Impressive recorder for DVD and DVR use

The Philips DVDR3575H is a DVD recorder and a 160 GB hard drive DVR in one unit offering 1080p upconvert capabilities and a digital/analog tuner.

Background:
I’ve stepped up to the DVDR3575H from an older Philips recorder, the DVDR75 that’s at least a few years old. It’s interesting though that while I’ve gained many new features, it seems there are always a few good things that just don’t get carried forward, even when you skip several years between models. So the first section below will address those features that are missing in this new generation. I do not have an HD television, so I won’t be presenting any information in regards to the HDMI output, quality, etc. I will note, however, that the unit will not record or playback in HD. I understand that in down converts the HD to standard, then upconverts to 1080p, even when just using it as a tuner, so it will obviously not be as high quality when it reaches your TV set.

Features found in older model (DVDR75) missing in this unit:
1. My older recorder had two sets of rear inputs, whereas this unit only has one one. I also had an S-Video input on the front of my old unit, which I used for hooking up my laptop occasionally. This unit does not have that handy option.
2. My older recorder had an RF converter so that it could be hooked to the TV via coax cable. Most people probably don’t use this anymore, but I was using it because I wanted to use the component inputs on my TV for my home theater connection and didn’t have an extra set of inputs (I don’t have an HD set). With this unit, there’s still an antenna out connection from the recorder, but it’s just a pass through of the antenna signal to the TV so that you can still use the TV’s tuner when the recorder is not in use.
3. My older recorder had a button for inserting a chapter marker while making a recording. This new unit will only let you insert them after the fact while watching the recording back in the Edit window. You can set it for “auto chapter” every 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes, but no manual marking that I can find. This is a real pain, and definitely my most missed feature.
Of course, there are tons of new capabilities to off-set these losses: having a DVR (record to hard drive), Pause Live TV mode, 1080p upconvert (for those with and HD set), quick skip and review (jumps forward or backwards 30 seconds during playback), and others.

General:

Okay, now that the comparison info is out of the way, I need to say that after just a few weeks of owning this recorder I already love it! It’s so great to be able to just record to the hard drive and not worry about having a blank disc in the unit or how much space might be left on the one that’s in there. The DVD menus created by this unit are so much easier to read that the ones created by my older Philips unit. I’ve recorded off the air as well as from other DVD and VHS sources hooked to the unit. One reviewer commented about crippling copy protection, but I was under the impression that most units included this, so I didn’t expect otherwise. My solution for this was to buy one of those simple boxes that remove the protection, which I installed between the line output of my DVD/VCR combo unit and line input of my old recorder. The same solution works with this recorder and has allowed me to archive my old VHS items to DVD.

The unit is fairly slim at just 2.25 inches tall and looks pretty good with a part black, part silver front. A flip-down door covers the front inputs. There is a cooling fan on the back, but I don’t hear it run at all.

The remote is average. I’ve seen better and worse. It’s large enough to be comfortable, but not too bulky. There’s enough variation in layout and button size and shape to make it easy to distinguish buttons. Probably the only real complaint might be the tiny size of the stop button. The record button is actually quite small too, but I think that’s okay to help avoid accidentally pressing it. The Pause Live TV button is by itself in the middle, making it easy to find by feel in the dark.

The menu system is decent. The only odd thing is that there are some disc-editing functions that are found under the setup menu (like finalizing a disc or erasing all titles on the hard drive). I tend to think of a “setup” menu in terms of the system itself, not performing disc editing/recording functions. But once you know where they are I guess it’s not a problem.

Disappointments:

There are a few shortcomings about this recorder that I hope Philips might address in some model down the road.
1. There’s no way to add a title to programs set in the timer. I understand this is available in some other brands of recorders and would be quite helpful when you have several timers set.
2. Adding a title to a recording is tedious. This recorder uses the numeric keypad as you’d use a cell phone to type a text message. Sony and other manufacturers use an on-screen keyboard that you can arrow around. I guess those who text message a lot won’t mind.
3. There’s no way to organize the titles recorded on the hard drive.
4. The title list selection screen for the HDD only shows the title for the item that’s highlighted. For the rest, you see only the index picture until you arrow over to it. That wouldn’t be too bad if you could select the index picture, but it’s just the first frame of the title, which is often blank or just a frame from the end of the commercial before the show. It drives me nuts to have a bunch of index pictures that are meaningless and not be able to change them, especially given how tedious it is to change the title (per number 2 above).
5. There is no capability to record to DL discs. I don’t really need that right now, as the blanks are quite expensive, but they’ll probably drop after awhile.
6. You can scan and program your analog and digital channels. Later, when flipping through them with the channel up and down buttons on the remote, you can’t seamlessly roll through all of them. You have to switch between analog and digital and go through them separately. I guess this will be a moot point in less than a year when analog goes off line, so this is pretty minor.
7. The stop button on the remote is tiny.

Hookups:

The unit provides output for HDMI, component, and composite. There’s also an antenna output that’s just a passthrough for the antenna signal. There’s no RF modulator, so this connection won’t give you “channel 3” or “channel 4” output to your TV or another unit. For inputs, you’ll find composite, DV, and USB on the front. On the back you can input a composite or S-Video signal. For audio there’s a digital and optical audio out jack.

Recording:

Recording the current program or input source is as simple as pressing the record button. Multiple presses allow you to set a total record time in 30 minute increments (OTR Recording). Before recording you can press the HDD or DVD button to set where you want to record to. The record mode button allows you to select from one of 6 modes, each one allowing longer record time per DVD or on the HDD, but with progressively more compression making for a poorer quality recording. I don’t have an HD set and find that recordings on any of the top few settings are fine. The degraded quality (compression artifacts and such) do get pretty noticeable on the longest record modes.

Timer programming is fairly straight forward, although there is no programming guide of any sort. I’ve never had one, so this is not a big deal to me. As noted in the disappointment section, there’s no way to label or title the timer event.

You can set the recorder to automatically insert chapter markers every 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes. There does not seem to be a way to insert one manually while recording though, only afterwards when editing.

I had a few DVD R discs that were started in an older recorder and never finalized. They easily converted to the new menu style when adding the first new recording with this unit.

When recording from DV the recorder will display an on-screen menu to let you actually control your DV camera from the recorder.

When recording to the HDD, a menu with six index images is created, one per title. To view a title, you have to make it the current selection by using the arrows to move to it. Even though digital stations broadcast the program name, which you can view with the info button when watching TV through this unit, it will not pull in this info and use it to label your recording. That’s a shame. Instead, all recordings are just labeled with the channel, date, time and recording length. For DVD recording, three index images are created per page, with the titles to the right of each one.

Note that this recorder does not have any type of “IR Blaster” that can send IR signals to your cable or satellite receiver to set the channel for you. This doesn’t matter much to me since we don’t have either one, but I have seen this type of feature advertised on other recorders.

Pause Live TV:

This is one of the coolest features if you’ve never had a DVR before. If you have to leave the room, just press the button to turn PLTV mode on. Essentially, this starts recording the program to the hard drive. Now just press the button again to “pause” the program. When you return, press it again to “un pause” the program and start watching again. Of course, you’ll be watching behind the real live time, so you can always press the stop button a couple of times to end this mode and jump back to “real time” if you need to. While using this mode you can also rewind back to the point where you turned the mode on. Similarly, you can fast forward until you catch up to “real time” if you like. Note that even though PLTV makes use of the hard drive, the recording is automatically erased when you exit this mode.

Dubbing:

You can copy from DVD to HDD (if not copy protected) and from HDD to DVD. The unit advertises “high speed dubbing” but this only works when going from HDD to DVD, and it will use the same recording mode/quality that was used when recording to the HDD. If you manually set a different mode it will not record in high speed. I’ve only used this feature once and it dubbed a 50 minute program to DVD in less than 7 minutes.

Playback:

In addition to standard playback features found on any player, a few extras offered on this unit are: skip and replay, rapid playback, time shift playback, and simultaneous playback and recording to the HDD. These are described below. The recorder also has slow-motion forward and reverse with frame advance.

Skip and Replay: The remote provides a button for “skip” and “replay”. Pressing one of these will skip forward or backwards a given number of seconds. You can set the amount of the skip in the setup menu, choosing from 5, 15, or 30 seconds or 1 or 5 minutes. I set mine for 30 seconds in either direction. This is great for DVDs or recordings that don’t have very many chapter markers.

Rapid Playback: This is a very cool feature. This allows you to speed up the recording so that it plays at 1.3 times the normal speed, or slow it down to .8 times the normal speed. I’ve used the fast speed on software DVD players on my laptop before and found it useful when reviewing a program or material that you’ve seen before but need to watch again for review. If the program was recorded in Dolby Digital, the manual says it will even correct the pitch of the recording to make it sound more normal.

Time Shift Playback: This feature allows you to play back a title that’s currently being recorded from the beginning. Recording will continue while you’re watching it back from an earlier point.

Simultaneous Playback and Recording: When recording to the hard drive you can continue to record one program while you select another title from the hard drive to watch.