Sony RDR-GX 300

...a lot of bias towards Sony products and my latest acquisition is the Sony GX300 DVD recorder. OK it is not a top of the range model with hard-drive recording, but at a price of £300 less 10 pence from Comet it is has proved a very reliable machine since we bought it last Xmas (2004).

The installation of the machine was every bit as easy as the Sony video recorders, which I also own - in fact it took me more time setting up an aerial ...
.../> If you have a Sony TV, the handset can be used to control that also when switched to TV mode. You can also "tune" it to other makes of receivers with certain listed codes… Denon, Kenwood, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sansui, Techniques and Yamaha. Sony suggests that you enter the codes one at a time until you find the one that works with your receiver (TV).

I turned on the TV set and pressed the set-up button on the handset that ... more

Those who have read my reviews on other electrical goods may recognise that I have a lot of bias towards Sony products and my latest acquisition is the Sony GX300 DVD recorder. OK it is not a top of the range model with hard-drive recording, but at a price of £300 less 10 pence from Comet it is has proved a very reliable machine since we bought it last Xmas (2004).

The installation of the machine was every bit as easy as the Sony video recorders, which I also own - in fact it took me more time setting up an aerial feed from my aerial booster box (a must-have if you wish to connect more appliance - the subject of another review I think) than it did tuning it all in.

I plugged in the aerial lead to the aerial-in socket on the DVD. In the aerial-out socket, you can plug in the lead supplied and from there into the aerial-in socket at the back of the television. But this is something I did not do because I already had this lead coming from my video recorder that already feeds all the channels in to my TV.

What I did was to connect the scart lead from the DVD (it has two) into the spare scart connection on the back of the TV. Fortunately, my TV set has two scart connection sockets, but if your set only has one, a multiple scart junction box can be purchased for a few pounds in Tesco, Dixons or other local TV and radio supplier.

I then connected the DVD recorder to the video recorder via the remaining scart sockets - this is so I can copy home video shots to DVD disks which take up a lot less space to store than video cassettes. Full instructions about all these connections are given in an easy-to-read user manual.

Next I plugged in the mains lead, installed the batteries (AA) supplied into the handset and was ready to go.

Tuning into the channels is very similar to a modern VCR and full instructions are given in the supplied manual.

If you have a Sony TV, the handset can be used to control that also when switched to TV mode. You can also "tune" it to other makes of receivers with certain listed codes… Denon, Kenwood, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sansui, Techniques and Yamaha. Sony suggests that you enter the codes one at a time until you find the one that works with your receiver (TV).

I turned on the TV set and pressed the set-up button on the handset that brought up "Easy Set Up".

The first was to set up the "OSD Language Setup". I chose English and pressed enter. Obviously LOL.

Then up came the "Tuner and Channel Setup" Pressing enter caused the machine automatically to search and assign the program to numbers on the handset. Because I had the machine connected to the TV via the scart, the channel numbers on the DVD recorder corresponded to the channel numbers on the TV set. This I thought was brilliant as the set up quickly finished itself and I had no other tuning or channel switching to do. For those interested, the procedure that was automatically carried out was as follows…

The same as my video recorder, starting with channel 1, it tuned to BBC 1 and automatically moved to channel 2 (BBC2), 3(ITV), 4(Channel 4) 5 (Channel 5)… It continued hunting and tuning other channels in our area (S4C - Welsh Channel 4) and ITV (West Country) all of which we can access from the Cardiff area.

As well as the channel auto-set, the clock was also set to the correct time, using the signal from BBC channel (default), but if so desired, the time signal can be set to pick up from any of the other ITV channels also. But seeing the BBC generally has the correct time, I left it at this. Another thing I like about this auto-clock facility, is that when the clocks changed to summer from winter time, the DVD recorder also changed automatically.

Setting the timer:
This sometimes is a nightmare for some people, but setting the Sony to timer-record was simplicity itself. There is a Video plus system, which is the easiest method, but it doesn't work on my TV because we are with NTL (cable TV) and the video plus signals are not sent in the same way as an ordinary roof aerial. To set the timer…

Ensure you're on the DVD channel on the TV.

Press "Timer" on the handset and you are straight into the timer insertion page..
Date (TODAY) will appear in 1st (left hand) Column highlighted.
By pressing the "up" arrow you can change this to tomorrow, next day (which appears as the date), or day after etc. etc. every time you press the "up" arrow.
If you press the "down" arrow however, you can set it to come on every day from Monday - Saturday, Monday - Friday and if you keep pressing it, it will come up every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday in single days.

By pressing the Right arrow again, it will take you to Start time in hours, press again, Start time in minutes. Press again, end time in hours, press again, end time in minutes. All using the up and down arrow to adjust times.

Press Right Arrow again to set the Channel you want to record from, then press again to select one of a various selection of recording modes….

HQ (High Quality) = 60 minutes.
HSP = (Better Quality) = 90 minutes.
SP (Standard Mode) = 120 minutes.
LP (Long Play) = 180 minutes.
EP (Extended Play) = 240 minutes.
SLP (Longest Play) = 360 minutes.

The machine can be left on or off then. And if you have the space on the DVD disk, you can actually record a program to one part of it, whilst watching another pre-recorded program. Full instructions of how to do this are in the user manual. It is not something I have used yet.

Other features

The machine will record DVD+RW -RWvr*, -Rvideo , +R, -R. Play DVD, VCD, CD DATA CD.

*vr mode is used for editing recordings on RW disks.

As each program is recorded, it's title, start and finish times are listed on the TV screen when you press Title List on the handset. With DVD RW you can also select a scene to appear alongside the title.

Pressing the tools on the handset brings up another screen with disc info that tells you how much is used up on the disk and with DVD RW (only) gives you the opportunity to wipe recordings or re-format the disk afresh.

To play the disks on another DVD player, you will need to select "finalise" in the Disc Info menu.

If you have a video camera, there is also a socket to plug in SVHS, phono video, and phono stereo. You can also connect other videos recorders/player, via the one of the scart sockets at the rear of the machine, as mentioned earlier regarding my video recorder.

Picture Quality
I found the quality of the recording quite exceptional. There is a very slight loss of quality with a recording made in SLP mode, but I thought it was still equal to that of an actual TV broadcast. The pause facility in standard play freezes the picture without any "wobble" at all as with all DVD players.

Sound Quality
Sound quality is nicam stereo and really good especially when playing music videos. Mind you, that would depend on the quality of your equipment. I run my entire set-up through a nicam Sony TV and the sound is very good, but even better is I connect it to my hi-fi equipment via the phono-leads at the back.

Fast-forward can be operated at various speeds from double ordinary playback to extremely fast.

Another useful function is that if you have a disk in and there's not quite enough space on it to finish a timer-recording event in standard play, the machine will adjust it to long-play to give more recording time, and then if it's not possible to get the whole recording on the disk, a message comes up on the screen warning you to put another disk in the machine that has enough space on it.

Reliability.
I have had my GX300 since Xmas 2004 and had no problems with it. I've recorded over 50 hours of home video across to DVD with no problem at all. As usual my experience with Sony is very good.

One thing you need to be careful with re-recording DVD disks is that you handle them with care. I dropped one and scratched it and had to throw it away. You need to handle the disks by the edges to avoid getting fingerprints on them.

Overall, I am more than pleased with my DVD recorder and would highly recommend one to anyone considering a DVD recorder.

Thanks for reading

 

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