Rating: 
Summary: STOP! DON'T THROW YOUR MONEY OUT THE WINDOW!
Review: I have owned this model for one year. I have had problems from very early on, except past the allowable return time from Best Buy and have contacted Philips customer service countless times, each time they gave me a different possible solution. I could write a whole seperate negative review on their customer service and how hard it is to get through, understand the rep. etc. The machine is worthless, all these features but they don't work. Most of the time it won't even PLAY a Disney DVD movie, let alone record a tv show. I have followed every suggestion, including using only up to 2x speed dvd media, only +R, professional cleaning, setting the unit level, installing software updates...nothing works. This was supposed to be the high end unit to buy at $600 and it is truly a piece of junk.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good So Far!!!
Review: Shortly after purchasing it, the predecessor to this model proved to be a nightmare in every possible manner. After being sent to Phillips for repairs under warranty, no improvements were noticed. So we cajoled the national chain that we purchased from to exchange (we paid the price differential) for the newer Phillips DVDR75.Several months have passed and countless hours of +R DVDs have been burned from my DirecTV / UltimateTV (similar to TiVo). I put the DVDR75 model through a demanding workout early on to reveal any existing technical glitches right away. What a difference this model has made! No more defects, ruined DVD blanks, or poor dependability. I tend to record on 6 hour mode and have been pleased with the resolution and overall results. So maybe Phillips got things right this time! I would recommend this model to anyone seeking a proven work horse.
Rating:
Summary: dissatisfied
Review: Beware! Stay away from this piece of junk and all products from Philips, a company which not only makes junk it also does not support their products in any way and, in fact, goes out of their way to avoid servicing them after they break! For the first few months this machine worked fine. Then suddenly the timer stopped working, and it would record a few minutes of the program and then shut down. Trying to get through to them on the phone entailed long waits on hold, and foreign operators who could not speak English and were totally unknowledgeable. It was finally determined that my only recourse for repair was to carry it into a service center, which I did, only to be told they had seen many others with this problem and did not know how to repair it! Eventually, after many phone calls and repeated stalling and failure to return my calls, they told me to send it to them---at my cost, of course. After sitting on it for a month, they sent it back with no comment, and of course not only no repair but now with an added problem; it failed to recognize discs it had previoisly recorded! After many more attempts to contact them before the warranty ran out they stalled and stalled until it finally did run out. Then they told me to mail it back in again. So far it has been over a month and I have heard nothing and do not expect much. After reading the reviews, I find this is a common experience with Philips. It is a company with a famous name which does not care about its customers, makes a poor product, and feels no regrets for ripping off its customers. One might expect better treatment after having paid half a grand with them. I will never buy another Philips product and advise all others to do likewise.
Rating:
Summary: Componant Video Inputs !
Review: Had my unit for about 3 months now with absolutely no problems. No lock ups, no media compatibility issues. I have so far transferred approximately 50 hrs of home videos to DVD+R at high speed with very good results and use it daily for time shifting HDTV. Using the component video inputs I am able to record downconverted (480i) HDTV from my Voom HD receiver with some awesome results. At high speed and even at the 2 hour speed my results are amazing. Viewing my recordings on my Panasonic HDTV I end up with what looks like a 540p wide screen (yes wide screen) picture in 5.1 Dolby. Not a High Def picture but still a hell of a lot better than any 480i broadcast. I have also made some recording using the build in tuner from standard cable with slightly better results then I am getting with my Replay TV recorder but I end up using my Replay TV for time shifting standard cable TV because of the convenience.
I had initially bought this recorder to preserve my old home movies with possible plans to utilize the component video inputs to record a higher quality signal. To my surprise the results were better than I expected. As far as I know there are no other DVD recorders in this price range or many at the higher price range that include component inputs. Until a HD DVD recorder is available this is a good alternative.
The negatives are:
1) The remote that has buttons that are used for fast forward and reverse as well as chapter skip that took a little getting used to.
2) The 4 and 6 hour speed quality is not really usable for anything other than recordings were you are not concerned about picture quality however this is true for all DVD single layer DVD recorders.
3)The componant video input signal needs to be 480i. This means I continously have to swith my Voom box between 480i when recording and 1080i for viewing. It would be much better if the downconverting was performed in the recorder, this would eliminate the swiching.
Rating:
Summary: Torture describes phillips dvd recorders
Review: Having owned half a dozen different brands of dvd recorders I've seen, I suspect, about ever problem one might encounter in a dvd recorder. Phillips has them all and a few extra to boot.
You would expect something that costs from several hundred to well over half a grand to give you a few basics in its manual or packaging. Like, what blank media to use, what speeds it can handle, what brands work well - no such luck. It comes with a blank +RW made by phillips, 2.4x as I recall. Good luck finding 2.4x +R. 4x or above caused it to crash .
I had mine for about 3-4 months and had recorded a few hundred disks in that time when it just flat died.
Nobody would balk at burning 10 cd's a day and at that rate a month would get the same number done let alone 3-4 months.
In that time I made at least 40 calls to support which is off-shore and most of the "techs" are hard to understand and know nothing. One tech, if you could get him, was at least able to talk about possible solutions. During those talks at least 2 and possibly 3 firmware upgrades were sent and installed. Some were installed more than once (on phillips recommendation).
After the final upgrade, 4x disks were still causing a crash and finally it didn't respond at all. No disks were recognized. So, pay half a grand and use the machine for 3-4 months and done.
I sent it back through Tweeters under their warranty and it was shipped to phillips repair. A month later I got back a machine with a different serial number. This machine was non-working right from the box. Thanks to Tweeters I got my money back and bought a Pioneer 520H (the latest one). It has 32 record modes in 5 and 10 minute increments. A hard drive to do editing on. Well you go read about all its features and you'll never buy this pile of bolts and heartache.
Phillips builds machines doomed to failure. No fan exists to exhaust the heat (like a computer case), some techs claim a fan inside the sealed case does this but heat issues are way up the list and I came to not beleive what most support people said as they contradicted themselves often.
They put features on the high end machines like a database for 999 recorded dvd's but they didn't test it to 999 dvd's as it fails and "forgets" a dvd now and then rendering the database useless. Backup? Surely if it has a database and is a recorder it must allow backing up the database to cd or even dvd - nope, the designers were on holiday for that feature.
It stoped (often) after an hour of recording all by itself (on any length setting used). Half a movie or half a show burned to disk, now that's useful.
It burned only 2.4x DVD's and the brand I found that worked was FujiFilm, and I tried the ones on the web that the one and only tech suggested, nope.
It gets hot, very.
If left to record to the end of the disk it crashes often and then will not recognize the disk. Imagine wanting to walk away and not be tied to the recorder (it the timer setting stops after an hour what choice do you have).
It often doesn't recognize disks that are not finalized.
Finalizing caused crashes too. Blown disks.
The manual was magazine size, newsprint, about half the thickness of a small phonebook. The pages were done in old art akin to the community chest card art in the game Monopoly and supplied very little in-depth information. Big type, big pictures, not enough info. I still have mine though, I plan to sell it on eBay along with Edsel parts and hula hoop kits.
So far with the Pioneer I have made ONE call, have had zero failures and am no longer tearing my hair out over lost time, piles of costly coasters, and a company whose support is a joke.
To phillips I'd suggest: better support. Put a fan in the case that exhausts out of the case. Add a hard drive. Your 75 requires time for time from your burner. A 2 hour movie takes 2 hours to burn. My pioneer does that in about 14 minutes on high speed burn using the recording on the hard drive to burn to the DVD. Saves on the recorder and on bad disks. Get your manual into this era. Hire a new art department. Fire your engineers cause someone isn't thinking straight there.
If I could I'd give it zero stars, 1 is too many. Never again. I'm tempted to add an 800 number so you can get the whole story!
Rating:
Summary: As you can tell by the reviews....It's a roll of the dice!!
Review: As you can tell by the reviews listed, people either love this machine or they hate it. When the unit works, it is SUPER!! But most find that the honeymoon is short lived. Set-up is not as hard as some would lead you to believe, though recording from a digital pay channel while watching a regular cable channel takes a bit of remote control savvy. I got my unit about 2 mos. ago. Worked like a charm...full of features that make recording and editing on the machine a breeze. Then it stops recording on +R's. You wonder why....so have many others. Shortly after this happens, the unit will refuse to record from timer. It will start up, record about 7 seconds, then the unit shuts down completely. At this point, severe stress begins to set in as you realize that you got one of the "crap-pile" units. Then for the final insult, the unit will begin to refuse to play store bought titles. Then it will ONLY play +RW discs. I am awaiting firmware upgrade, but not optimistically. It is pretty obvious from the reviews that a large percentage of these units are nothing but crap. I WOULD ONLY RECOMMEND THIS UNIT TO PEOPLE THAT YOU WANT TO TORTURE!!
Rating:
Summary: Still going strong
Review: I've had the DVDR75 for a year now & have transfered most of my home video library & have also recorded several TV programs......over 400 DVD+R's burned with only about 10 bad discs. The manual is a bit "non user friendly" but I really had no problems figuring out how to use this unit & just use the manual for backup reference.
One thing I had an issue with in the beginning was that sometimes I would hit record & the unit would shut off after 30 minutes. One quick call to customer support and the guy explained to me that if you continue holding the record button down it will set the timer in 30 minute increments. I'd just suggest checking the total time on the screen before you walk away. This unit has also been to the repair shop once & took 3 weeks to get it back, but I had no hassles with that either & the tech that fixed it added his direct line to contact him if I had anymore questions or concerns - which amazed me!
I love that I can change the title picture to the actual main title of the movie that I've recorded so easily.
I really have put this unit to the test & I'm pleased with my decision to buy this model. By the way, most of the DVD+R discs I've purchased have been Memorex & they've been extremely consistant in their quality.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: I've owned this recorder for over a year now. It has worked perfectly for every recording I've done (over 175 so far)
I could not recommend a better performer for anyone. Connections are "no non-sense" for anyone familiar with audio/video connections. The menu is something to get used to though if your not used to digital recording. Once practiced however...no problem whatsoever.
The one thing that stumped me (on the remote) was that the fast forward or rewind button has to be pressed for 2 seconds to actually rewind or ff regularly - otherwise it goes to the next or previous chapter. Most remotes have seperate buttons for these features. This is one flaw I would recommend philips to change!
This recorder has given me 0 problems. I read many reviews proclaiming problems - and I admit I was worried at first. But those worries diminished after 100+ successfull recordings. One recording after another this is a recording champion in my opinion. Disc recording options are 1 (HDTV*quality*) 2 (DVD) 2X (Near DVD) 3 (SVHS) 4 (VHS) 6 (VHS-EP) One thing I noticed is that when you choose a recording length it shows the quality-of-picture even before recording is optioned. Nice!
I've always trusted Philips for disc recording. I have a Philips CDR-200 CD recorder that I bought over 5 years ago that still works flawlessly even after 400 hundred discs recorded.
Philips is a true pioneer of disc recording and is (in my opinion) one of the most trusted names in the field.
Rating:
Summary: Amazed and Surprised
Review: after I read all those negative reviews at this site.
Well, I must have to say that I needed to change the original device I received after my purchase. The original one comes with a failure on its AV OUT device. After struggling with Philips during about 03 months I finally got a new one.
Disgusted after all of this, I finally do the connections recomended after reading ALL the manual. Everything went ok and since then (April, 2004) I've burned successfuly about a hundred DVDs (mostly PHILIPS +R/+RW), and have had only 2 or 3 DISC ERROR messages.
And the quality of them look very fine to me, all of them plays at my friends and family DVD Player units of several brands other than PHILIPS as well. Have to say: I got satisfaction with it!
I'm going to buy a second unit of DVDR and it'll be the Philips DVDR 615, that seems to be the best one in my researches.
Hope I'll be so pleased with the new one as I am with the DVDR75 so far...
Rating:
Summary: This thing bites - deserves negative 10 stars!!!!
Review: This recorder has got to be the worst joke in the universe! I got this recorder on clearance, and now I'm finding the reason why! When we first started using it, it worked wonders! I was using DVD+RW discs, which caused zero problems...then I tried a 4X DVD+R disc...fzzt! DISC ERROR and shut down. What could cause this?
Oh yeah...Philips very secretively forgot to mention that in order to use 4X DVD+R discs, you need to do a firmware upgrade! Funny how they don't mention that out of the box. So after a download process (which you need VERY specific instructions to your burner to do - or just request one from Philips) and a burn to a CD and then plop it into your DVDR75, then it works for the 4X media...for a while.
Then the REAL problems started! Now it won't record to ANY BRAND DVD+R discs without problems, and even will refuse to recognize commercially recorded discs, like ALL of the Disney titles I own. The only way I can record now is to use 4X DVD+RW discs, which of course are more expensive.
Also, the only way they'll do their "warranty" work is to ship the recorder (at your expense, naturally), and then they'll "fix" it and then send it back, or replace it. If it was a reputable company, they'd have authorized repair facilities, or have a way of shipping that you didn't need to pay for, since it's a tech issue on their end.
As soon as I can, I'll be replacing this one with a REAL recorder and relegating this one to being a secondary unit...or perhaps just toss it in the bin since it's worth about that much. This is what I get for thinking Philips knows ANYthing about DVD-recorder technology!
|
