Philips DVDR75 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder
Torture describes phillips dvd recorders
Having owned half a dozen different brands of dvd recorders I've seen, I suspect, about ever problem one might encounter in a dvd recorder. Phillips has them all and a few extra to boot. <br /> <br />You would expect something that costs from several hundred to well over half a grand to give you a few basics in its manual or packaging. Like, what blank media to use, what speeds it can handle, what brands work well - no such luck. It comes with a blank +RW made by phillips, 2.4x as I recall. Good luck finding 2.4x +R. 4x or above caused it to crash .  <br /> <br />I had mine for about 3-4 months and had recorded a few hundred disks in that time when it just flat died. <br /> <br />Nobody would balk at burning 10 cd's a day and at that rate a month would get the same number done let alone 3-4 months. <br /> <br />In that time I made at least 40 calls to support which is off-shore and most of the \\"techs\\" are hard to understand and know nothing. One tech, if you could get him, was at least able to talk about possible solutions. During those talks at least 2 and possibly 3 firmware upgrades were sent and installed. Some were installed more than once (on phillips recommendation). <br /> <br />After the final upgrade, 4x disks were still causing a crash and finally it didn't respond at all. No disks were recognized. So, pay half a grand and use the machine for 3-4 months and done.  <br /> <br />I sent it back through Tweeters under their warranty and it was shipped to phillips repair. A month later I got back a machine with a different serial number. This machine was non-working right from the box. Thanks to Tweeters I got my money back and bought a Pioneer 520H (the latest one). It has 32 record modes in 5 and 10 minute increments. A hard drive to do editing on. Well you go read about all its features and you'll never buy this pile of bolts and heartache. <br /> <br />Phillips builds machines doomed to failure. No fan exists to exhaust the heat (like a computer case), some techs claim a fan inside the sealed case does this but heat issues are way up the list and I came to not beleive what most support people said as they contradicted themselves often. <br /> <br />They put features on the high end machines like a database for 999 recorded dvd's but they didn't test it to 999 dvd's as it fails and \\"forgets\\" a dvd now and then rendering the database useless. Backup? Surely if it has a database and is a recorder it must allow backing up the database to cd or even dvd - nope, the designers were on holiday for that feature. <br /> <br />It stoped (often) after an hour of recording all by itself (on any length setting used). Half a movie or half a show burned to disk, now that's useful. <br /> <br />It burned only 2.4x DVD's and the brand I found that worked was FujiFilm, and I tried the ones on the web that the one and only tech suggested, nope. <br /> <br />It gets hot, very. <br /> <br />If left to record to the end of the disk it crashes often and then will not recognize the disk. Imagine wanting to walk away and not be tied to the recorder (it the timer setting stops after an hour what choice do you have). <br /> <br />It often doesn't recognize disks that are not finalized. <br /> <br />Finalizing caused crashes too. Blown disks. <br /> <br />The manual was magazine size, newsprint, about half the thickness of a small phonebook. The pages were done in old art akin to the community chest card art in the game Monopoly and supplied very little in-depth information. Big type, big pictures, not enough info. I still have mine though, I plan to sell it on eBay along with Edsel parts and hula hoop kits. <br /> <br />So far with the Pioneer I have made ONE call, have had zero failures and am no longer tearing my hair out over lost time, piles of costly coasters, and a company whose support is a joke. <br /> <br />To phillips I'd suggest: better support. Put a fan in the case that exhausts out of the case. Add a hard drive. Your 75 requires time for time from your burner. A 2 hour movie takes 2 hours to burn. My pioneer does that in about 14 minutes on high speed burn using the recording on the hard drive to burn to the DVD. Saves on the recorder and on bad disks. Get your manual into this era. Hire a new art department. Fire your engineers cause someone isn't thinking straight there. <br /> <br />If I could I'd give it zero stars, 1 is too many. Never again. I'm tempted to add an 800 number so you can get the whole story!