Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Black
Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Black
HDD DVD RECORDER 160GB INT DIG TV TUNER HDMI OUTPUT IN
Customer Review: Very good.
I’ve only this a couple of weeks having eventually got my money back for a ’similar’ Philips product that was so bad as to be unfit for purpose. Anyway, very pleased with the Sony. SOOOO much better than the Philips in every way imaginable. It looks good, it works, it’s quick and responsive. Good manual. The lengthy EPG updates are a bit annoying as I always record from a connected Sky box so will never use it - can’t switch it off according to another reviewer below. Minor gripe though.
Customer Review: High Quality with some limitations
This is an incredible machine for the money. It’s best trick is the DVD upscaling to 1080p through HDMI which has stopped me bothering about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray until the format war is over. On my 1080p capable Sony TV the picture quality is simply staggering - worth the asking price alone. Normal TV upscaling with less data to work with is less impressive but perfectly acceptable. Recording quality depends on your signal quality and compression - use HQ if you have the disc space.
Flexibility to edit TV recordings before transfer to TV (removing unwanted sections) is easy and the transfer quality is very good depending on the settings you use. When dubbing to DVD the HXD870 appears to be incapable of recording something else to HD (unlike when watching a recording or DVD at the same time which is fine).
It you look ahead a few days in the digital TV listings there can be a substantial delay in completing the full schedule - for some reason this data isn’t immediately available on the hard drive which seems an odd decision by Sony. This can be annoying when trying to schedule recordings, a procedure that is otherwise very simple.
I was disappointed that despite indications to the contrary your recorded TV and DVDs cannot be played back through the aerial. This is a simple pass through connection only - there is no channel to tune into like a VCR. It does feed a picture to HDMI and Scart outputs at the same time so you can use a separate modulator if a feed to a remote TV is wanted. Digital audio output is coax only.
If you ask a question through the Sony website, be prepared to wait. They get to it eventually but this service does not appear to have a high priority.
The limitations of the HXD870 only affect you when doing unusual things. As soon as you play a DVD at HD resolution you forgive it everything!
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Amazon Price: ?85.05
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DVD Recorder / Hard Disk Drive with Integrated Dual Digital and Analogue Tuner 160GB capacity and series link recording function Player Type: DVD Recorder (HDD)/Digital TV Tuner Playback Options: DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW Recording (dual RW compatibility) HDMI: 1 (Output)
Amazon Price: ?209.99
Used Price: ?188.99
Customer Review: Good recorder let down by EPG
This is a very good recorder let down by a fault in the EPG. Basically it’s fine if you set it to record programs on the same day. However programs set more than 24 hours in advance can be lost. The good news is that apparantly (according to the pcadvisor website) Sony have a fix on CD-ROM. Call them on 0800-1695263.
Customer Review: Not a Dual Digital Tuner !!!
Don’t be caught out by the “Integrated Dual Digital and Analogue Tuner”. I thought this would mean it has two digital tuners and that I could record BBC1 and watch BBC3 but you can’t you must watch the channel you are recording. Dual means one digital and one analogue. Also the EPG interface is not as nice as the VTX-D800U it has the same layout but it feels a bit crowded and is baby blue not the crisp grey and white. I’m still getting to know this device so may post again.
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