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Why buy a DVD recorder without a hard drive when for the same (or lower) price you can purchase an RCA DVD recorder with an 80 Gig HD (#DRC8030N).
Easy to use on screen menu, and the varibles of the recording modes are good too. Only problem that has sometimes happened (on both our units) is sometimes after using the time delay the picture will still stay a few seconds delayed. They were the last two units on the shelf and $150.00 each, and so far they've been great. Comparing the different brands that are similar to this one for the price this is we feel a really good value if you're looking for this type of replacement unit. If that happens we now know to go to "menu" and back to "watch live TV" to fix it. We had a DVD recorder poop out on us and so when we went shopping for a replacement and saw this unit at the store and at that price we said why not. Just pressing the "live TV" button on remote doesn't fix it.
I can only think that the units bought in '05 and mid '06 had "issues". Can't 'skip' commercials, but you can fast to really fast forward through them. As with so many things you buy now a days, the manual isn't an awful lot of help past the ultra basics of operation and setup. Although it seems to be pretty well panned by most of the other reviewers of this unit, we just bought two of them last week (2 TV rooms and all). Nice looking unit, ours are all black and not like the photo in the sales add here. The TIVO'esk pause, and replay live TV buffer of the hard drive is really the best feature for us. We've recorded several TV shows via the timers and that's worked fine also.
And bought two of them.
I have had this Recorder for over a year.I did find that it will not record to the 1x 16x disks, but only the 8X.Since I have had this, I have recorded plenty with about 2 coasters.So If you can't record, Please make sure that you disks are 8x.I just love this.I have had a few freezes on watching rentals, but dvd's do skip when other people rent and don't take care of them.All prerecorded bought new have played perfectly.So, no problems so far.
The new model was just as bad as the 8040, right out of the box. Again never successfully burned a DVD, though would indicate the materials were in the "library" and something had recorded onto the disc. (See my review under that unit).Though it is less than 1 year from my initial purchase, RCA/Thompson refuses refund and requires another round with the designated repair place.
The repair shop concurred it was a lemon.RCA finally agreed to replace the unit, and did so with their new DRC8060N model. Even the repair tech said to stay far away from RCA DVD burners (as well as the Toshibas), and pay extra to go with Panasonic or Sony instead if you want a technology which is actually ready for market.The RCAs should not even be on the shelves, and the behavior of the RCA customer service people at the management/supervisor level indicates they know it-- their purpose is to wear out or wait out the consumer until the warrantee runs out. I believe RCA customers should seriously consider filing a fraud complaint, and/or class action lawsuit.Like other consumers here, I followed the manual to the letter.
When I picked it up post-repair and tested it at home, the machine froze, requiring a hard reset, within 2 minutes of powering up. This unit did not burn one CD successfully, but ruined 10 blank discs and I lost media I thought had been successfully burned, before I gave up. This unit is so bad, 4 out of the 5 designated RCA service centers in my area refused to service it, or said "exchange only", though exchange and refund are not covered by the warrantee.The one place that did agree to "fix" the machine sent it to an RCA tech.
It is fraud.
I hand-carried the defective unit to a local Authorized Service Center. NEVER. After two and one half months had gone by altogether since I'd dropped it off, another new unit finally arrived. The downstairs one skipped chapters, refused to play brand new DVD's or simply locked up tight.
I haven't yet mentioned that the whole time this was going on I logged literally hundreds and hundreds of long distance calls to them because they have no 800 number. More than a month later new one arrives at service center. They say they'll send a new unit. RCA, GE and Proscan are all owned by Thomson Electronics which is no more than Thomson Pharmaceuticals, a French drug company that bought those three companies.
Part ordered again. This went on for months. They put a smashed-up box in a good box and shipped an already broken unit. I went to Best Buy and bought two Panasonic DVD recorders for 10 bucks less apiece. The part was ordered.
Part arrives broken. They've been working flawlessly ever since. The only thing worse than this unit is the customer service from RCA. Inside box is smashed.
Thomson seems to know exactly nothing about electronics and less about customer service. Then comes the RCA Customer Service Shuffle. NEVER buy ANYTHING from RCA, GE or Proscan. Outside box is in perfect shape. I bought two of these units from a Warehouse-Type Club, one unit for the upstairs and one for down. The runaround began. Unit is tested and found to be non-functional.
This deserves negative stars, actually. Part ordered again. No parts available anywhere in the country for a 5 month old unit. I took it, unopened, as well as the other one I'd bought back to where I'd bought them and they gave me my money back. The rating system here won't let us go zero stars. The wrong part arrived. Too bad.
A part was bad. The unit is total ca-ca doo-doo. Don't even think about buying one. Unless you enjoy banging your head against a brick customer service wall for more than two and a half months.
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