Philips DVDR985 Progressive-Scan DVD Recorder and Player
What could have been...
I was very excited at the prospect of being able to burn my VHS collection to DVD. The first thing I realized after buying this particular recorder was that it had built-in detection of copy protection. Therefore, no &quot;fair use&quot; of my store bought VHS tapes was in order. Oh well, I still have lots and lots of VHS tape recordings that aren't copy protected. <br />  <br /> The only problem is that about one in four discs I tried to burn failed. This problem was eventually partially overcome by a firmware upgrade. I went to the company website, downloaded the firmware, burned a CD on my PC, and then put the CD in the DVDR. The firmware update took awhile, but things got a bit better. The next thing I learned from tech support was that the machine is very particular about the brand of DVD+R discs you use.  <br />  <br /> Now, after owning the machine a little over a year, I get constant &quot;Disc warning&quot; and &quot;Disc error&quot; messages. I can only get a successful DVD created less than fifty percent of the time. I should have paid more attention to the reviews. <br />  <br /> When it worked, it was great. But I guess I suffer from &quot;early adopter&quot; syndrome. Hopefully the next DVD recorder I buy will be a bit more mature and reliable.