PHILIPS Hard Disk/ Multi-region Capable DVD Recorder DVDR3300H/05 Best Buy

a disaster for any advanced user - 10 Jun 2007

3 out of 3 found this review helpful.

Don't buy this! Here is why:

- non-intuitive remote - choice between HDD,DVD and Tuner should have been placed together, instead Tuner button is micro-small placed on completely different side than the first two
- never seen such a bad software
- typing a name to each of the recordings takes ages - unbeleivable but true - you have to press 25 times to get to the letter Z f.e., if you press and hold nothing happens; count yourself how many times you need to press the button to add a name The Silence of the Lambs???
- info bar does not go away - after any action you will have to press i+ button to make it go away
- you can not rewind to the start of the recording, but you have to go in 5 min steps - that's 60 actions on your button for 5 hour recording
- you have only 8 timers for recording setup
- timers can only be repeated "Monday-Friday" and "Weekly", so if you want to record a show every day at preset time you will have to burn 3 timers, one will cover Monday to Friday, second one will do Saturday, and 3th Sunday. And if you want to record Football World Cup which has 3 games every day, you will need 9 timers set in this peculiar way. Disaster.
- when I press Record button I get the choice 00:30, then 01:00, 01:30, etc, 06:00 then again 00:30 01:00 etc in circles, so there is no way to change your mind and abandon recording.
- rewinding one chapter back requires pressing 2 times on the back button, and you have to do it quickly! This is basic function and yet it does not work!
- pressing fast and repeatedly rewind button sends you to the slow-playback mode!!!
- million other things

Philips? Never again...

Wot am I watching!! - 13 May 2007

3 out of 5 found this review helpful.

There is just one thing about this machine that is puzzling me and that is why on the title menu is there a 'thumbnail' picture facility but yet you cannot change it, only the first frame of the recording can be seen which will probably be blank or a tv company logo. If you cannot unlike other recorders choose the thumbnail then why bother having one at all. It is a minor niggle but when you have been used to this, my usual 'trick' was to make the thumbnail the shows title, it seems a shame for it not to be incorporated when there are other features that are available but just not used!

some points of note - 30 Apr 2006

55 out of 57 found this review helpful.

This is the only dvd recorder i have used so i can't compare it to other models but here's some useful points:

- It can easily be coverted to multiregion using a hack code widely available on various internet forums
- It records on dvd+r, dvd-r (not listed in manual) and dvd+rw
- The SP and SSP modes are the modes to use for recording films and football matches if you want to stick them on a dvd after
- You can record tv while watching a dvd
- It is absolutely silent in all operations.

Limitations:
- the edit mode is useful for recording as you can skip adverts etc but it does not delete them it "hides" them. so for example, if you record a film with adverts and cut it down from 2.5rs to 2 hrs (the space required for SP dvd archiving) it will not record as it says there is not enough space even though the hidden stuff will not show up after recording.
- some picture sharpness is lost when recording from hdd to dvd.
- recording from a 2 hr film to dvd takes about 25mins
- You cannot record from any copywrited dvd to the HDD from an external dvd player (would have been good for making your own best of simpsons dvds for example)
- 80GB does not store 120 hrs of good quality video, if you want the highest quality you'll only get about 12 hours on.
- it looks the good but is pretty big and heavy.
- the remote control is rubbish and takes a lot of trial and error to find out what things do.
- You cannot change quality to fit on a dvd after you have recorded onto the HDD (probably the most annoying point)
- It doesn't support dual layer recording

One thing that i really would have liked is the ability to record from the HDD to a video ipod type thing as you can record in the video format for it.

Overall after about a month of getting used to what it can and can't do you can use it for pretty much anything. I have listed more bad points than good as these are the points i'd mainly be interested in before buying. If you can pick one up for under £200 i'd highly recommend it.

Gadget Searcher - 11 Apr 2006

18 out of 21 found this review helpful.

I bought this machine in Spain.It is of high quality and produces excellent sound and picture.However not being able to record direct to DVD is a pain.Mine does not show the same menu as in the handbook and will not edit.To transfer anything over 2 hours to DVD is impossible if you cannot edit.I have a Pioneer in the UK and it is brilliant and If you wish to Archive it will automatically adjust to fit.
The remote is far too smalland fiddly and recording direct is a pain.Avoid it.There are much better machines out there.Look at the reviews.Philips have been less than heplful.

Quite good but could be even better - 21 Mar 2006

43 out of 43 found this review helpful.

I bought this hdd/dvd recorder a few days ago and absolutely love it.
It is relatively inexpensive, well built, nice looking but most of all it has all the great functionalities of this type of recorders, namely:
- If you are watching something you are really interested and are interrupted you can pause live TV and then resume it whenever you wish. This takes effected immediately so in effect you will never have to miss another second of TV.
- If you have just missed something important on TV you can go back and watch it again. Like above, this is very quick and you have the last 6 hours-worth of TV stored in the hard drive so you can easily go back and check it.
- You can't record anything directly to DVD but that's not a problem because what you do is record everything to the hard drive (80GB is quite enough but if not you can always buy one of the 'elder' siblings, at 160GB and 250GB) and you only have to record a DVD when you have enough stuff to write to it.
- You can edit the video before burning a DVD. That's really awesome because you don't have to burn on the disc things like commercials, etc.
- Did you miss the start of a program you wanted to record from the beginning? Since you have the last six-hours' worth of TV (only on the current channel, obviously) on the hard drive you can basically record anything by going to the beginning of that program and start the recording then. It means that that title will be saved so you can watch it or burning to dvd later on.
- Do you have a Digital8 ou DV camcorder? You will love this recorder: just plug it in with a firewire cable to this unit, record everything to the hard drive and then you can edit the video before you burn a DVD. Just awesome!
- Unlike some more expensive recorders (like, er... Sony's) you CAN record from a VHS tape to a DVD. You must have gathered by now that you'll have to save it to the hard drive first and only then to the DVD. This way you can keep any old tapes you've got. Who's complaining now?

There are some less positive aspects though:
- It takes a little while (up to 10-15 seconds) for the unit to be fully working after you switch it on. It probably goes through a lot of initialisations before it's available to be used.
- The layout of the remote control is quite ineffective. For example, the channel up and down buttons are extremely small. Since they are used so often they should be bigger and placed near the centre of the unit.
- It is easy to tune the channels for the first time but trying to order them in the order you want takes ages. That's because the on-screen interface only allows you to choose two channels and switch positions, so you have to see what is the initial order of all channels in the recorder, match them to the channels as currently tuned in the TV set and be careful to update that 'map' as you go along since, in effect, after each channel switch, some other channel further down the list will need updating. Philips could do a LOT better in this respect.

All in all, this is a great, though not perfect unit. Image quality is good, features are great and it all holds very well for this price. I must say I'm a picky kind of guy but although there are some nags overall I am enjoying this a lot.