Philips DVDR3400 DVD Recorder with DivX and USB 2.0
Not what I expected.
I recently bought a flat-panel HDTV and an HDMI upconverting DVD-Recorder, the LG DR1F9H.  I liked the features of that recorder--the video quality was amazing, and the DivX playback was a nice addition--but the unit was defective: its audio would skip and break up, omitting lines of dialogue, from almost every kind of disc.  I returned it and got a second one, which had the same problem, so I returned *that* and tried the Philips DVDR 3400, which looked similar.  Again, DivX playback, HDMI output. <br /> <br />What I didn't realize is that this *isn't* an Upconverting player.  The output on this has four settings:  480i, 480p, 576i, and 576p.  My TV won't take the 576 resolution, so I'm stuck with just the 480, which is standard DVD resolution--and it looks far grainier and lower-quality than DVD video usually does.  Nor does it properly accommodate the aspect ratio of the HDTV: it just stretches out the normal 4:3 image to take up the full screen, which looks terrible.  It's not very good about adjusting such settings, either; you can't adjust the playback or resolution settings unless the video is stopped, and even then, not if it's remembering a position--you must hit stop again, so that it begins playback from the start of the disc.  It doesn't support resume-from-stop with the other video formats (divx, etc) either.  All in all, it seems to be a rather poorly-executed device.  I will experiment somewhat further with it, but will probably return it to the store.  This whole excursion is proving profoundly frustrating.