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You will never have to miss a play again. Very handy feature.The hard drive in this DVR is roughly 80GB smaller than what my Pinoneer has, but I have never come close to filling it up.
Also, because of the hours I work, I have programmed the built in tuner to record all my favorite shows and I watch them when I get home. The timer programming allows for specific recording as well as every Monday, or every day, and so on.
This is my second DVR. Burning DVDs is simple and fast, so if you do need to clear space on your hard drive, burn it to a DVD.
I have to say, for nearly half the price of my Pioneer DVR, This Philips model offers all the same features and is very easy to use right out of the box. I rave about the "pause live TV" feature to my friends.
It excepts re-writable DVDs and allows editting of DVDs that you have created.
But it has the advantage of wide screen picture and surround sound. But that won't work after February. I usually delete an event after I watch it anyway. What nobody tells you is that the converter box will not let you do that, because the channel selection is in the converter, not in the VCR. It wouldn't be a problem if the TV industry would clean up their act.What is really notable is the picture quality as affected by the tuner and the connection to the TV.
At EP speed it will record 132 hours on the hard drive, and the quality is similar to the VCR at EP speed. You can just set and delete events at will, and don't have to worry about what fits on a tape. I use it with a 52" Sony HDTV, so I can evaluate the picture quality. That is a problem for us with TV programs made in the last 5 years or so, because the dialog is garbled and drowned out by unnecessary music. But it has the distinct disadvantage that it won't record closed captioning.
I keep a separate log on a piece of paper, and that saves the time to label each event on the disc. I bought one 2 months ago and liked it so much I bought a second one, so I can record programs from 2 channels at the same time.I don't like to pay a monthly fee for anything, so I have always just set VCR's to record off the antenna by timer. By default it shows the date, time, and channel for each event. A picture that is tuned by this DVR and then sent to the TV by way of either the HDMI cable or component video cables is not as clear as the same picture tuned directly by the TV. So this DVR is the solution, and it's the only one out there, unless you pay a monthy fee for cable and something like TiVo.For timer recording, it is even more convenient than a VCR.
What's even more interesting is that the HDMI cable makes a poorer picture than component video cables, even though HDMI is claimed to be the ultimate.Some day we may have blu-ray recorders, but until that time comes, I think this is an excellent unit.
This unit met all three goals. So far I've used it to record hours of broadcast digital TV and play pre-recorded DVD's. This DVR Philips Hard Disk/DVD Recorder 160 GB (DVDR3576H/37) with internal 160 GB hard drive has been excellent. The DVR also offers the option of recording DVD's, either directly from broadcast or from the hard disk. While I've done neither so far, I'm confident that both will work. My goals were to replace my VCR while adding a digital tuner, without getting tied to a TiVo contract. Overall, I'm very pleased with my purchase.
Then later I tried dubbing the show on the hard drive to DVD. That worked fine too.On a big screen 1080 TV you will notice that the quality is not quite as good when you use the tuner in this Philips recorder, but it still much better than analog TV. I would say that at the price this sells for the picture quality is just fine. This thing works really great. Mine arrived yesterday afternoon and by yesteray evening I was watching one TV channel while recording another. I am impressed.
I use ours to tape homeschool for my 5 children. This is very disappointing, and a very negligent feature to miss.Also, the recording menu for manual recordings does not have the weekly feature.
If the power fails for more than 2 minutes, the unit loses all its scheduled programs to record. Therefore, if this happens while I am away on vacation, I could possibly come home to no school for the kids.
This is a good unit which does what it says and the DVD's are playable in other players. Therefore rather than set the timers once per school year repeating them WEEKLY, I have to program in every single date I want to record.
There are a few drawbacks. It does not offer battery back up in case of power loss.
This is VERY time consuming and also a poor feature.
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