DVD Recorders W/Hard Drive Built In

[FunkHouse9]

Does anyone here have any experience using/owning DVD recorders with a built-in hard drive? I broke down and bought a refurbished one from Overstock.com yesterday and am curious if anyone has any opinions. It looks like it'll serve as a DVR without a subscription and have the ability to pause live tv and edit & burn recordings to DVD-R. My last DVD recorder, which was a piece of trash, finally died on me a couple months back, so I needed a replacement. I decided to give a hard drive recorder a shot. They're very hard to come by.

Here's the model I bought.
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-DVDR3576H ... B0013WM0BQ

[Snowparrot]

We have one, and my husband uses it a lot! He tapes movies and sports off the movie channels, and then burns discs to give to the grandkids, etc. I think he's excesssive, but....
Ours is a Pioneer, I think....

[RinglingRingling]

probably a 160 gb IDE drive. you might even be able to swap it out for a larger one..

I prefer the Binford 8750.

[FunkHouse9]

probably a 160 gb IDE drive. you might even be able to swap it out for a larger one..

That would be awesome. However, I'll probably wait until this thing has aged or proven itself insufficient before I crack it open and start swapping parts.

I prefer the Binford 8750.

I'm guessing that's a Home Improvement reference. If not, I have no idea what you're talking about.

[MacPhin]

we don't have any experience but Tag Along has wanted to get one. Let us know how you do.

[Zuke]

I had one a few years ago, it lasted a little more than a year, the hard drive crapped out, and it was useless to me. I bought a standard DVD recorder, and with my 100 hours of TIVO space, it did the same thing for considerably less money. Get a good surge protector, and buy the warranty on anything like that with a hard drive that could blow up on you.

[RinglingRingling]

probably a 160 gb IDE drive. you might even be able to swap it out for a larger one..

That would be awesome. However, I'll probably wait until this thing has aged or proven itself insufficient before I crack it open and start swapping parts.

I prefer the Binford 8750.

I'm guessing that's a Home Improvement reference. If not, I have no idea what you're talking about.

a) what the heck.. after you crack it open, you could have enough parts to make a second one...
b) yes. drop in a 1 TB IDE drive.. MOOOOORRRRRREEE POOOOOWWWWWWEEEEERRRRRRRRRR

[FunkHouse9]

I had one a few years ago, it lasted a little more than a year, the hard drive crapped out, and it was useless to me. I bought a standard DVD recorder, and with my 100 hours of TIVO space, it did the same thing for considerably less money. Get a good surge protector, and buy the warranty on anything like that with a hard drive that could blow up on you.

I only paid $220 for it, so I'm not going to get anything special for any less $$$. As for extended warranties, I don't bother. If the hard drive craps out, I'll just do what R2 suggested and drop a new drive into it. If anything else dies, well, shame on me.

[FunkHouse9]

we don't have any experience but Tag Along has wanted to get one. Let us know how you do.

As a follow-up, I got it and I love it. Definitely money well spent. I can record to the hard drive, add chapters, remove commercials and burn to DVD and it can pause live TV. Couldn't ask for much more than that.

Downsides.... It takes a while to burn a 2 hour DVD from the hard disc. I'd guess it's writing at 6X or so. I'm so use to movies burning in under 5 minutes on my computer. The menus could look nicer and some kind of universal remote that would at least allow me to adjust volume would have been a big plus, but you can't win them all. The only downsides about it being refurbished are that are a few marks on the top from God-knows-what and the English copy of the manual was just a printout/copy and not the original. Other than that, I have no complaints.

I'd recommend this to anybody looking for a DVD recorder as long as you're the type who is good with figuring out how to program electronics. If you're the type who has a hard time programming a vcr to record something, this is probably going to be too much. This is great for me. My parents would never be able to figure it out.

[RinglingRingling]

you might be able to use the firewire or USB to move the files to your computer hard-drive and use the faster burner there if it becomes too much of an issue.