Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Silver.

January 15, 2008 | By Doug In DVD Recorders |

Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Silver.
HDD DVD RECORDER 160GB INT DIG TV TUNER HDMI OUTPUT IN

Customer Review: High Quality but 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!

Customer Review: Wonderful box
The Sony RDR 870 is simple a wonderful piece of equipment once you are able to get it up and running. The documentation is easy to follow if only concerned about connecting Freeview or analogue/satellite. Trying to connect both is not explained and you are more or less left with trial and error and some pointers hidden in quite a sizeable document. Contacting Sony was a waste of time as no one appears to respond to your email*. As always Amazon did a great job in delivering on time and the equipment in one piece. Unlike a friends experience with Bt Shop were the whole process was a nightmare from beginning to end

*To update my review and to be fair to Sony, they made contact by telehone

and confirmed my connections to be correct. A bit late but at least they showed that they do care about customers.

Sony RDRHXD970 - 250GB Hard Drive DVD Recorder
Sony RDR-HXD970B - DVD recorder / HDD recorder with digital TV tuner - black RDR-HXD970B is a full-featured DVD Recorder/Hard Disk Drive with Integrated Dual Digital and Analog Tuner 250GB capacity and photo and music management features. Product Description - Sony RDR-HXD970B - DVD recorder / HDD recorder with digital TV tuner Product Type - DVD recorder / HDD recorder with digital TV tuner Dimensions (WxDxH) - 43.6 cm x 28.6 cm x 7.7 cm Colour - Black DVD - DVD recorder TV Tuner - - PAL SECAM Digital Storage Media - Hard disc drive - 250 GB Audio - Stereo Remote Control - Remote control - infrared Power - AC 230V ( 50/60 Hz )
Amazon Price: ?229.99
Used Price: ?213.99
Customer Review: Top buy
Excellent piece of kit which was simple to set up and is easy to use (especially if you’re used to Sony products). Do take your time reading the manual before plugging in as there are a lot of permutations on set up depending what other kit you’re attaching. Well worth getting an HDMI cable for connecting it up - particularly if you’re using a Sony Bravia with this.
Customer Review: Stunning bit of kit
I had purchased a Thomson unit from my local electrical wholesaler. It was utter rubbish - redefining “you get what you pay for” in my mind! The Sony is in another league. It’s slick in operation and the editing features are stunning. I’m hooked. The ability to go in to a recording and edit out the adverts, set a nice thumbnail still and change titles is slick and usable. I also love the fact that it’s very ‘GOP aware’ when you choose to edit in video aware mode. My only negative comment would be that it appears to only have one freeview digital tuner onboard. This means that if you’re recording from one channel then you CANNOT watch another channel at the same time (although I guess you migth be able to watch an analogue channel though I’ve not tested this as reception’s really poor in our area). You can, however, watch a DVD or another HDD recording while it’s recording which is nice. The chase playback is also pretty sweet (play the beginning of a programme while it’s still recording the end of it). All in all I would highly recommend this unit. We’ve got our phone through BT, our internet via ADSL (low user rate) and our TV for free. Much cheaper than either Virgin Media or Sky could offer and all with companies who actually care about supporting their customers… though, of course, I’m meant to be reviewing the Sony rather than ranting about the dire service our cable and satelite companies give in the UK!

Toshiba DR17DT DVD Recorder with Digital Tuner
Integrated digital tuner. Playable formats: DVD-R/-RW, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-RAM, CD, CD-R/-RW, VCD, SVCD, DivX.
Amazon Price: ?129.98
Customer Review: not that impressed (yet)
I’ve only had this player 2 days but I must say my first impressions are not that great. On paper this machine seems to do everything, but I took a risk buying it as I couldn’t find any reviews for it online. My first comment is that it’s so s……l……o…….w. Put in a DVD movie and it takes an age for the menu to appear. Once playing a movie things are not much better. The 1080p upscaling (via HDMI) seems to work - however Iam not sure it’s any better than the xbox360 over VGA. The user interface looks dated and again is very slow to nativate around. I’ve yet to attempt any recording, but I hope it will score better in that area! So far only 3 stars (for HDMI output and styling).