Philips HDRW720 DVD Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive
A Good Machine - After You Learn Its Quirks
I have owned a Philips DVDR75 for about a year.  It is terribly user-unfriendly, but, after an extended learning period you get used to its quirks.  Then I bought the HDRW720.    Philips has not learned from past mistakes.  This machine was designed for use with a cable system, not with a satellite receiver such as I use.  It will not perform a timer recording without using the onboard TV Guide system and that system will not gather data from or otherwise address a satellite receiver.  This problem is not addressed in the owner's manual and their tech support showed total ignorance about the subject.  With each call they gave me erroneous advice which produced no useable results.  They are, however, to be congratulated for speaking English completely understandable by a Southerner - something other producers of consumer electronics should learn.    After I had arranged with Amazon to get the machine picked up for return and after writing a scathing review here, I boxed the thing up and waited for UPS.  Then I had an idea.  I came up with a work-around to make the machine work as I needed and I cancelled the pickup.    Now the machine does everything I want it to do and it does it very well.  I called Philips tech support and told them the work-around so they could pass it along to other satellite receiver users.    If you have a cable system this thing is great.  You can make it work with a satellite system but don't depend on Philips for assistance.