Philips DVDR 5350 H

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	makes life so much easier
Disadvantages:	quite an expensive purchase

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I got this as a christmas present in 2006, and have been using it for about the last 9 months. i don't know what i would do without it.
i would reccomend even if you don't buy this one, to get yourselves a dvd hard drive recorder as they are so useful.
so what does this do. well it does exactly what it says on the tin: it records onto the built in hard drvie (the one i have got is the 160gb version which can hold a maximum of 250 hours when the recording mode is set to the super extended etc etc. mode! this is supposed to be the worst mode, but for normal recording such as Eastenders if you are out one night, and will only watch it once, then this mode is perfect.
it has 2 scart sockets, so that you can connect it to your tv and another device (such as a digital freeview box- which is what i have got). the only problem i have, and maybe it is just ebcause i didn't read the instructions right, but you have to change the channel of the freeview box to fit in with what you want- it doesn't do it automatically like it does with the normal tv channels (bbc one to channel 5).
the recorder is very simple to set up if you follow the instructions, and it does everything that you want it to do. 250 hours is a lot- more that 10 full days of recordings, so if you have just eastenders to tape for the week and maybe a film or two and ready steady cook, along with match of the day, then you won't even have taken up 5% of the capacity of the hard drive.
this really is a great buy. you get a simple to use remote, the programs that you record onto your hard drive can easily be transferred onto a dvd (of which it takes both + and - dvd rw and r). there is a protect mode that allows you to not accidentally delete your favourite program (has come in very handy!) and of course, you can delete programs that you don't want to keep.
also, you can edit the programs that you have recorded so that you can get rid of, for example, the adverts that interrupt the film- it takes a bit of time, but it is well worth it.
overall, this is a great machine and would reccommend it to everyone (if you don't want this one then consider another dvd hard drive recorder- they are well worth it).
hope that this was useful for you.