This DVD recorder has a 80GB hard disk drive and Argos are selling it for £200. This sounds remarkably cheap. Is it just a case of you get what you pay for? Has anyone tried it? Also, are there any links to independent reviews; I've totally failed to find any.
I bought this DVD recorder yesterday at Argos. I am just looking myself for feedback from users bus just like you nothing so far. I've tried it out for a couple of recordings and no problem there, but when I tried to upload them onto a disc the hard drive crashed 3 times. I had to unplug the recorder to get rid of the error messages. Maybe I was just impatient with the buttons! But other than that quite pleased with it. It has good features for first time user and simple enough to operate. I can see that other retailers sell it for up to £299 so at £199 - a decent price. Plus you have the 16 day money back guarantee, so you could always try to see if you like it
It's even cheaper now - £179 at Argos. I bought one yesterday. It's a decent piece of kit for that price. You can record onto it's Hard drive then dub the recordings over to the inbuilt DVD+RW (+R)drive at 4Xspeed - which is pretty cool - I like that. The only negative thing in my books is that there is no RGB scart in socket just composite scart or RCA inputs - So I have to connect Sky to it using it's S-Video in socket. - There's an RGB scart out and Component out but not in. Still no big worries S-Video in looks okay.
I bought one of these today. However... we didn't think to check that it was surround sound, which of course for that price it isn't. For that reason alone, I think we will return it, as there's not much point having great speakers, a digital TV and buying surround sound DVDs to play them out of two 4" square TV speakers. I should have known it was too good to be true. Also, I set it up and tested it this afternoon and although the sound was just stereo (I didn't notice) the quality was absolutely fine. However, when the Boss arrived home, he put it on and the sound was just appalling - really hissy. I wondered if it could be the weather (don't laugh - heavy rain affects our reception). That's neither here nor there, really, as we really want surround sound so I'm looking at other options. I've been looking at other DVD recorders with hard disk and surround sound for a reasonable price and have come up with these: http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/241_272159.html http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/241_214426.html These both have a hard drive and surround sound capability ("Digital Coaxial Input A connection sending digital surround sound, such as Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS, to a compatible TV or amplifier"), I think. Is that right? Anyone know if either is any good? Any advice appreciated - I'm only a girl...
I have been having trouble with "drop outs" on DVD's that were "dubbed" i.e. copied from the Hard Disk. I am using EP quality, and since the data originated from other DVD's (at EP) the quality on the Hard disk (having copied them) is forced to be EP. Anyway this is by the by. BUT I have discovered that the "drop outs" are exactly the same (as far as I can tell by observation and listening) from dubbings of the same program, onto a variety of different manufactured DVDR. Further research might prove this- if I can compare two attempts digit by digit on my PC! I define a dropout as typically a jump on playback leaving out typically a word (i.e about 1/2 second missing) - of course no such dropout is apparent when played from hard disk! So it looks like a software error in the machine rather than less than perfect disks (which is what the handbook suggests!) On advice of the Helpline, I did a factory reset. Perfromance unchanged by this so :----- I have returned the original recorder to Argos, been given a replacement, and repeated the experiment. Guess what? a drop out at exctly the same place but longer than last time. So everything still says it is a systematic flaw in their software
