Philips: DVDR3300

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Comments (3)

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DMR, Yorkshire on February 10th, 2007
I've owned one of these Philips recorders for well over 12 months and in that time I can honestly say I have never found any reason to feel I made a poor purchase. The build quality is very good. The machine is quiet in operation, even though the hard drive and cooling fan are always active. The picture is bright and clear, especially when connected to a digital receiver. The menus are so easy to follow my technophobic partner can use them and she still can't make our old Sony video recorder work properly. The VideoPlus+/Timer system has never failed to make a recording on time, unlike my Digital PVR. Playback is always smooth and even at fairly high compression ratios the recordings are still as clear as general TV images are. The digital editing options are not the best, but have you ever tried editing a VHS recording, this is a world away from that. One-touch recording would be a redundant feature on this machine, a six hour time bar is provided that continuously records the current TV channel in a temporary buffer so that you can backtrack through the last six hours or pause live TV whenever you want. You can save any portion of the time bar by simply marking the bit you want and it will be copied to the hard drive. You also get the ability to watch or edit recordings on the Hard Drive or DVD while the machine is recording the current TV programme. Copying recordings from the hard drive to a DVD is incredibly easy too. The remote control is one of the best I have had for a long time; it’s small, chunky and very well made. The layout is a bit odd, but I suspect this is caused by Philips' desire to create something that you can hold comfortably no matter how big your hands are. Having never had to use Philips customer services I can't comment on their efficiency or lack thereof, but I can say their website is very helpful and has provided four firmware updates for my recorder so far. You would be lucky to get one from most manufacturers. The only feature of the DVDR3300H I can honestly say gives me pause for thought is the proprietary disc format and OS on the hard drive. Should I wish to upgrade/replace the disc I know it’s going to be a pain getting Philips to part with the software to format the new disc. Obviously I am not going to recommend you buy one of these machines, they are already obsolete, but I would ask you to consider the latest models from Philips. I will be when the time comes for me to go High Definition.

Michael, Hitchin, Hertfordshire on August 29th, 2006
Hooray, my DVDR70 has finally died which means I can go out and buy a new machine and one things for sure; it won't be this or any other box with a Philips badge on. If I had a pound for every hour I've wasted whilst waiting for my old Philips to decide whether it can be bothered to read a known good disc, I would have have binned it years ago. "No disc" it used to say, then after several tries "disc contains unknown data" and after a few more attempts it would arrogantly announce "disc error". A few more reboots might eventually get you a flashing index picture, which still wouldn't play but at least you proved it wasn't an empty disc. Eventually, if you were lucky it might spring into life. Sent it back to Philips under warranty when problem first started but at that time it was intermittent and difficult to demonstrate. Sure enough it came back without any report docs at all, i.e. nothing to reassure me that the fault had been found. Since then the warranty has expired and the problem has worsened. It's been the most infuriating electronic device I've ever owned and I won't buy Philips again.

Dave, Derbyshire on April 5th, 2006
Awfull, theere are just too many things wrong with this machine, not easy to use, terrible navigation of menu's, machine gets to hot, cable is fiexd in (cannot be unplugged), poor manual, editing is poor compared to others (pioneer 420), it makes a simple recording task hard, you just can't press record you have to specify a length of recording, poor remote control, can't really think of any pros but the picture seems good, but overall in my opinion DONT BUY