Samsung broke design rule #1 - Sound and video must be synchronized

I first started praising this unit for it quality and ease of use. However, this recorder clearly has issues with synchronizing the sound up with the video. This intermittent problem clearly was starting to annoy me. Sometimes it was fine then I do another recording and it was out of whack by 1/4 of a second. It only happens when recordings are longer than 30 mins.

Update #2 After comparing other DVD recorders with ATSC tuners, I decided to keep the unit because the audio problems seem to only happens on the Digital PBS channel. I have not seen any other problems with the other stations. The Laser Disk sound problems may have contributed from a dirty disk. I have done other Laser and VHS recordings and have not seen other problems. Unfortunately, there is nothing better out there for ATSC DVD recorders.

Even though I own one, I will still not recommend this unit because of the sound problem on Digital PBS.

I am still very impressed with the picture quality. The other DVD recorders defiantly lack quality in this area.

I am still going to leave the rest of my review because I feel that Samsung can learn from their mistakes. I hope someday they will release a better model. I clearly think they are on the right track with this product.

Original Review.........
It is finally here, a DVD recorder that contains an ATSC tuner with decent features. This benefits me because I only receive my HDTV signals from over the air and VHS quality just plain stinks when recording HDTV. I wanted something that would record HD better than VHS and now I found it.

The first Samsung AR650 I bought was a display model and it contained the store banner in the box. This unit clearly had issues. Some functions did not work and would not play back my recordings. I think it had preliminary software on board. I got a second unit and it worked very well.

I like the picture quality from the XP mode of recording. You would have to look closely to tell if it was a recording or not. I like that. The Panasonic DMR-EZ27K I tried out clearly was not as clear as the Samsung in XP mode. I found it a disappointment and returned the Panasonic immediately.

I noticed that logos from TV Stations such as Fox and others are truncated a little bit. Like the HD image is blown up a little bit on the Samsung tuner to indicate this is a recording or to lower image quality. It is not that noticeable unless they have the FOX logo up or displays the TV rating. The image quality from the turner is good. It looks like it is downgraded to 480, but is fine for me because I cannot record higher than 480 anyway.

The image quality from the recordings defiantly surpasses VHS and I been very happy with it. I like the instant access to chapters too.

Other reports about the EPG are very true. EPG does not work up to 5 days. Only 1 day if that. Then when you turn the unit off, it looses that information. That stinks.

Oddly, this model would only support the -R/WR formats and RAM, but without the advanced features of RAM discs like chase play or time shift. The funny thing is last year models did support R/RW. Also, It does support -R Dual Layer, but these disks are very hard to find and expensive. The next model needs to have R/RW DL.

The GUI is very easy to understand and use. This is a big plus for new users.

There are apparently two recording algorithms this recorder supports. VR and V mode. VR allow more flexibility with recording, but it not compatible with most DVD players. I would stick with V if you hand your disks to friends or family.

I do not like it when you insert an unformatted disk and it defaults to the VR algorithm because I have to go into the menu and reformatted it as a V disk. A minor detail. Why use VR if you cannot play it on most DVD players.

One minor defect I found was the recorder does struggle a little when it is busy doing something. Then when you change the channel, the sound then jerks a little. This is minor and I hope they fix this with a software update soon.

The Samsung overall is a very solid unit and I found much easier to use than the Panasonic models.

Update: I recently recorded some LD and VHS and love the recording quality from this unit. :)