Comment: Got this frickin machine and its a good thing that I'm on holiday because it took 4 days to figure out the Japano-english psyco-manual!I have used a Philips DVDR-5500 for 2 years and I was confused about what exactly what this machine does.With the Philips you press record and it records.
But with the Sony you have to go into this long winded menus!Can you just put in a blank dvd and record no!!!
You have to copy every thing onto the disc drive first(correct me if I'm wrong but that was my interpretation of the confusing non-manual poon jive).The concept is that its only for old farts that want to record every single episode of some soap opera onto the disc drive and never burn anything onto blank DVD discs.
My friends have owned this machine for years and never once bothered to burn DVDs on it because when you finally figure out how to copy programs from the disc drive it does it in real time.You need to put on your hair shirt to figure out how... what could be a simple machine is so enigmatic.
After saying all this... the tuner is devine,the recording quality second to nun(joke).the upscaling works wonderfully with my SKY satelite box and the soung quality is supreme.
SONY study Philips plain english manuals.Keep it simple( print quick users guides...think Zen simplicity baby) and remember why people bought and use your machines in the first place please!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bad Buy
Comment: When you want to edit adverts out on programme on hard drive and then dub to DVD this machine becomes a nightmare
After dubbing to Dvd and playing back the recording becomes all out of synch and the picture jerks all over the place so if you want to dub to Dvd you can only record to the hard drive on BBC
AVOID.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Non starter for sony
Comment: Considering this is a Sony machine I am very disappointed. In particular the erasing of a programme takes for ever i.e. 10 mins and often more. My old Sony set erases in seconds. I am very disappointed with this machine and I would not recommend it. Can they not send a software download to correct like they did my old machine this was done automatically. Very frustrating.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really disappointing
Comment: I have Sony TVs and DVD recorders, I wanted this as it had HDMI connection for my Sony theatre system. I hate it - it hiccups frequently and I can't pin it down. It takes forever to turn on and off - like an old fashioned valve radio where we had to wait for the valves to warm up!!!
You cannot record directly to a DVD disk, you can only record to the hard disk then you have to transfer it. It will not record on +DVDRW although it will play them. Also you cannot format or erase or edit on a +DVDRW. I have a few of these disks and if I want to use them I have to use my other Sony DVD to erase stuff!! This is just a total nuisance. Playing purchased DVDs is fraught as sometimes it flickers on and off. I poke every lead, turn it off and on again then maybe it just works properly. Shame on Sony for this pain, do not buy it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Do not buy!
Comment: This is categorically the worst machine I have ever bought. If I could afford it, I would gladly throw it out the window. The manual is moronic, the machine is incredibly slow and most buttons need to be pressed several times before it will respond, taping from HD to DVD is only in real time and the TV cannot be used for any other purpose during that time (hence it's best done just before you go to bed - if you can be bothered). I'm not in any way a techno phobe and am quite good at setting things up but this took me days and days to get to grips with simply to record one programme. I also wanted to hook up my old VCR to transfer to DVD, which I was able to do once I bought an extra Scart cable, but again it took hours to set up. When I finally figured it out and then went back to normal TV and the DVD recorder the whole thing had to be set up from the start (more wasted hours and a lot of screaming). If you want a DVD recorder, quite frankly choose ANYTHING but this.
