Philips DVDR520H DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Drive
A Steady and Reliable Performer
A year ago, I was reading all the reviews panning this unit here on Amazon, but the price was good, so I took a chance. I am so glad that I did! If there were problems when the unit first hit the shelves, they'd certainly been resolved by the time my unit shipped.  <br /> <br />The manual is easy to follow, filled with illustrations, and has a glossary and spec sheet. I still refer to it when I want to learn more.  <br /> <br />The unit itself is attractive, not too large, and the controls are placed in a logical order with the majority on the right front and the on/standby buttonon the left. There are front and rear inputs, including a DV input for transferring your camcorder images to the unit.  I've transferred input from my vhs as well. It's a good way to get those videotapes onto DVD. <br /> <br />I love the 2 1/2 hour setting for recording DVDs. It makes a lot more sense than a 2 hour setting, and it's nice to have it as an intermediate between 2 and 3 hours.  <br /> <br />In functioning, the unit is easy to program to record something. I usually pad a recording with a few extra minutes beginning and end, because many of the cable channels don't start a recording on the hour and end it on the hour, no matter what the guide in the newspaper says. There are three options for setting up a timed recording. You can use VCRplus, the Guide Menu, or the Timer button, which opens up a simpler screen for inputting your recording information. Either in the guide or the timer menu, you can get to advanced options that will enable you to do things like set the recorder to record every show in a miniseries, but stop the repeat action after the miniseries is over.  Since I tape a lot of series of limited duration, I appreciate this extra. It doesn't exist on any of my Tivo season passes. <br /> <br />After you've recorded something on the hard drive, you can edit it on the unit. I've found this is most successful for me if I'm doing very simple editing. Otherwise, I'll burnthe show onto a DVD+RW and then edit it on my computer where I have frame by frame control. If you do edit on the unit, you'll note that you can split and merge portions, or erase portions of a taping that you don't want.  <br /> <br />As an example of this, I like the station identification ads on the Sci Fi channel. I like them so well that I've set aside a portion of the roomy hard drive to hold them. When I see one in a presentation I've recorded, I'll split it out of the recording, rename it and give it a unique thumbnail image (so that when I open the browser on the unit I can see which id ad it is). When I have a sufficient number of them, I'll either merge them into one DVD sized presentation and burn it onto a DVD at once, or I'll burn them onto a DVD each with its own menu item and thumbnail.  Just to give you an idea of what you can do. <br /> <br />So far, the only time the unit has failed to record a scheduled program has been when we had a power failure. It recovered nicely after that, and has been working reliably ever since. The recordings are of good quality because I have set the quality setting at high. Maybe some of the people who were complaining of the quality set it at something like six hours on a DVD, which will give you a poorer image.  <br /> <br />A little under a year later, I'm still happy. If you can find one of these units and take the time to learn how to use it and treat it well (it says defrag the drive frequently, do it) you'll be happy too.