Sony SLV-D350P DVD / VCR Combo

Rating:
Summary: False Advertising
Review: Don't buy this machine if you want, and think you are getting, the Commercial Skip feature. My ProScan which finally broke, had it and it was a worthwhile feature.

Sony advertises the D350 as having commercial skip, when in fact, it doesn't. Instead of marking the commercial, as my ProScan did and then automatically fast forwarding through upon replay, the Sony just has a 30 second "skip" button, meaning you have to manually "skip" each commercial, in 30 second intervals.
This is, at best, false advertising by Sony. I expected more from them.

Image quality, both DVD and VCR are very nice, and set up is easy.

Remote is very confusing.


Rating:
Summary: It seemed like a good idea...
Review: Everything was working fine. I started watching Return of the King (DVD) to test it out and everything worked great. Then the machine started freezing up, and I couldn't stop or start the movie it was just frozen on one frame. I tried several other DVDs and they worked initially but the machine started acting up over time. I tried unplugging it overnight like it suggests in the manual to combat "condensation." It worked fine in the morning but I got 6 minutes into Ferris Bueller's day off before it crapped out on me. I will be returning it. VCR portion works fine.

Rating:
Summary: Conveniently broken after 13 weeks
Review: I bought this DVD/VCR combo from Best Buy about 13 weeks ago. The DVD player worked fairly well until the screen froze while watching The Ring. I could not get the unit to stop, play OR eject. I tried this several times with the remote and buttons on the unit over a few day period with no luck. Best Buy didn't want anything to do with it since it was over the 30 day return/exchange period. Sony now wants to charge me $29.95 to exchange it for a refurbished unit or $59 for fixing and returning my unit. So in summary, I spent $159 for the new unit, $29.95 for a refurbished unit and the associated shipping charges. Let's hope that Sony can get it right the second time around. I would not recommend ANYONE buy SLVD350P from Sony.

Rating:
Summary: TV Picture was distorted
Review: I bought this product and it was easy to install. I have DISHTV and there was no diagram to tell you how to install it. Once I did, I noticed immediately that the TV pictures wasn't as good as before. It was grainy and had a slight flicker. I tried to get information from Sony and got only canned answers back which were non responsive. So I have repacked this item and intend to return it. Very disappointed. I may try it one more time because it does have the items I was looking for and maybe this was a defective product. I was concerned about the criticism of the product in general by the other customer but I am willing to try it one more time before switching to another company.

Rating:
Summary: Well darn...
Review: I got this as a Christmas gift from my parents. It has been working fantastic for a week. But a few days ago it started to skip a little. Today it was really bad. I've been watching my DVDs of the Britcom Red Dwarf, which is one of my favorite shows so the DVDs are in perfect condition, and it skipped badly. I tried the same scene over and over...still the skipping. I tried the same scene over and over on my PC DVD player and no skipping at all. So I went back to the Sony and still the skipping remained. It's also random as well (not the same type of skipping). I watch an episode of Seinfeld and no skipping. Very annoying.

It seems like this model is problematic. I may get with mom and dad to trade this thing. This sucks since 3 years ago we went round and round over computer monitors. That replacement failed after the warranty was almost up. They want me to mail it off at my cost.

Piss poor quality is what we get from these companies now. And crappy warranties. Sad.

Anyway, I went with Sony because I have a Sony SLV-662HF VCR that's been used and abused for more years than I can remember and still it goes on and on.

Rating:
Summary: Starts skipping and has happened with other Sonys
Review: I had the same problem with this DVD player and another Sony DVD player, that cost twice as much. They both seemed ok at first but started skipping after just a month or two use, and it became progressively worse. First just a skip or two, it made me think maybe the DVD was scratched. Then, would freeze up and skip certain scenes. Finally it got to where it wouldn't play any DVD I own all the way through, and wouldn't even recognize certain DVDs- it would just keep spinning and saying "No disc".

We bought 2 $99 Panasonic DVD players and threw away the Sonys, and to my surprise, the Panasonic ones have been playing perfectly for over a year now, NO skips or other defect or quality problems. I recommend Panasonic DVD players as being the best, and advise anyone to stay away from the overpriced Sonys.

Read up some other reviews and see for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: No problems here.
Review: I have had the unit for a month now and have been giving it a real workout. I constantly play dvd and vhs through it at night. The vcr is very good. playback of my tapes is better than any vcr I ever owned. DVD palyback is excellent also. I have the componet outputs hooked up for video and the optical output for dolby 5.1 There are alot of bad reviews so I consider myself lucky that my unit has been flawless to date. The remote is a bad one. To small and hard to read. As a matter of fact the only thing Ive noticed is the open command works slowly.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I received this DVD/VCR combo for Christmas and am completely unhappy with it. When playing DVDs, the picture breaks up, skips and freezes. I know it is not my DVDs causing the problem because they work fine on my other DVD player, which is also a Sony. I can't believe this is a Sony product!

Rating:
Summary: Failed out of the box
Review: I selected this unit over other similar units because of the brand name. Out of the box, the unit could not load any of the movie DVDs that I tried. After a long delay, it would report an error saying that the disk could not be read. These DVDs all worked in my other DVD player. I took the unit back and exchanged it for another of the same model. Brought it home and it had the same exact problem. I then bought a different brand of combo unit and it worked just fine. It looks like Sony has a poor design or extremely bad quality control. The other brand had the same features and cost $50 less than the Sony which I bought on sale. Don't even bother trying this DVD combo.

Rating:
Summary: Works Great for me
Review: I was amazed with so many bad reviews. I have ordered this from amazon and using it for almost 6 months. I don't watch movies everyday but on weekends. So far this combo been great for me. No problems. Infact one DVD was rolling on my friends DVD but ran fine on mine (it was on region zero or something). It plays all formats of MP3 that I tried. One of the formats didn't work on my other sony DVD... amazing. Initially picture was not that clear then I change the cable that goes from combo to my TV (my TV does not have inputs), picture got clear. Thats the good thing I did. I use the cable came with the combo. I have no complain with this combo except that I agree remote buttons are too small.