CyberHome CH-DVR 1500 Progressive-Scan DVD+R/+RW Recorder and Player , Silver
You get what you pay for...but it works.
If you need to transfer your old 1980's &quot;Matlock&quot; and &quot;McGyver&quot; VHS recordings to DVD ASAP, and you're short on cash, this DVD recorder will fill your need. If you're just a casual TV recorder and just looking to upgrade from VHS, cough up another 200 bucks for another brand or wait a year or more for prices to drop.<br />Look everyone, Cyberhome is not Sony. Cyberhome has some quality control issues so don't be surprised if you intially get a dud. I bought this recorder because it's CHEAP not because it's the highest quality.<br />I mainly use this machine to transfer my quickly deteriorating VHS tapes to DVD, and it does a great job at this task. Recording from my VCR was easy. The picture and sound quality was exactly like the VHS picture quality. The DVD editing features were good overall.<br />I also taped from my digital cable box and the picture quality closely matched.  The recorded sound quality was not quite equal to digital cable, but good overall.<br />Playback of pre-recorded DVDs was very good. Picture and sound were similar to my old DVD player (a Pioneer). VCDs, CDs and other disk-based media played well also.<br />Major gripes: The recording timer doesn't always work, so don't depend on it. Also, my recorder runs real hot. If I use it more than 6 hours, it has problems reading the discs. I have to turn it off and let it cool down for an hour before running it again. Be careful what quality DVD+Rs you buy. If you buy cheap discs, 20% of them will not be readable by the recorder.<br />Minor gripes: Fast forwarding over 16x speed doesn't always work. It will randomly skip to the end of the DVD. Also, the sound on the main DVD menus doesn't always play. Editing the recorded DVD titles can be tedious. Too many characters to choose from and you can't delete words in the title, only type spaces over them. I also wish it would record sound in Dolby Digital or something similar, but hey, I got what I paid for.