LG RH 7500

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Excellent
Sound Level	Excellent
Ease of Use	Simple
Range of Features	Above Average
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Easy to set up and use .
Disadvantages:	Some functions may be rarely used

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Santa's little elves were very busy in 2006, and built me a DVD recorder with a little help from electronics giant, LG.
Sometimes reviewing Christmas presents puts at risk relationships with the donor, or even with Santa himself - e.g. " Present x was something I never wanted and turned out to be the worst example of its kind; I will gladly make a donation of it to anyone who has a big enough skip - here's my telephone number..." is not the sort of review that warms the cockles of a wife's heart, so to speak.!

No such problems here.! Thank you my darling - how did you ever guess that I would be ultra content with one of these ?? - ( public answers later ).

1 Technical
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Please do not rush past this section, ladies, as I will not be so technical that you will be baffled.!
What is the machine?
It is a DVD player, which can happily play any shop-bought DVDs.
Equally, it can play any DVDs that have been home produced. As you know, there are many different formats used in PCs, but this machine will cope with them all - although you do remember that copying your mate's DVDs that are copyright is absolutely taboo ! - possible but forbidden.
So DVD +, -; DVDR +, -; DVDRW+, - and DVD+RDL are all listed as compatible.

The player can also play CDs, - audio and video ones.

But this is more than a player. This machine also records. Do put in one of the recordable DVDs and you can save the next exciting episode of your favourite TV programme, whether that is Jackanory or the Birdspotter Annual Omnibus.

Even more exciting is the possibility of recording a whole DVD of your camcorder efforts, with not a single shake missed. Multiple copies of such a DVD can then be dispatched to all the disinterested parties you can think of, who have avoided your company for 6 months, unwilling to submit themselves to your Oscar nominated home movies.

Now, the last technical bit, the player can also record to its own hard disk. This model comes with 80GB of space while the sister model ( RH7800) has 160GB. This means that you could record up to 110 hours of TV or other programmes straight to this disk, edit it, watch it, and erase it, and start all over again.

2 Appearance
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I will be humbly honest on this issue. Men tend to accuse women of being mostly concerned about the appearance of home electronics equipment while men are consumed with the technical facilities and operation of the item.
However, there are certain items - and this is one of them - where the males of the species do appreciate form, style and appearance. So this is a super sleek, slim, smooth model, beautiful to the touch and pleasant to the eye.!! Rough measurements are 450 mm wide, 350 mm deep and just 50 mm high,
It is silver in colour and light to carry.

If we start with the rear, there are two scart sockets, a digital audio output socket, an aerial socket, and various outlets for audio and video. There are also inputs for audio and video, and, finally, a fan to keep the hard disk cool.

On the front panel, there is a drop down, hidden section covering inputs for DV, S-Video and A/V. The rest of the front panel consists of the basic controls all nice and discreet.
So power on/off, play, stop, pause, record, eject and the remote sensor. There is also a button to allow you to switch from the Hard Disk to a DVD.
Finally, there is the inevitable LCD Display which keeps you fully informed of all that is happening.

In short, the machine gives you easy access to all you need, but does so in a beautiful appearance. In our living room, this has elegantly replaced the old DVD player and VCR, and left loads of space on the shelf as a result.

3 Operation
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There are folk who get put off technology because machines are difficult to operate.
Let me describe the ease of operation of this machine in two sections - setting it up at the beginning, and then the day-to-day use of the recorder.

Set-up
++++
One of the problems about receiving gadgets as Christmas presents, is that the recipient has to get the hang of them very quickly on Christmas day, or he will lose all credibility as a budding technofreak.
So I had some cause to be nervous as Christmas Day approached.
I knew I was getting a DVD recorder - it became a little bit obvious when I got a phone call from a Curry's store asking me about my preference for the type of machine ! Did I want one with a hard disk? Quelle surprise ! I knew right away that I ran a huge risk - it could be the cheapest machine on the market, that simply would not perform - or it could be so highly complex, that I would never have it working on Christmas Day itself - after all I do have to work on that day every year, and then help with the cooking afterwards !

So the good news was that I followed the very clear instructions and had it operational within quarter of an hour. I then allowed the family to watch TV for a while without further interruption, before completing the operation which involved getting the NTL box linked in, and the TV tuned to receive digital cable that way - it had been set up differently before.
Simply put, the instructions are so clear, that if you have a clear room, no Christmas programmes to watch, no mocking family, and no wailing kids, it should not take you more than half an hour to remove the VCR and have everything up and running.

Day-to-day
++++++++

Day to day operation of the DVD recorder, is reasonably simple, depending on what you plan to do with it.
For us, the most obvious use, is getting a recording on hard disk of a programme which we were watching until disturbed by phone or door bell.
That is utterly simple. One single button on the remote control is pressed and the DVD gets to its recording job right away.

The second day-to-day operation is known as 'timeshift'. It means that if the phone rings or the door bell sounds, and you need to leave a live broadcast, you can let the DVD recorder start recording from that moment, and when you get back to the room, you can restart watching from where you left off. This requires two buttons to be pressed, and so is utterly simple.

Timer recording, allows you to set the machine to record any programme within a month - and can record 16 of them. This is a longer process but the onscreen display guides you through the process, and it is not dissimilar to VCR timer recording.
There is provision for recording to be done with Video+ and also to utilise PDC information where a TV station uses it... in simple terms, it means that if the broadcast is delayed, the recorder will know, and wait before it begins recording.!

Recording from other sources such as a camcorder or VCR is also possible.

I have yet to go beyond those capabilities of the machine, but it can do so much more.
You can edit your own home-made DVDs in all kinds of ways, adding titles, chapters and so on. If I ever get time to play around with these, I'll update the review.

The bottom line, is that operating the machine is very straightforward and simply explained.

Odds and Ends
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The remote control can be configured to operate your TV as well as the DVD recorder.
The recorder will search out all the possible channels when first switched on, and retain them in memory.
You are given an option for setting time, date and aspect of the screen, audio settings area codes and parental locks.

I am not sure of the price of the machine - it was my gift from Santa - or his elves - or my significant other - and anyway prices are dropping faster than the snow these days.

My only wee complaint, so far, is the noise of the fan . It is not really loud, just a wee bit annoying, and not something I had expected at all.

All in all, a great machine, and a welcome present.!