Kreisen DVR-530S Progressive Scan DVD Recorder
A Great Bargain
Having only a little vertical space left before the stack of components hit the top of the entertainment center, I was immediately attracted to this model by the slim design. When I found it for $130 with a $50 mail-in rebate, I knew that for $80 it would be hard to go wrong. I was right! What a great little unit for the money!!!<br /><br />The 530S has just about every feature you could hope for, including editing recordings, playing MP3s, displaying JPEG photos, etc. I was initially surprised at the incredible video quality it provides when playing well-made commercial DVD movies. It is much better than our old major name brand DVD player which cost a lot more (and all that unit does is play DVDs and CDs).<br /><br />When recording from satellite in the 2-hour-per-disc mode, there is virtually no difference in quality between the original and the recording. There is a noticeable loss in the 4-hour mode, but it is still way better than tape. I haven't tried the 1-hour and 6-hour modes. I suspect that at one hour per disc it would be essentially perfect.<br /><br />The only problem I have encountered is that even though Kreisen refers to the off mode as \\"standy\\" it forgets what input it was on before it was powered down. It needs to be on rear s-video in my setup, which takes three presses of the AV IN button to re-acquire. I thought perhaps this would be addressed in the firmware upgrade, but it refuses to install the firmware from CD. Maybe it already has the latest version?<br /><br />Construction seems solid, much nicer than some other low-budget models I have seen. I feel fairly confident that it will last a while. There's amazingly little info floating around the Web on this unit. I can't even find out who makes it. Most of the cheaper models seem to be made by Lite-On, but except for the limitation of recording to DVD+R/RW media, I don't see many similarities with those units.<br /><br />I can't imagine anyone would be disappointed with this unit and feel quite comfortable recommending it.d feel quite comfortable recommending it. <br />