Philips DVDR880

...more details reply via my guestbook and i will be happy to pass it on.

I hope this info is of some use and I can certain recommend this Philips from my time with it. I payed £349 .99 for mine although they are much cheaper now.  ... more

I got this machine for christmas 2003 and have been very pleased with it so far. It has many features and I will try to go through some of the ones that I have found useful together with a general overview of the product.

Firstly it is taller than many of the current units on the market. This I have already found to be an advantage as it has allowed a large LED screen to be included which with my failing eyesight make things a little easier to see. The screen is located centrally on the front of the unit. This large size I believe to have another advantage as it allows for better air circulation around the internal componets. You have to remember that you are physically burning information on to these DVD disks and a lot of heat is generated. This has been born out to my mind by a friend of mine who has a newer and thinner Sony machine. This has been returned under warranty with heat related problems twice since he's had it .

On the front of the machine you have all the usual controls that you would find on a video recorder. On/off, channel up and down, Record mode (more on this later) One touch record, Open / close for the disk tray, Fast forward search, Rewind search backwards, Stop and Play/pause.
Also on the front are the digital video camera connections discreetly hidden behind a drop down flap. There is a S-video connection and the ones I prefer to use the composite video and separate audio imputs. ( yellow ,red and white phono jacks) So there is no excuse no to start archiving all that holiday video footage you took not to mention cousin Janes wedding!

On the back of the machine you have the rest of the input and output connections. These are as follows 2 scart connections I use both these one to connect to the TV and one to connect my satelite reciever. You have a standard coax aerial input and output you also have an S-video output and a composite video and stereo audio output and finally a digital audio out put. This last one is to connect to multi channel sound decoders if you are so lucky as to have one. The mains power input is also on the rear.

It has a quite large remote which is generally used to operate the recorder. The buttons are easy to read and use and the whole thing has a strong rugged construction unlike my satelite remote.

The set up could not have been easier, just plug your aerial in the back and connect a scart lead to the recorder and TV and thanks to a little feature called easylink the machine does it all.It transfers all stored TV channels in the same order, to the DVD recorder. It even set the clock and date etc.

On switching on you are presented with an on screen menu which is quite easy to follow. You navigate around the screen using direction arrows on the remote and a button labeled OK to select Items. I found it easy, but if your not to technically minded have the manual handy as they use a combination of symbols and written words when accessing the timer recording, editing and set up features.

As promised more on record mode. This is accessed either from the front button or via the system menu. It allows you to choose the quality of recording and this in turn how much you can record timewise on a disk. There are 5 settings High quality
(60 mins) Standard Play (120 mins at pre recorded dvd standard) Standard Play+ ( 150 mins at better than S-VHS quality) Long Play (180 mins at S-VHS quality) or Extended play ( 240 mins at VHS quality).
For general TV recording I use the extended play mode, you know last nights soaps etc and this is more than adeqate and so far I have been using the same re-writable disk since I got the recorder and the quality is fine. When theres a movie or some thing I plan to keep I use a write once disk and a higher quality recording time depended on the lenght of the film etc.

Where this machine comes into its own is the editing side. Imagine you just recorded a Film on ITV you want to keep and you have got all those advert breaks , you can edit them out and the film will play seamlessly. What you actually doing is marking start and end points for the ads and asking the machine not to play the material between those points and thus it runs smoothly. Clever or what. This process takes a while to master and I would suggest practising on some none essential material first. Although nothing is permanant until you go through a process called finalising the disk. This is again done under the system menu and makes the disk permanant and readable by any DVD player.

The unit will playback and record Cd's and will also play Cd's with MP3 files on.
It also has video plus+ for those of you who don't like programing timer recordings and Dolby Digtal sound.
Another neat feature I like is that you can choose a still picture from your recordings to have as an index picture on the disk start up screen . You can of course type in details for each recording via an on screen keyboard( a bit time consuming).

Erasing disks is easy either totally or just partially and only takes a few seconds.
I can whole heartedly recommend this machine it seems very reliable and once you take the plunge you will wonder what VHS was all about. I have just finish transfering all my old VHS movies on to DVD and I swear they look better.

I forgot to mention things like the search functions forward and back at a range of speeds 1/4, 1/2 2, 4,8,16,32 times normal
rock solid freeze frame and chapter jump. You can set up chapter markers to happen automatically as you record or put them in after.
It uses DVD +R disks to recorded but will play back the following systems: DVD video, Video CD, DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD -RW, DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW,Audio CD MP3CD.
Disk price varies so much its best to shop a round but you should not pay more than about £7.99 for 5 re-writable disks and write once disks in bulk can be as little as 50p and no doubt will keep coming down in price.

It is a region 2 machine for playback of pre-recorded films but there is a hack available to enable region 1 playback and it works if you need more details reply via my guestbook and i will be happy to pass it on.

I hope this info is of some use and I can certain recommend this Philips from my time with it. I payed £349 .99 for mine although they are much cheaper now. 

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