Philips 160GB Hard Disk and DVD Recorder (Refurbished)

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We had been using a Toshiba hard drive recorder for a couple years. Loved it, but it's analog tuner became essentially useless after recent digital changeover. We have our cable split with one going to cable box and the other direct to this DVR. It's a different line-up, but all the stations we normally record are there. We had 2 Philips HDTV's in other rooms with raw cable going to them and hoped we'd receive the same signal, which we did. Now we don't have to have cable box on station we want to record. Only drawbacks are the small remote buttons and the inability to put title on shows we record weekly. Just have to look at date and thumbview.

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Very pleased. Delivery was quick. Packing was a bit loose, but arrived in good shape. A good buy and works well.

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This unit replaced a Samsung Digital Converter which we bought almost a year ago because the stations in our area were converting to digital ahead of the cutover date. We paid almost $300 for the Samsung unit. This Philips offers so so so so so much more in features and value and usefulness at at price that is far more fair. Even the digital reception is far superior. I consider myself lucky to have been able to purchase this Philips, so lucky, in fact, that I purchased another from Overstock only 3 weeks later, to use in our camper van. Thank you thank you thank you, Overstock!!!!!

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I love this machine- the quality, the features, the capacity. But I'm not able to record channel 2.1 (our PBS) using the timer, even though I can record 2.1 manually, and I can record any other channel on the timer. Bizarre, even Philips can't figure it out. I don't know if this is a design error or a failure of my machine.

Rating

This is my first HDD dvr and I have only had it three weeks, so I cannot say how durable and reliable it will be. There have been no malfunctions so far, and after reading the manual I think it's relatively simple to understand the basic features without difficulty. The picture quality: For recordings it is very good and the playback picture quality of DVDs (and DVD-Rs) is also exceptional and crystal clear. Having a hard drive is admittedly very convenient, I may never be able to do without that again.However, the minuses almost make me wish I'd bought another Panasonic when my last one died. The remote for the Philips unit is not very intuitive, plus the letter/numerical buttons are so tiny it makes it difficult to key in program titles unless you're positioned right in front of the machine. I can't imagine what trouble a guy with large fingers would have with it. It's also a rather laborous process to just get to the "edit" functions...the menus are not very well organized. This aspect of the process annoys me more than it may others.The only other real minus is the live television picture quality through the Philips device (on HDMI) is ghastly...unwatchable. I have to switch to my TV/Cable input to get a good live picture. My Panasonic had exceptional live picture quality from the HDMI output, so I was quite astonished. It's my only comparison, as I've only owned these two brands of DVRs.I cannot say I recommend this unit without reservations until I see how durable and reliable it is (the Panasonic was VERY unreliable and died after 2 years). Reviews I read when researching this product seem very positive about it's durability, and this is a premium with me, and would mitigate some of the annoyances I detailed above.