Philips CDR775BK Dual-Deck Audio CD Recorder

Rating:
Summary: READ THE MANUEL
Review: AS LONG AS YOU USE DIGITAL AUDIO CDR'S (IT WILL SAY ON THE LITTLE COMPACT DISK EMBLEM ON CDR LABEL)AND FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THE MANUEL(BECAUSE THERE ARE A HALF DOZEN RECORDING METHODS TO USE)AND IT WILL WORK GREAT.I USE MINE IN MY RECORDING STUDIO AND FOR THE 9 MONTHS I'VE HAD IT THERE HAS BEEN NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER.[Read the Manual]

Rating:
Summary: PHILLUPS CDR775,,,, POOR CHOICE
Review: BUYER BE WHERE ,,, I BOUGHT THIS MACHINE AND WORKED FOR THREE DAYS TRYING TO GIVE IT A FAIR SHAKE TO WORK ... I THOUGHT I MIGHT BE MISSING SOMETHING SO I TOOK IT TO A FRIEND WHO IS A COMPUTER ENGINEER , THINKING MAYBE I DIDN'T GET IT.. HE WORKED ON THE THING ONE ENTIRE EVENING AND SAID THAT IT DOSEN'T WORK ,, WE CALLED THE PHILLUPS HOT LINE WHOS ONLY ADVISE WAS TO TURN THE THING OFF LET IT SI FOR ONE HOUR AND TRY AGAIN,,, I DID IT ANYWAY TO SAY I TRIED IT ALL... THANK GOODNESS I BOUGHT THIS AT A REPUTABLE DEALER WHO THE TOOK IT BACK AND THE SALESPERSON GOT ME ANOTHER CDR775 BY PHILLUPS . WE OPENED THE NEW BOX. PLUGGED IT IN AND WASTED 5 MORE CD BLANKS TRYING TO MAKE THIS WORK... IT WOULDN'T FINALIZE .. NOR WOULD IT COMPLETELY RECORD A WHOLE DISC,, NOR WOULD IT PLAY ANY PART OF IT . I RETURNED THE SECOND AND I AM NOW REVIEWING YOUR WEB SITE TO BUY ONE THAT WORKS.... BE CAREFUL....

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it!
Review: Ever since I bought this unit I have had serious problems. It is now my 3rd time to send it back to the store I bought it in.
Problems I had were as follows-:
(i) It seems to hang (like a PC) for some reason. This is intermittent and happens when either recording or just palying new CD's.
(ii) It is very slow to load up certain blank CD's which I recorded. And I mean 3 / 4 minutes.
(iii) I received OPC Errors when using certain blank CD's.
You would be better off saving and buying teh Pioneer PDR W839 or someting similar.
Whatever you do...stay away from Philips!!

Rating:
Summary: Taking a chance
Review: Had this unit for 18 months and the problems encountered were that when you recorded in the dub mode for a period of time, it never went back to normal speed (to "listen" mode) which in turn made you lose the cd you were recording on. Had problems with "check cd" when i was near the end, so watch out for that or use cdrw cd's so you can start from where the error occured at. I took it back in for repairs, and the replacement one went bad just as the first one did.

Rating:
Summary: Unreliable junk - buy it if you like to waste time!
Review: I agree with the reviewers who say that this is a great product when it works. However, last night the recorder just froze while I was recording the last track of a mix - no buttons worked, nothing. I had to turn the unit off and back on to regain any functionality. Of course, the disc I had recorded couldn't be finalized at that point (saying "Disc Error" when I tried), so it was about an hour wasted. This is not the first time this has happened, and it has happened using different brands of CD's. Also, the CD's I AM able to make seem to skip easily when played anywhere but from the player itself. Philips' support is completely useless - I can read the troubleshooting section of the manual myself - and that is all they seem to do on the phone. I'm stuck with a very expensive piece of junk.

Rating:
Summary: AN REAL ELECTRONIC LEMON
Review: I bought this CDR775BK early in 2001 and at first it was alright until everything went to hell after about 5 Months, every time I used it I always have to worry what it's going to do wrong, ether skip during a recordng session or maybe just go into stop mode while recording or do some other cute tricks that will cause me to lose a blank CD, and speaking about blank CD's it sometimes can't read CD's even though the CD is made for this junk. I tried to email Philips to get some help and that's totally impossible, there web site don't even show anything that has to do with there audio items like it used to as if they don't want to have anything to do with these CDR's. If you called them by phone you'll might get someone that's pretty good helping you, but don't count on it. After getting contact with Philips they had me ship the CDR to there repair center, and so I did, NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE, BUT THREE TIMES I had to ship it back for repairs because I had more problems with it then ever before and then finally I got a new one (Same Model) and it was just as bad as the first, starting about the third day and up that I had it. I do NOT support buying this item because it's really that bad, as of matter of fact it's totally worthless; And i'll tell you something, after finally getting rid of this CDR, I then purchased a new CDR (Harman Kardon CDR-20) on June 2002 and what a hell of a different i'm seeing, so far, so good. I use it for dubbing, recording off from my DSS and so on and I am having no problems what so ever knock on wood. I'm not saying that Harman Kardon products is God's gift to the world because I don't know that company or there products all that good for that CDR-20 that I now have is my first Harman Kardon product that I ever owned, at this time it's about 150% better then this Philips CDR775BK. This Philips CDR is one product that needs to go back to the drawing board for a good re-engineering.

Rating:
Summary: Good recordings when it works
Review: I bought this model from Circuit City which offered a free 30-pack of Memorex 80 minute CDRs. Along with a $50 rebate I was excited about being able to record tapes, records, and copies of my favorite CDs. Well, after having problems like not finalizing CDRs automatically and just stopping in the middle of a song frozen with no option but to turn the unit off and then on again to get any functions to work (not to mention rendering alot of CDRs useless and a waste of my time), I took it into Circuit City after having it for just over a month. Since Circuit City's policy is no refunds after that, I took it in to be repaired at one of their service centers. They had it for almost 3 weeks and replaced the CBA recorder in it. Not too long after I got it back the same occured and I brought it back again and after the same amount of time, another CBA recorder had been replaced. The problems continued. I finally called Philips customer support to discover that 80 minute CDRs are not compatible with this model. Now why would Circuit City give free 80 minute CDRs with a model that's incompatible? They say they didn't know and eventually gave me 30 TDK 74 minute CDRs after I contacted the company online. Also, why doesn't Philips tell you this in the manual? How is one to know? Actually, it does make very good recordings when it's working right(the only reason I give it a generous 2 out of 5). However, it still freezes up during a song once in a while, even with 74 minute CDRs and you have to shut it off and on just to get the wells open. Forget about your recorded CDR at that point, it's useless and a waste of time and money. Like some others who have said negative things about the customer support, I pretty much got the same kind of useless advice. This model has problems, and I think Philips has a tough time with damage control issues. If you buy this model, expect the real possibility of having to deal with these problems. As for me, if the problems continue to persist regularly, I'll be looking into another brand, but this time I'll research better. The amount of frustration, waste of time, and money on wasted CDRs just isn't worth it. Although I'm surprised how many reviewers actually liked it, isn't it amazing how many also had similar problems?

Rating:
Summary: A Good Start....
Review: I found the connections very easy to hook-up. The manual was a bit confusing though. What was a pain, was to record selected tracks off another cd. There are a few steps that if you mess up on any one of them, you will accidentally record the wrong tracks. I did also have some defective tracks once later finalized and played back. When it would reach the defective track it wouldn't recognize it, then the playback would stop. If I bypassed the track, all would be fine. Other than that, I have had very pleasing results with the CD's I've made. It would be nice though if you could record on any CD-R, as I have many computer-ready CD-Rs that are now usless to me.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I have had this recorder for three years. Not once have I had a problem with it that couldn't be remedied by cleaning the drive. I have made several cd's with every possible blank cd out there. They all work fine on every single cd player that I own. I recommend this product to anyone who wants a low cost, easy cd recorder. As with almost every electronic device, please read the instruction manual. It will save you a lot of time and money!

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money on this.
Review: I have the 3-CD version of this Philips recorder model, but aside from their CD capacity, all Philips recorders are essentially the same. I had mine for only a few months before it simply stopped recording on CDR's I'd been using all along. So it had to be shipped back to the Philips factory (where it stayed for 5 weeks!), so they could "look at it." Over a month later, I got a call from them saying that "Philips CD recorders are only designed to work with Philips exclusive CDR blank media." My first problem with this is that apparently nobody who sells Philips recorders knows this--or they just don't tell you-- and Philips themselves don't tell you in the instructions, on the box, or even at their helpline 1-800 number. Secondly, good luck trying to find any Philips CDR blank media out there, much less at a reasonable price. And even when the unit is functioning the way it should, the record-times are sporadic and the computer inside the unit is fickle at best. Please use my unfortunate experiences with Philips CD recorders to your own benefit. Do not spend your hard-earned money on this product. I'm sure there are other quality CD recorders out there, but I just blew my money on the wrong one.