Samsung DVD-R 128

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	Highly durable machine
Disadvantages:	None, it even survives long drops

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I recently purchased the Samsung DVD-R128. I had simple requirements, it needed to be cheap (this was a secondary recorder), it needed to be of a certain size (due to the space it was to fill in a piece of furniture), and most importantly it needed to record in the - format. The main brand you find that falls into these requirements is LiteON, but I had just encountered a nasty situation with two different models of LiteOn product, that meant after years of respect for the brand, I no longer wanted anything to do with them. However this model Samsung machine stood out, it met all my requirements, plus my very first DVD player was a Samsung and almost 10 years on it still works fine.

Ok so lets get technical for a second; the recorders vital statistics were size and this model sits with a width of 43 cm, and a height of 4.9 cm; these dimensions mean that I can get my Telewest box, and my DVD recorder in a space in a bedroom unit, typically designed to fit one DVD machine. IMPORTANT NOTE: If putting two devices together, make sure there is a gap between the two, I purchased some see-through blocks from a Sony shop about 5 years ago; failure to separate the two could cause your technology to malfunction or worse still a fire to break out, as a friend of mine learned. The Inputs to the recorder consist on one scart input, one three plug audio visual input, one standard plug visual input with digital audio input. With the ouput devices we have the same again, but with a USB output to connect straight to a PC.

Now lets talk formats, and this bit's a little long. First of all was the - (minus) format, then came the + (plus) format, think VHS and Betamax. The - format is more reliable, the image is generally cut deeper and you don't need to be so fussy about the brand of blank DVD you purchase to use with your recorder. + formats tend to be a bit temperamental, and the quality of vision often becomes wishy washy towards the end of the disc. The Samsung recorder uses - format discs only (also handy because they are often cheaper). With a blank disc you can record between 1-6 hours of programming the quality varies from excellent to VHS quality depending on how many hours you want to use each disc for. This recorder excepts - formats of the following style discs R/RW.

The nice thing about the Samsung recorder is that it has something they class as "Instant Recording"; this believe it or not is almost unheard of. Unless you warm the recorder up with most brands, its unlikely that recording will occur at the very least 10 seconds after you push the record button. This can be really annoying, with the Samsung model, you push the record button and it does that, the very second. Also what's nice is that you can load, and it recognises the space on a disc within 8 seconds, some DVD recorders take over a minute to do this.

To help you organise your recordings, once you have recorded something if you select the edit option on the onscreen menu a pop up keyboard appears, this allows you to name whatever you have recorded. Once you have finalised the disc (this finishes the disc of so it will play on any other machine) when you load the disc it then gives you a menu so you can pick the particular programme you require.

Once you have recorded something the images you receive on playback are fantastic. Crisp clean images with no fuzzy edges, and certainly no reduction in sound quality, One recorder I had used to record about 3 notches quieter, so when playing something back you had to turn the volume up. Trouble being last thing at night if you forget to turn your TV volume down before turning the disc off you might become unpopular with your neighbours.

The Samsung recorder also features something it fails to advertise: DIVX, MPEG and AVI format playback. For those not sure what this is, basically its all about the download. If you download something from the internet, you either have to watch it on your PC, or get a piece of conversion software to adapt the image to play on your DVD player. With the addition of this feature to this model DVD, it means if you record something from the internet, you can literally record it straight to a disc and play it instantly in your machine, absolutely no need for conversion. As well as this the recorder will also play VCD's, MP3's and photo discs (discs with your prized photographs on).

On what I thought was going to be a tragic day, I threw my Samsung DVD-R128 down the stairs. I wont bore you with the full story of this, but I was horrified to think it may be dead. Believe it or not it still works fine. And the machine is generally more durable than most I have encountered, after a few weeks you generally tend to find most DVD recorders have their glitches (with a Panasonic model I found glitches after just one day). Because this recorder is quite basic less can go wrong with it, which is why it would probably be harder to cause issue with. I'd without a doubt recommend this recorder, it does what I need and never questions what you load into it, I know that sounds odd but some discs on some recorders seem to expect you to jump through hoops just so it will play them.

This excellent recorder is available via the current Argos catalogue priced just £119.99 which is £10 - £20 off the last seasons price.