he would know that discs are also reusable),let alone DVDR/HDD units,and if home recording with them is so much of a burden then Sky+ is a good device to buy.Vhs picture quality has always stunk and dvdr is a lot cheaper than vhs ever was after the same time in existence.If you are happy with crap quality,good luck to you,but every penny you are currently spending on vhs is a complete waste of money.Why use 1970`s technology(which is what vhs is)when there is 21st century equipment available at rock bottom prices?
I have not bought a movie on vhs for over 10 years-I knew I was wasting my money even back then

This item was edited on Saturday, 10th April 2004, 21:11

I`ve had my Philip`s DVDR70 two weeks now so can`t comment on long term use, but for me its been fantastic. I have had two dud disc burns on disc`s that cost 32p a disc, but thinking about it both times I had put a long, and I mean LONG title name in before stating the finalise procedure which then failed. Before finalising I had been able to play them both. Since then no long names if any put on and no dud burns. Oh, and mine worked out the box so I have`nt downloaded the upgraded, after all, why try to fix something that works.

This item was edited on Sunday, 11th April 2004, 09:18