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Skip those anoying commercials and ditch the VCR
Why do you want this unit? Its a digital VCR ok thats nice but so what? Yeah it plays DVD's but so what? What makes this unit worth the rediculous premium price is a little button that lets you skip commercials! Thats worth its weight in time savings and sanity. Starting off its great for a 21st century VCR it records just like a VCR does with a twist. The timer function has much more in the way of features you can set it up to record shows all the time every day or all but one day you can even watch recorded shows while taping a new show. The recorder is even smart enough to tell you that its time to start recording off the timer when your using the recorder it will then switch the channel and start recording its also smart enough to not have to be turned off to activate the timer recording then it will shut off the unit after recording if it didnt get any input from you for a while. The menu allows you to edit stock settings for things like how long you want the commercial skip button to be set for. This is a real plus. I have the rocker button (commercial skip button) set for up one minute and down for 30 seconds. This way if I over skip I can back up real fast and miss nothing. The button can be set from 30 seconds to 5 minutes either way up or down. This is the heart of the unit they only reason you would want it. Without it its just a glorified VCR with the normal fast forward button. I can get through five minutes of commericals in less than 2 seconds. Another nice feature is the copy function if there is a show you want to share or keep you can hit one button and it copies it to DVDR. The hard drive size is ok I use the HQ mode the highest quality as the lesser modes are real ugly in quality, you can fit at least five pages of hour shows (6 per page) before you get close to maxing it. This is one of the problems the tuner is real cheap. If you have any weak signals in your channel listing the tuner will magnify it. I have comcast cable so some of my channels are a bit weak and the recorder cannot deal with it except to magnify the weak signal and make it worse. On the flip side it does record in 1080p so you get full HD on your recording. Bottom line if the source coming in is perfect the recording is perfect except in less than HQ mode then its tape quality or worse. I cannot use less than HQ quality. Another problem is the menu system its real hard to use. In order to watch a show you recorded you have to go through the setup then select the show from snipets of samples the memory for recently watched shows is nice it remembers how far you got in a show and you can start from that point and not the beginning again and fast forward thats nice. The delete function is really goofy. To delete a show you have to select delete then answer yes twice like your a child are you really sure? No really are you sure? Kinda dumb. Because you have to input alot of commands to the menu system its made worse because of the worlds worst remote I mean this remote is really bad. To start its real small and has more buttons then most remotes twice its size. The buttons are microscopic. The key buttons are put in a real awkward places on the side where they dont belong they should be front and center. Also the design was conceived in germany so being germans they have to try to make art out of plastic. They made this remote have sharp edges and angles WHOA! was that dumb. This remote will hurt your hands after about 10 minutes of use and its not ready for american TV watchers. I believe it was designed for using sparingly maybe to turn on the unit and thats it. Buttons are about 1mm in size very hard to input numbers accurately. This remote is better off replaced by a logitech harmony remote which is what I had to do to use it all the time. Bottom line I bought it because no other manufacturer makes a hard drive based recorder for free TV watching. Comcast and TIVO both charge you for similar systems. Even though its not perfect and was designed by people who dont watch TV much. It still gets everyday use in my system. Buy it!

Philips DVD Recorder with 160 GB Hard Disc
Am extremely pleased with the product. Does everything as advertised. Would definitely recommend the product.

Nice HD recorder!
This is a very nice product. Perfect video copies of anything on digital TV!

Great DVR
I bought this at Wal-Mart for 8. I have it connected to an antenna for DTV off-air broadcast recording and we use it alongside our Tivo Series 2 DVR which is connected to cable. This DVR does not have the elegant Tivo interface because there are no monthly fees. Other than that it is pretty close to perfect. You can record easily to hard disk (HDD), or DVD and you can high speed dub 2 hours of programming to DVD from the HDD in about 15 minutes.

It also plays .mp3/.wma files, so it can replace your CD player. You can plug a USB drive into the front of this player and watch a slide show of your pictures. Navigation of CD's and USB drives is very easy. You can repeat play a folder (album) or repeat show a folder of pictures for a continuous slide show.

It will store bookmarks so you can instantly resume watching any of several shows you were watching and paused. Alltogether a very well thought out and user friendly product.

The only features I would like to see added are: volume control for a TV on the remote and it would be nice if the DTV off-air program title and information automatically got stored on the HDD when you record a program (like a Tivo?).

This recorder was a great investment. I have had this over a month and would buy it again tomorrow.

Just Say NO to Tivo
This is far superior to Tivo and DVR. There are no monthly fees and you own the unit. More importantly, you can easily edit and convert your recordings to DVD to keep forever. A perfect way to capture that classic movie, TV show, or football game.