I recently bought a Philips dvdr70 recorder and have been having a few problems, the main one being that I am getting a intermittent crackle during playback on some programmes. For instance, some BBC progs play back ok, but others have the crackle. The sound on my Sky digital system is fine, there is no crackle and the crackle doesn't always show up on everything I record, which is the frustrating bit! I am not sure whether it is the Philips dvdr70 that is the problem, as I have returned one to the shop, only to find the replacement has the same problem. Then again it may be the dvd+rw's that I am using (currently Samsung 4.7gb). I have tried every configuration under the sun, but the problem persists!! Can anyone assist?
The crackle is accompanied with horizontal white bands, radiating out from the subtitles. It's caused by some kind of imbalance in the signal. Different tuners handle it differently. My TV has occasional distorted sounds, but not nearly as much as the DVDR70, which is really bad. My Telefunken hifi VCR doesn't show any problems that I can detect when it receives such a signal. Although the tuner on the DVDR70 produces a very fine picture, it's sensitive to signals outside of the norm - if I understand correctly. I believe this is a weakness in the construction, not a fault with a particular unit. It's possible there's a setting that can fix it for that channel. I don't know. I had a channel with that problem a while ago. Really bad. A split Fox Kids/Hallmark channel. Fox had perfect sound, Hallmark was terrible. Had to use the VCR even to watch it, the sound grated on me so much. Hallmark has been fixed, but now another channel is displaying intermittent problems. Not sure if it's the satellite or the cable company that's at fault.
