Sony RDRGXD500 DVD Recorder with Digital Terrestrial Tuner Best Buy

Nice product but limited by.. - 06 Jul 2005

23 out of 25 found this review helpful.

I have to say the recording quality of this machine is great, its looks great and the menu driven interface is great. BUT it can only record about 2 hours on one DVD disc at normal quality (fine picture), which is its bad point, it does about 4 hours at the lowest quality but its like watching a bad video!

OK this machine has freeview built in great, but it let down by not having a hard drive, if you are thinking of buying this to record freeview programs don't. Get a recorder with a hard drive and buy a separate freeview box to plug into it.

Very good - 01 Feb 2005

99 out of 102 found this review helpful.

I'm very pleased with this recorder which I have owned for a few weeks now. With recorder, player and freeview all in a single box and a remote which will also work for main brands of TV, it cuts down the clutter which pleased the wife too! Recording is very easy: just find the program on the electronic program guide, which covers seven days ahead, and select. The picture quality is very good in video mode at the standard SD quality level, and I have been using mostly DVD-RW discs for recording. If you record in video mode you need to finalise these before you play them in 'standard' DVD players. If instead you record in VR mode you have more options, for example viewing whats being recorded from the start while the recording continues. Discs recorded in VR mode can played without finalising (useful as this can take 30 minutes), for example in a PC with some up to date dvd software, but will not play in many DVD players. However with the latest version of Nero on the PC it is possible to convert VR discs to video mode in one step.

On the negative side there does seem to be a little pixilation for fast action recorded at the standard quality level in VR mode, and the player had compatibility problems and locked up a couple of my DVD-R disks. To get the disks out I needed to unplug the recorder and then plug in again, whilst holding down the eject key; somewhat inconvenient. I also noticed minor lipsync issues on one disk. Finally multi-region would have been useful, and now seems to be available from some vendors.

Overall though I am very pleased with this machine, it is fairly easy to use, a well designed menu system and many useful options, all in a single neat box, and records very good quality DVDs.

Excellent! - 31 Dec 2004

159 out of 163 found this review helpful.

I've been looking at DVD recorders for some time now. There are a number of very cheap recorders around. But I decided to go for the quality of Sony. This recorder is excellent. The built in freeview tuner is a real bonus. If you want to record off TV, simply find the program in the EPG and hit record - job done. The quality of the recording is excellent. I've only used it on "SP", which gives two hours on a single DVD, and it's hard to spot any difference with the original. Of course, you can record from an external source, which is again excellent quality. Using a RW disc allows you to edit the recording (i.e. delete those adverts and "60 seconds news updates"). I'm very impressed with this recorder. It does have a built in fan, but it seems that all recorders do, but this one is not too intrusive. I've also managed to play back the discs it records on my (over 5 years old) standard DVD player.