Gateway AR230 Progressive-Scan DVD Player / Recorder
A Piece of JUNK
I bought this Gateway AR230 on July 23, 2004 from HSN.The pros of this unit is cheap price and easy to use. I had no problems recording any discs. I used a HP dvd +rw and a TDK dvd + r.The cons about this besides breaking down is when using a RW and you have a full disc and want to record another show on the disc , you can't just delete one program you have to completely erase the entire disc. If you just delete one program it shows up in the menu as a deleted space and there is no space . The unit worked fine for the first two months and then it stop working. It locked up and just says HELLO!!! and nothing works on it and can't even get my disc out of it. SO if course now I have to ship it back to there consumer repair service center in California . And of course I had pay for shipping . This is not the first experience I had with a product from gateway. I bought a customized computer from Gateway nothing but trouble with it. I recommend not to deal with Gateway or buy any future products from gateway  . And of course now  I just sent Out my dvd recorder for repair.       HERE IS A UPDATE: I just got my dvd recorder back from the service center yesterday (10/26/04) and they failed to return my dvd that was stuck in my original unit. They decided not to send me my orginal unit back, but instead sent me a repaired unit which had a manufactured date of December 2003 and has the old firmware on it.And now none of dvd r's that I recorded work in this unit.The one I sent them had a manufactured date of July 2004 and had the updated firmware. What a joke !! How dare gateway send me a 7 month old unit.After making first call to gateway customer service and asking them why I didn't get the same unit back. There response was it is stated in there warranty . That they may subsitute unit for a new or used one.  And they expect me to upgrade the dvd and dowload the upgrade from my computer shame on them. I don't have a cd burner. So to make a long story short. They agreed to send me out a new unit with updated firmware.I hope this is the last time I have to deal with gateway.