8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
Performs very well for the cost
Date of Review: Aug 29, 2005
The Bottom Line: Perfect for archiving SVHS tapes or dubbing from TIVO or DISH.
Purchased at Circuit City, on sale for $75, including 10 blank DVD-R media. Great value for the cost. This is a full-width unit weighing 15 lbs, seemingly better built than many current DVD players-only. Has S-video in & out, digital & RCA audio out. No firewire input for digital camcorders. Records to + media only, and not to RAM media. I purchased it to archive SVHS videotapes, and it does a fine job at that. Four recording speeds, with decent video quality at the two highest speeds. Slower speeds OK for casual sources. Automatically creates chapters at 4 to 30 minute intervals. Creates a video thumbnail (which can be titled) for each recorded session. Includes timer recording, which is a little clunky to set up --(manual advises in broken English to set the unit's clock (falsely) ahead by 3 mins to let the system come up to speed before timed recording begins). Must finalize recordings to play back on other DVD players, and instructions to do so are unclear in the (quasi-English) manual. I called the 800 # support line, and got the answer immediately. Email support also very speedy & helpful. My recorded DVDs played back fine on two other players, one of which is first generation (and cost me $700 at the time). Note that the audio response is listed as plus or minus 3 dB across 20-20Khz, so I wouldn't advise using this as your primary player. Limited 80 dB audio dynamic range and 50 dB video dynamic range. Of course, it will record audio in two-channel only, as all home DVD recorders currently do. I believe that Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) is incorporated, so don't try to copy protected DVDs. In my case, to burn a "personal use" copy of a broadcast first-run movie on pay-for-view, I had to first record the movie to my DISHPlayer and burn the DVD copy off-the-air. Somewhat noisy fan and clock displays 24-hour time only, but timer recordings are easily set up in 12-hour mode. Imported from China by Orbyx Electronics, whose website has firmware downloads. Circuit City offers a three-year extended warranty for $20. I looked at many $400 DVD recorders with hard drives, and none of them did commercial skip easily. So I dropped that requirement and saved $325.
