Zenith HDR230 HDTV Personal Video Recorder/Receiver (Brushed Metallic)
My comments after 10 months of use:
I have waited a while before writing a review of the Zenith HDR-230 in order to gain some experience and learning curve..<br /><br />This unit is really excellent, especially when paired up with a DVD-RW/VCR unit.. Recording HDTV content to the unit's in-built hard drive is a really nice feature for the ability to record a future program, however I also prefer moving content off of the hard drive in order to free up space, and save a program as part of an archive.<br /><br />My HDR-230 is part of a home theater system based around the HP VP6120 DLP Video projector ($1500), an Onkyo 5 DVD disk-changer and 600 Watt Dolby 6.1 amplifier unit ($400), Zenith DVD-RW/VHS VCR unit ($400), and an 8-foot da-lite brand projection screen, which results in an 8-foot wide (diagonal measurement) screen image. The entire package ended up at an investment level of approx $2800 which is a bargain basement price for such a quality result..<br /><br />A nice feature of the HDR-230 is that the output format is front-panel selectable. Note that the Y Pb Pr (component video) output is only available for 1080i, 720p, 720i, and 480p.. However there is an un-intended consequence of selecting the 480i output format, and that is that the unit will output content that can be down-converted from, for example 1080i, to 480i, and then the content can be routed to a DVD recorder or VCR that has S-video or standard video inputs ...<br /><br />In doing this, my results seem to indicate that recording to DVD-RW disks in this manner is very similar to the playback resolution of typical DVD movies. It is not recommended that recordings be made to VHS tapes, as the result will be the further down-conversion to NTSC video format which is much poorer quality..<br /><br />The overall result is a large amount of flexiblity..<br /><br />I very much recommend the HDR-230 for anyone that would like to put together an entry-level system that outperforms many systems that currently can go for five to six thousand dollars..<br /><br />A word of caution for those that wish to record commercially-broadcast movies to DVD disk in this manner, it is really worth the price to purchase your favorite DVD movies if you wish to build up a collection. The reason is that having to deal with 3 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes is simply not worth the time involved..e to six thousand dollars.. <br /> <br />A word of caution for those that wish to record commercially-broadcast movies to DVD disk in this manner, it is really worth the price to purchase your favorite DVD movies if you wish to build up a collection. The reason is that having to deal with 3 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes is simply not worth the time involved..