Rating: 
Summary: Visionary and ingenious Sony
Review: The Sony RDR-GX7 DVD Recorder is a high-tech marvel brought to us by the ever visionary and ingenious folks at Sony. Although the RDR-GX7 is somewhat expensive, it is well worth the price. The recording clarity is top notch. And this machine is very user friendly. It automatically labels and dates your recorded programs. And it creates "chapters" in your recordings. You can instantly play back your entire recorded program (no re-winding necessary!). Or you can select to play a specific chapter only. If you record using DVD + RW discs, you can easily and quickly erase an existing recording and replace it with a new recording. It would require several minutes to erase the contents on a full VHS tape. It takes about 1 second (no kidding!) to erase the contents on a full DVD + RW disc. The RDR-GX7's advanced technology also prevents you from accidentally recording over a program that you intended to save. And the machine will automatically adjust the recording speed if you are running out of room on your disc. There are a few disadvantages in using the RDR-GX7. My husband and I found it very complicated to set up this DVD recorder so that we could transfer existing programs from our VHS tapes onto DVD discs. We actually had to hire someone to do this. Also, the recorder sometimes takes a long time to eject a recorded disc because it slowly "info writes" the disc prior to ejecting it. (I think that "info writes" has to do with identifying and storing information on the disc.) But these are minor complaints. Overall, the Sony RDR-GX7 is yet another miracle of technology which people will find hard to resist.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: This DVD recorder is amazing! I've had it for about a month now, and have burned about 30 DVDs (both -r and -rw formats - haven't tried +rw yet). I've used three different brands of discs (Memorex, TDK, and Fuji), and not a SINGLE ONE has failed. I've burned things at SP, LP and EP speeds -- I get great quality even at the higher speeds. I do notice a bit of quality degradation when a disc is paused, but when it's running it seems just fine to me. Altogether, an excellent product and well worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: Great Recordings; Setup Instructions Omitted Important Step
Review: This is a GREAT dvd recorder. When I first started researching dvd recorders, I was leaning toward the Philips because they were the first on the market. But after reading so many negative reviews here, I decided to look at other brands. I chose the Sony because of its great rating with Amazon, and also because of the Sony reputation. Two of my other dvd players are Sonys, and they both work really well. I also chose it because having a firewire input was very important to me, since I have a minidv camcorder. That narrowed my choices, I think, to Philips, Sony, and a Panasonic that uses Dvd roms, which I didn't want. My only hesitation in purchasing this Sony(actually it was a Christmas present from my husband, but I told him which unit I preferred) was that it didn't record on DVD+R discs, and a salesperson at an electronics store told me those were the most compatible with other players. But I have three dvd players, and a dvd drive on my computer, and the dvd-r discs play in all of them. And one of the dvd players is over three years old! One thing I wanted to put out there, which might help you if you purchase this recorder, is that the setup instructions skip an important step. When you connect to the video inputs in the back, you need to go into the "setup" screen and specify whether you are using the video inputs(the yellow cable), or the "s" inputs. You also may need to tell it to turn off black screen or something like that (I'm going from memory here). When I first hooked this up, I couldn't figure out why I could get sound but no picture with the rear inputs, but with the front input, I could get a picture (from my Directv broadcast, I mean, not from a dvd). Nowhere in the setup instructions does it tell you to go to the setup screen and specify which input you are using. I actually exchanged my first unit for another one because I was convinced the video inputs were faulty. When the same thing happened with the 2nd unit, I decided to read the instruction book cover to cover to figure out the problem. Somewhere toward the back of the 100+ page instruction book, it told me what to do. Once I got a video signal from all my inputs, I had absolutely no problems operating this machine, and the dvds came out beautifully. I dubbed an old sp speed vhs tape that was made from a cable broadcast with the 90 minute dvd speed. The dvd picture was better than the picture on the tape from which it was dubbed! Then I dubbed another old tape, this one ep speed, at the 120 minute speed. The picture might not have been better than the original tape, but it certainly wasn't any worse. Mostly, I have been transferring old 8mm camcorder movies to dvd, and they come out beautifully at the hq 1 hour speed. I tried doing this with the dvd burner on my computer months ago, and the quality was awful. The picture quality was poor, and the sound was out of sync. My computer burner did a great job with the newer digital minidv tapes, but the old analogs just didn't work well there. With the Sony recorder, the 8 mm dub is flawless; the dvd looks and sounds as good as the original tape. Another plus with the Sony is that it uses 3 different dvd formats. I've tried them all, and I really have no preference, except that +rw is nice because it doesn't need to be finalized at the end, which saves about 5 minutes of your time. Though the rw discs are rerecordable, I don't need this feature because I have Tivo. My dvd recorder is strictly for archiving, not time shifting, so I won't be erasing. So I'll buy whichever disc format is on sale or cheapest. It's nice to have three formats to choose from when you're shopping! In summary, this is a top notch dvd recorder that should meet all your recording needs.
Rating:
Summary: super product
Review: This is a super product. I liked it so much, I bought a second one for the master bedroom. It is very easy to use and is compatible with many different dvd formats - much better than the competition. I just dont have any complaints. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: It's the same price as my first BETAmax 20 years ago!
Review: We bought this after reading up on all of the available similar products, and we've had it about 3 weeks now. Setup was just slightly complicated because I had to hook it up to my AV receiver, but Sony tech help was great and I had it up and running about an hour after I brought it home. Recording is fairly straightforward. I still haven't figured out all of the features (haven't had time) but I've been able to transfer several of our 10 to 16- year old home movies (VHS) and one from our old 8mm recorder as well. We don't have any digital camcorders (having not really made any home movies lately) so we haven't tried the iLink feature at all. Recording shows off of the TV is easy and quick. I read complaints about the time it takes to load the DVD each time...well, it takes a while to rewind a tape, too! Why the impatience? It takes less than 30 seconds to load a DVD...just turn on the unit, and go start the dishwasher or something! We've recorded several TV shows, and some football games since we bought the unit, and all the speeds have superior picture to the VHS VCR we had (also a Sony unit, btw). I don't recommend using the SLP speeed unless you have to (it was a good thing we did for one game; there was a 90 minute weather delay and we would have missed the end of the game had we not set it for 5 hours. The SLP speed's picture is about like a VHS, and not a good quality one. However, the other speeds (there are six altogether) are all superior to our VHS. So far, we're loving this! Now that it's so affordable (We paid the same price--$429.95 for our Sony BetaMax 22 years ago...how funny is that?? ). Who knew all the advances they'd make in 20 years.
Just wanted to add that I've now had the unit for 5 months and still works great :)
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