Sony RDR-HXD995

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	It's a Sony, fully compatible with existing kit and buckets of features
Disadvantages:	Not as cheap as third party units

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Sony RDR-HXD995 is a combined DVD and hard disk recorder with built in analogue and freeview tuners with analogue and digital outputs.

It could be seen as providing the same functionality of several ‘set top boxes’ namely a freeview receiver, DVD player/recorder (as well as supporting Audio CD) and a Hard Disk recorder – giving essentially the same functionality as a VCR machine.

The main advantage of such a system is that it greatly simplifies wiring it all up to your TV set, as well as providing a much neater package, and of course, works from a single remote control.

Additional benefits include support for USB devices, allowing audio and picture files to be transferred from mp3 players, cameras etc, as well as letting you print directly to a ‘pict bridge’ printer, obviating the need for a computer.

Being Sony, it allows you to connect ‘i-link’ (firewire) devices such as camcorsers, and has an HDMI socket which ‘upscales’ images to your HD television, although the information contained in the content isn’t in itself high definition (it uses digital ‘smoke and mirrors’ to achieve this but can’t ‘magic’ detail that isn’t there in the first place)

The unit *doesn’t* support blu-ray or ‘photo disks’, nor does it work with the proprietary Sony ‘SACD’ format however that isn’t a major shortcoming for many people.

I believe you can also use the system as an audio ‘jukebox’ but you’d have to feed it MP3 files via the USB ports, I don’t think it ‘rips’ standard audio CDs.
I’ll give a bit of background about how I came to briefly use this machine;

My father’s trusty VCR had gone on the blink – it looked like power supply had burned out, he was all for getting it repaired, but as I’d gone entirely digital a number of years ago I suggested it was pointless getting it fixed, and I could give him one of my spare VCRs.

My suggestion was that he could clear some of the clutter beneath his 26” ‘fatscreen’ Sony TV and do away with his DVD player and freeview box.

The fact that he chose a Sony unit meant that the remote control unit could work both the recorder and TV.

He’s also interested in digital photography, and the ability to create slideshows greatly appealed to him.

The unit comes with all the sort of things you’ d expect

It works as an ordinary Freeview box – which means you don’t have to throw out your old analogue CRT telly. It’s also got HDMI so when you DO upgrade to a ‘flatscreen’ telly, you can get the highest quality pictures from it.

The tuner can be made to write to either hard disk (for ‘ordinary’ “scratch video” ie ‘eastenders’ and ‘corrie’) or write directly to DVD disk if you want to keep recordings)

The analogue tuner supports ‘videoplus’ which is the default setting, but changing the menu options allows you to use digital Electronic Programme Gude (EPG)

Unfortunately this isn’t a ‘dual head’ recorder, so you can’t use it to record one channel whilst viewing another, although you should be able to record one programme and replay another at the same time.

It’s even possible to transfer a recording from Hard Disk to DVD (although you almost certainly won’t be able to do this at the same time as recording a broadcast).

The manuals are up to the usual Sony standards – perfectly adequate if you have a basic grasp of the terminology in the forst place, but can be a bit confusing if you are a complete ‘newbie’.

I have a very similar Sony Hard Disk recorder, so was entirely familiar with what I needed to do.

There was one inexplicable glitch in the system menus; we’d set the default format to 16:9 ‘widescreen’ format, but for some completely unexplained reason the ‘Title list’ menu insisted in coming up in 4:3 format, however selecting a recording to play reverted to 16:9 anyway.

My own recorder (an RDR-HDX1065) has an especially well designed user interface, which isn’t exactly the same in this model – that isn’t to say it’s any better or worse, just the options are in slightly different places.

The model we got has a 250Gb disk drive, the 160Gb version was around £20 cheaper – whether this of any particular benefit depends largely on whether you really want the extra space – I personally have never used more than 100Gb at any one time.

Overall – this is an entirely competent piece of kit, relatively easy to use (why there’s separate areal inputs for analogue and digital is still beyond me!) the default

Videoplus program guide option is absurd given that it only works on analogue and parts of the UK have already switched over to digital only.
if you have all the separate components (freeview, DVD player/ recorder and a Hard
Drive unit, it may make little sense in trading up to such a machine – the cost is a little higher than the sum of the parts, HOWEVER if you’re wanting to make things simple and are taking the step from videotape to digital recording this is a very worthwhile investment.

Picture quality for ‘watching live’ and replaying is excellent – pretty much what you’d expect from a SONY.

One final grumble, the TV set we were using has a built in freeview tuner – on some of the menus it was possible to see ‘ghosting’ from the onboard tuner – but this wasn’t apparent when a programme was being displayed – I’ve noticed a similar effect when I’m feeding my BRAVIA LCD telly from my own HDD using the SCART plug, but isn’t apparent when using the HDMI lead.

I would suggest this isn’t a major drawback, and that if your TV offers HDMI connectivity, this is the one to use, it’s a problem with your telly, not the recorder.
It’s true other manufacturers offer similar equipment at lower cost, but then you’ll end up with having to use several remote control units.

If you already HAVE a Sony TV, and you don’t want a prolipheration of ‘buttons’ this is an easy choice.

More to the point, if you want to edit camcorder video content and/or use the photographic facilities, this unit gives you everything you’d need without having to get a Personal Computer.

In shot; not cheap, but offers perfectly adequate performance, and provides complete integration with existing SONY kit.

I suspect these models may well be superseded shortly, in which case look forward to some ‘deep discounting’ as they go ‘end of life’ – this is reflected in the current selling price which ranges from about £217 to £270.