Philips DVDR 3380 DVD Recorder
Philips DVDR 3380 DVD Recorder
Region 2 MP3 and Picture CD compatible iLink/firewire connection
Customer Review: Philips comes good
I received this DVDR as a replacement for a previous Philips model DVDR which had crashed after a couple of years with a known software glitch. I was somewhat hesitant to deal with Philips after this bad experience, especially as I had to pay approx ?80 for the privilege, but I have no regrets. A new DVDR of this quality would have cost much more and the old one was not repairable. This uprated DVD is a faultless performer, is more user-friendly than its predecessor and can be changed to being region-free in a few easy moves (at no cost and without CDs or software downloads). Soooooooooo simple, I’d need to have been a moron not to be able to do it. Now I can watch films I’d waited half a lifetime to view because they’re only available for Region 1. I have it linked to a freeview box also with its own recordable hard drive and think I have the best combo without selling my soul to Sky+.
Customer Review: Superior DVD Recorder
Well first off this is my first ever DVD recorder, so I knew I was in for a learning curve upon reading the instructions. I know the fundamentals of DVD authoring, but had to read the instructions nonetheless. Luckily they are written out so well, I was recording DVD’s within the first day of operation. And it only took a few practice goes on a DVD-RW to fully learn all the most essential of operations.
The good:
- One touch recording. In other words, press the REC button several times for getting it to record for 30, 60, 90, 120 mins… and so on, as opposed to continuous recording (When you go to bed, go to work etc) which fills up the whole DVD. Very handy feature which I’ve never seen on a VCR before.
- Great (and simple) system and disc menus. The default (and only) disc menu is a little bland and boring though.
- Comes with 1, 2, 4 and 6 hour recording modes. 2 is DVD quality and 4 is VHS quality. I use 4 for everything I copy from videotape and many TV shows I record.
- Ability to split titles on RW discs. Means you can trim the (unwanted) start or end bits off recordings on these discs.
- You can append recordings. Ie- record at the end of an existing title rather than record a new title. Can be done on both R and RW discs.
The bad:
- The recorder occasionally hangs. Often this happens when you’re disc editing and choose a new index picture. (The thumbnail pic shown in the disc main menu)
- No fast forward/rewind ability while in edit mode. Edit mode is used to split titles, add chapters etc. This is more a nuisance than a problem.
- “Hiding Chapters” doesn’t work with other DVD players despite what the manual says. Ie- you use the hide chapter feature to “hide” commercials you have recorded, with the intent they don’t show up during playback. Unfortunately, they still do on other DVD players, even though the manual says otherwise.
- Automatic chapter creation is ONLY set to 5 mins, rather than being customisable. Ie- a 21 minute TV show would be better with 7 minute chapters which would line up closely withy commercial breaks.
- Says that new recorder software can be downloaded via the Philips website, but at the time of this review writing, it can’t. No such new software exists yet.
Conclusion:
I really do love this recorder despite the cons listed here. The pros do definitely outweight them due to quality rather than quantity. The main gripe I have with this recorder is the chapter functions. On RW discs you SHOULD be able to edit them by removing commercials rather than just hiding them (which doesn’t really work anyway).
And it would be nice to be able to do that on R discs by virtue of making the “recorded commercials” into unretrievable space on the R disc since R discs can only be written once anyway.
There also exists a need to be able to choose from different disc and system menus rather than the bland default one, and be able to set chapter length rather than settle for 5 minutes only.
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Used Price: ?100.00
Customer Review: best format,best recorder,best buy.NOW!
i have owned this superb unit for about 18 months and cant find any realistic critisims worthy of note.i have seen some less than glowing reviews and would like to make a few suggestions to get the best from the recorder.firstly use decent scart leads the shorter the better,secondly set input/output to rgb/s video to suit your equipment.composite video phono is also available but why would you use it? playback of prerecorded discs and home recordings is as good as most ?150-?250 players.if you have an av system connect audio using optical output to improve already good quality.disc types use dvd-r for once only recording they play in as many other dvd players/drives as dvd+r.earlier panasonic recorders could be fazed by cheap and cheerful dvd-r but all work fine on this.dvd-ram use for recording/playback reusable a million times at ?3 each.dvd-ram are more limited in playback compatibility but then a look at your dvd player/drive will settle that.i have a panasonic 36inch widescreen and sky+ the recorder used to free up space on skys hard drive.it has been used heavily since it was bought and has performed faultlessly.cost ?350 when new and was worth every penny.bin your vcr now even 4hour mode is as good as vhs gets and 2hour mode as good as sky.using flexible recording 1-6 hours if set to 3hours still equals s-video quality anyway.buy dmre55 if you need progressive scan pal/ntsc or component video output otherwise dmre50 is all but identical.only other point of note dvd/hard drive recorders are more flexible and with plummeting prices maybe a better option,panasonic and toshiba best at present.finally dvd-ram can record and play at the same time much like a 4.7gb hard disc and you can use as many of these great discs as you like,other formats can do this now but dvd-ram always has.
Customer Review: The Best Of The Rest
As with all DVD Recorders and Players, there are good and there are bad, there is never going to be a happy medium. Panasonic are the leaders as far as quality is concerned, and they deserve the credit. I first tried the Philips 880 recorder, I found it easy to use and it had some nice features, the problem was that my stand alone DVD player didn’t play the DVD+ discs recorded on the Philips. So I opted for the more universal DVD-R, which to date I have never had a problem with. The RAM discs are fine for everyday use like a videotape but not for archiving. Features and socketry on the Panasonic DMR-E50 are fantastic. Don’t settle for anything less.
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Forget about the running out of recording space. With the built in160GB HDD( Hard Disk Drive) you may record up to 198 hours ( SLPmodes) of quality video programs on it. The coexistence of theoptical disc drive and the built-in HDD on LVW-5045 doesn
Used Price: ?128.30
Customer Review: Nooooooooooo- don’t do it……
Fantastic machine for a couple of months when did everything it said on box, then problems began- dvd player stopped recording, then didn’t want to play dvd’s that had been recorded on it, then stopped playing original feature film dvd’s, even though a ?20 dvd player in the kids room played everything we threw at it, then hard drive crashed and we lost all the kids programmes that had slowly been built up on it, hard drive still worked but has crashed another two times losing everything on drive and finally died the other week when it came up with a fatal error message- built in hard disk utilities within the liteon don’t work! If you want one of these don’t waste too much money- I paid ?250 for mine - absolute waste of money! Don’t pay more than ?20 and then don’t expect it to last for long this is a disposable item… By the way the hdd has been ripped out chucked in an icy box and now works fine when attached to my pc- although all the recordings had gone- so couple of quid retrieved there.
Customer Review: Loved it when it worked!
I bought this back in ‘05 for 1p short of ?300 and at first it did everything it said on the box, apart from the odd crash which I could live with. BUT… after about a year of use it started to get fussy about the blank DVD’s it wanted to record on, just spitting them out with ‘Invalid Disc’ errors. Then it decided it didn’t really want to record on any discs… DVD+R,-R,+RW,-RW. I bought various cake boxes of blank DVD’s including Ritek and Taiyo Yuden (not cheap), both on the Lite-on recommended disc list and generally regarded as ‘bullet proof’. I could just about live with this as the hard drive is large and I also have a PC to copy discs and export DV to. However, now it doesn’t read DVDR’s either! It plays the odd bought DVD but anything recorded on a DVDR just doesn’t work. I’ve updated the firmware but… nothing. So now what I’m left with is a machine that just records off the TV. I’ve had to buy a separate DVD player to sit on top and I have my freeview box sitting on top of that. Not the neatest set-up to have stuck under your TV. What annoys me most is while it worked it was great and I bought my dad the Lite-On 5025 80Gb model for his birthday. But even after very light use and infrequent recording to DVDR, his is now starting to suffer from the same problems I had. Fortunately it is JUST inside the guarantee so will be going back and hopefully will get repaired first time. If you’re considering a lite-on product I would seriously think again. I’ve spent close to ?500 on these two recorders in little over 2 years and they’re both on their last legs.
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Used Price: ?117.97
Customer Review: Pretty good but where’s the HDMI?
Thanks to reviewer ‘Ricko’ for the advice on setting up. Got it working fine pretty quickly. It is slow to start up but once going is very good. I use the synchro record feature for transferring from Sky+ to HDD then onto DVD. Best to transfer overnight when Sky+ is not being used though. Not sure what the HDMI interface in the manufacturers review is. I expected an HDMI output on the machine but there is not one. Buy something else if you want to connect to the TV by HDMI. Picture quality is good so maybe is something built in to the machine? Other than that I’m still getting used to all the features but out of the box set up is fine for most.
Customer Review: Sony DVD Recorder
I must agree with the other reviewers. Sony manual is rubish. The recorder works well and is fairly straight forwards to use, but we have found some annoying limitations with it when used with SKY. The programme guide does not work with only a sky box - even though the manual implies that it may work. We can’t pick up terrestrial TV due to surrounding hills. We bought this as an alternative to SKY+, but without the programme guide, the system is complicated to use - my wife hates it. Also if the kids touch the sky box - after you have carefully set up the set to record - ie turn the sky box off or put a different channel on during your recording - then you will endure the frustration of having only half the film recorded. In summary if you enjoy a challenge, don’t share your sky system with anyone and want the flexibility then this box will work well - else pay the ?[...] for Sky +.
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