GoVideo R6530 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder
An Exercise in Frustration
I bought the recorder at Costco, and began experiencing problems as soon as I started using it. The setup was easy, the picture quality was fine, and the controls for navigating the DVD were great. Too bad it wasn't enough to make up for all the problems.       As one reviewer noted with his unit, one of my first recordings skipped about 10 minutes whenever I played it, although you can see that the 10 minutes had recorded when you rewind.       The unit is also a problem if you use a TIVO Series 2 standalone unit. The recorder responds to the TIVO remote. After many hours of experimenting to identify the problem, I discovered that, if I pushed virtually any button on my TIVO remote 3 times (e.g, fast forward), the recorder reads it, and will pause if it's recording, and will start recording if it's in pause. I tried a universal remote instead, and fortunately the DVD recorder did not respond to that remote. The universal remote does not have certain functions that the TIVO remote has, so I had to keep switching between the TIVO remote and universal remote.       The recorder also tells you only what percent of your free space is left, not the minutes left, so you have to add up the minutes of all the recordings you have already made to find out if you have room to squeeze in the next recording you want to make.       When I ran out of room, the recorder froze on me, then refused to see the disc anymore.       The recorder also skimps on useful features, which would have been acceptable if not for the functional flaws and unreliability.       As noted above, it will not tell you how many minutes you have left on the disk. Unlike many other DVD recorders, you can't insert your own personalized titles or delete bad recordings from +R disks. Hitting the DISPLAY button does not display anything on the screen while you are recording, like how much time you have left on the disk.       The remote buttons are ridiculously small, and are not bunched intuitively (e.g., the tiny record button is several buttons away from the tiny pause button, so cutting out commercials requires much fumbling), and it is very difficult to use the remote in bad lighting. Inexplicably, Go Video decided not to bunch together and emphasize the buttons required to record.      The troubleshooting in the user manual is for very basic problems only (e.g., did you put in the disk upside down), and the Go Video website has no troubleshooting information beyond that.       All-in-all, not worth the money.