DVD Player/Recorder with built-in SDTV Digital Receiver
Philips
- DVDR3505/37
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Reviews
(7)
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I have a 32 inch HDTV, and I do all my TV viewing OTA (no cable or satellite). We enjoy watching PBS, and other broadcast stations. But the VCR could not record any of the digital channels. So I started looking for a DVR. My HDTV does not have a video out port, so I could not use a tunerless DVR.
So I bought this DVR mainly because it has a digital tuner, thinking that the quality would not be so good because it does not record in HD like a Tivo. But I was wrong. The quality of recording is so clear, I can't tell a difference between the original HD broadcast and DVD playback.
You can record at different quality settings. The higher the quality of recording, the less stuff you can fit on the DVD, because the higher quality recording takes up more space. At the highest quality setting, you can fit one hour of shows. At the next highest quality setting, you can fit 2 hours. At the next quality setting, you can fit 2.5 hours. And so on and so on all the way to a 6 hour disc capacity.
I
So I bought this DVR mainly because it has a digital tuner, thinking that the quality would not be so good because it does not record in HD like a Tivo. But I was wrong. The quality of recording is so clear, I can't tell a difference between the original HD broadcast and DVD playback.
You can record at different quality settings. The higher the quality of recording, the less stuff you can fit on the DVD, because the higher quality recording takes up more space. At the highest quality setting, you can fit one hour of shows. At the next highest quality setting, you can fit 2 hours. At the next quality setting, you can fit 2.5 hours. And so on and so on all the way to a 6 hour disc capacity.
I
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2 price(s)
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Accepts almost all media types, has lots of features, DIVX, HDMI with good upscaling picture quality, and the SD channels come in clear.
This recorder does have an integrated QAM tuner that allows free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by your cable provider. The instruction manual does not state this fact and neither does most websites.
The only down side is that in my area Comcast provides cable service and ABC, CBS, and NBC are on channels 86-431, 85-433, and 86-432.
This recorder's tuner only accepts two digits of the sub channel number. Therefore if you have three digits like in my area you have no chance of watching or recording any of those stations.
The digital channels I am able to get do come in clearly and picture quality is an A+ on recordings. If you don't have this problem in your neighbourhood then this is a great recorder for the price.
I did end up returning this unit for the Panasonic DMREZ27K because of the problem with the two digit
This recorder does have an integrated QAM tuner that allows free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by your cable provider. The instruction manual does not state this fact and neither does most websites.
The only down side is that in my area Comcast provides cable service and ABC, CBS, and NBC are on channels 86-431, 85-433, and 86-432.
This recorder's tuner only accepts two digits of the sub channel number. Therefore if you have three digits like in my area you have no chance of watching or recording any of those stations.
The digital channels I am able to get do come in clearly and picture quality is an A+ on recordings. If you don't have this problem in your neighbourhood then this is a great recorder for the price.
I did end up returning this unit for the Panasonic DMREZ27K because of the problem with the two digit
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I needed a new dvd player and decided to upgrade with a tuner to be ready for digital broadcasts next year. The tuner is excellent and I can't tell you enough how nice it is to actually see the ball in a baseball game. The picture was so good that I upgraded to a larger tv. I also like being able to "tape" in a clear, crisp format. The recorder is quite easy to use so I'm not sure where others have been having problems. I should note that I bought this at Wal-Mart. They originally sold me an open-box item, that was not sold as so. (The previous owner had left a DVD in the player-clue#1). The antenna hook-up on the first dvd-r was loose, and the channel changing was quite slow, 5-10sec. I returned it, and the new one has a 3-4 sec. channel change speed and the antenna input works fine. There are still many features that I haven't tried yet but timed recordings and viewing/playback have worked well.
Pros: Excellent tuner for OTA signals, great digital recordings, easy to use, also
Pros: Excellent tuner for OTA signals, great digital recordings, easy to use, also
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I tried two of these players, and they both had the same problem. It's very slow to act on navigation commands, like skip chapter, FFWD, etc. It got annoying having to wait for literally 5-10 seconds every time you wanted to go to a different spot on the disc. Other than that, the features are good. It records on both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, and the editing capabilities are nice. But I opted for a recorder that is also a good player, so I got the Samsung DVD-AR650. Both are at Wal-Mart, which means a good price, cheap extended service/replacement plan, and 3 months to return it. The Samsung only records on DVD-R/RW, so you have to finalize the disc before playing it on another player, but the menus and front panel display are much nicer than the Philips, and it plays discs without a hitch.
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I was very glad to find what seemed to be a reasonably priced OTA digital tuner with a DVD recorder.
When it works, it works fine. BUT. . .
It does not always hold your timer recording info.
The firmware (dated 6/22/07) at the Philips site was already on the unit I have. It took forever (felt I had won a video game) to finally access the info about my machine to see that the firmware "fix" was already in and there was no fix.
I will live with it, but will check the recorder before each recording :(.
When it works, it works fine. BUT. . .
It does not always hold your timer recording info.
The firmware (dated 6/22/07) at the Philips site was already on the unit I have. It took forever (felt I had won a video game) to finally access the info about my machine to see that the firmware "fix" was already in and there was no fix.
I will live with it, but will check the recorder before each recording :(.
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The picture is wonderful. The features are terrific. The ease of use is astounding. FYI - I'm a James Bond fan and own a few titles. One of the movie channels had a Bond-a-thon a few days ago, so I decided to put my Philips DVD recorder to the test. I recorded one of the titles that I already own from the movie channel broadcast to my DVR. The next day, I recorded the movie from my DVR to a DVD. I then had my family watch the first 10 minutes from each movie on one of our other DVD players and, based upon picture, sound quality, etc., tell me which one they thought was the store bought version and which one was the recorded version. My wife and all three kids picked my recording over the store bought version of the movie. Truly remarkable. The primary reason that I bought the recorder is to build upon our DVD collection without having to fork over the big $ to buy the movies from the store (the HDMI connection and upconverting were icing on the cake). At $180 for the recorder
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The Phillips DVDR3505/37 has the best "digital tuner" picture quality out of the two other DVD recorders that I have tested with "digital tuners" (Panasonic and Samsung). The Phillips DVDR3505 produces an amazingly clear OTA digital picture on my old 27 inch Sanyo analog "box" TV using an indoor antenna. The Phillips 3505 and the 27inch TV are connected with regular "composite cables". The resulting OTA digital picture is amazingly detailed and clear with little or no annoying "dot crawl". Another important feature for me in selecting the Phillips DVDR3505 is that it allows you to choose "4.3 pan & Scan" to view OTA digital programs in full screen on a "box" TV (no black bars caused by "HD" OTA programs). In the 4.3 pan & scan mode the OTA digital picture is shown in full screen but is not distorted looking (no long and stretched faces) and the picture framing matches the full screen picture seen on my analog OTA TV in a side by side comparison. In addition the picture clarity/sharpness
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