Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive
Hard drive recording will spoil you
Pros:  Hard drive recording is quick and painless. <br />       Built-in TV Guide is handy. <br />       Intuitive menus. <br />       Has a clock! <br /> <br />Cons:  Relies too heavily on the TV Guide <br />       Slow tuner <br />       No previous channel button!! <br /> <br />I originally purchased the Panasonic EH50S, but returned it for two reasons: <br /> <br />1. It did not have a clock. Seems trivial, but the VCR it replaced had a clock and I found that I had grown very reliant on it. <br /> <br />2. No previous channel button.  The Pioneer doesn't have one either...  This is a HUGE omission.  ANY device with a TV tuner needs to have this feature. <br /> <br />After replacing the Panasonic EH50S with the Pioneer, I realized that I should have purchased a DVD recorder with a hard drive right off the bat. <br /> <br />If you're upgrading from, or replacing a VCR, you'll be amazed at how enjoyable recording television can be with a hard drive.  No tapes, and no worries about running out of space (unless you fail to do some occasional house cleaning of the shows your record). <br /> <br />Editing out the commercials from the shows/movies you want to save to DVDs is a simple process. <br /> <br />I mentioned that the TV Guide is a pro and a con.  The downside with the Pioneer is that it uses the TV Guide system to set up it's tuner.  In other words, if you want to delete a channel from the Pioneer, you have to delete it using the TV Guide.  Very inconvenient and often flawed.  I have two local stations that I don't want, but I cannot delete them because they don't show up in the TV Guide listing correctly. <br /> <br />The machine will also display the TV Guide screen when you turn it on.  I don't need to see this every time I turn the machine on, so I find it annoying. <br /> <br />The TV Guide has been wrong twice so far.  I noticed that it listed one movie, while the station was actually playing another.  (Not Pioneers fault) <br /> <br />The tuner on the Pioneer is slow.  My television and old VCR jump from channel to channel very quickly.  With the 533H, there is a short delay.  Apparently this is because it uses and analog tuner rather than digital.  If so, they should have raised the price a bit and included the digital tuner. <br /> <br />The machine has begun to display the word \\"wait\\" on the screen when I turn it on.  I am forced to wait about thirty seconds before it settles in and allows me to change channels.  I'll have to do some research into this problem. <br /> <br />After a month of use, the positives outweigh the negatives, and hopefully Pioneer will fix some of the more trivial negatives with a firmware upgrade in the future. <br /> <br />If you're looking to replace a  VCR, or just jump into the world of DVD recorders, the Pioneer 533H would be a great choice.