Philips HDRW720 DVD Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive
Very buggy and frustrating
This unit looked like a steal for $200 at Costco, based on the features.  I read up on it and found out that the user interface is poor compared to a Tivo, but for that price, I figured I could live with it. <br /> <br />The user interface is kind of poor, but once you are used to it, it's no problem.  And the features are great, when they work. <br /> <br />I upgraded to the latest firmware, but didn't notice any improvements in the bugs that were bothering me. <br /> <br />Here is a list of the bugs with the unit that really are a pain: <br /> <br />1.  Spontaneous reboots.  Sometimes it just gets confused and reboots itself while you are trying to do something with it.  This probably happens to me every 2 weeks to a month.  Sometimes it trounces a recording that it was in the middle of creating. <br /> <br />2.  Reboot where everything gets wiped out.  This only happened once, but it lost the recording schedule and the customized channel list (I have basic cable and the listings are for extended, so I manually deleted all the stations I don't get).  It also took a day or two to get the TV listings back again. <br /> <br />3.  It misses recording a show, or part of a show once in a while.  This may be due to faulty TV Guide data from the cable company sometimes.  But even manually programmed recordings (time & channel) get messed up sometimes. <br /> <br />4.  It recorded shows I never asked for.  I think this stopped happening with the firmware upgrade, but I used to get 6 or 8 hour long recordings of junk once a week for no reason. <br /> <br />5.  I can't archive many of my recordings to DVD.  This is the worst.  There are often \\"read errors\\" when playing back shows off of the hard disk.  When you are just watching a show, it just slightly stutters and goes on - no problem.  If you are trying to archive the show though, it bombs out and refuses to archive it (leaving you with a coaster.) <br /> <br />That last one is really frustrating.  I record 4 hours of Japanese programming for my mother in law every Saturday and Sunday night.  I burn them to DVDs, give them to her, she watches them and sends them to her sister.  Well, when the shows won't archive to DVD, I have to record them to tape, which takes 4 hours each.  And tapes are more expensive to buy and ship. <br /> <br />I know computers pretty well, and know that modern hard drives are supposed to notice when they get physical read/write errors, they mark that sector as bad, and never try to use it again.  Thus drives with flaws end up seeming flawless (once the flaws are all found), but slightly smaller (due to the bad sectors it is ignoring).  So I figured once I had filled the hard disk, all the bad sectors would be found and marked and I would not get the \\"read error\\" problem when archiving anymore.  WRONG.  I let the disk fill up almost completely then cleaned it down to half full.  Now 2/3's or 3/4's of the time when I try to archive 4 hour shows to DVD it fails due to \\"read errors\\".  WHAT A PAIN! <br /> <br />If only the hard drive would mark it's bad sectors, or if only I could archive to DVD and just let it stutter when a read error occurs instead of bombing out completely.  The archive feature is almost completely useless because you can never count on it working. <br /> <br />I even tried to edit the shows to skip the part with the read error, but for some reason it never seems to work, no matter how much of the show I cut out, what's left still gets a read error and won't archive. <br /> <br />I keep checking for a new firmware upgrade in hopes that at least some of the bugs will be fixed, but since the product seems discontinued I am guessing that they aren't putting any more effort into it.  I won't be getting any more Philips electronics after this experience.