Sony RDR-HX900 DVD Recorder with 160 GB Hard Disk Recorder
This product has a fatal, fatal design flaw
The Sony RDR HX900 is a truly great product, except for one problem. Unfortunately, that one problem is a fatal design flaw that renders the product unreliable. <br /> <br />The HX 900 downloads the TV Guide OnScreen (TVGOS) television listings that orignate from GemStar. Based on message board postings, owners all over the country experience the same thing: every once in a while, the unit loses all of the program listing information, the channel lineup, and -- worst of all -- your scheduled recordings. Now, anything that you have previously recorded is still there on the hard drive, but your entire upcoming schedule is gone. You leave for work in the morning and things look great; you think that you will record some shows while you are gone. When you come home, no program listings, no more recording schedule, and the shows that you thought would record, well, they did not record. It is so unreliable that I have a VCR sitting right there next to the DVR to serve as a backup -- the VCR records everything that the DVR does, because I know, without a doubt, that at some seemingly random point, the DVR will fail to do its job. <br /> <br />I have spent hours on the phone and on the internet researching this problem. You have to go through at least three people at Sony before you can even get anyone to admit that they have ever heard of the problem. Some of the customer service people are so clueless that they actually believe that the problem is with your outgoing connection to the television; obviously the problem comes in through the input, not the output. <br /> <br />People all over the country have the same problem. And, it is with all brands of DVRs. The only commonality is the TVGOS. Read more about this at: <br /> <br />[...] <br /> <br />I believe that GemStar periodically sends some sort of reset signal down the line. This signal is delivered to you via your PBS station. If your unit is not downloading at the moment that the reset comes across the line, you'reok; but if you are downloading, your DVR resets. Thus the apparent randomness of it all. <br /> <br />I finally got a technician at Sony to tell me that he would check to see if anyone was communicating with GemStar about this (GemStar's support number tells you that they communicate only with manufacturers, not consumers). Until the manufacturers and GemStar solve this reset problem, you should not buy any product which relies on TVGOS data.