Sony RDR-HXD710

Advantages: Easy to use, good picure and sound and not noisy
Disadvantages: Died too young!

...I have the same machine, which I bought in January 2006. It locks up too, but not often enough to upset me. It has been very easy to use, including recording. It gives a very clear and sharp picture and the sound is fine. The fun is very quiet too! Now the machine has gone dead on me. The only sign of life is a 20sec "Welcome" lit sign and nothing else. Then the "Welcome" goes away and nothing can wake it up. Not as dead as a dodo though, as I can hear sounds coming from inside the machine, suggesting that power is getting to it, but nothing else. I spoke to Sony. "they know nothing". They referred me to one of their recommended repairers, but before I take it to them, has anybody experienced something similar and managed to solve it? Rating: If it lasted a bit longer, I would have given a 4-5 star. But as it...

Amicha2000 27.01.2009 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD710

Sony RDR-HX510

Advantages: Sleek, stylish, feature rich
Disadvantages: Expensive, slow to respond

...Sony RDR-HX510 After much research I had narrowed down the selection to 2 products - 1 from Panasonic and this 1 from Sony. Both were similarly priced when I bought the Sony RDR-HX510 at £320. There was not much in it when quality was compared, but the clincher was compatibility - I have mostly Sony everything so I reasoned that it was more likely to work well with own brand then competitor brands. What's in the Box? ----------------------- Recorder unit, basic audio/visual cables, manual, power cable and remote control (with batteries). What's not in the Box? ---------------------------- No sample recordable disc (very poor Sony !!!) No Scart cable(s) No Progressive scan connection cables (these will set you back £20-£30 for a cheap set) No sample memory stick (again - poor Sony !!!!) No channel...

a4angus 10.11.2005 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HX510S

Sony quality for little money

Advantages: Upscales DVDs to 1080p, multi-format recording, lot of features, good value for money
Disadvantages: No digital tuner or cables, set up complicated, picture distortion problem, read review for others

...- Introduction - I had been wondering about purchasing an HD (HD = High Definition, for anyone who's not aware) DVD player in the new year sales, due to the fact that I've recently got a new TV (the Sony Bravia KDL-20S2020, which I've also done a Ciao! review on) that is HD Ready and I quite wanted to take advantage of that, plus I saw one for £180 with an offer for 7 free HD DVDs which I thought was a generous offer at the time (see Toshibas website for info on this if your curious but thats rather off topic really). After thinking about it for a few days over the Christmas period, I decided that I was being a bit hasty, lets face it nobody knows for sure which HD format will win the so called format war (HD DVD vs Blu Ray (BD)) and as my TV is only pretty small at 20", I decided against it. Trying to think of some alternative...

IzzyS 04.01.2008 (06.01.2008) · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-GX 350

The Sony RDR-HXD 790 is a finicky but effective piece of kit.

Advantages: Does exactly what it should. Quite smart-looking. Lots of different features.
Disadvantages: Finicky to begin with. Instruction manual not crystal clear.

...For a first time buyer of a DVD recorder, the RDR-HXD 790 is admittedly not the simplest machine to operate. To begin with is the initial connecting and setting up of the recorder. Although the instruction manual gives varying options of how to connect it to televisions, sound systems, cable receivers, etc, it was not terribly clear. I bought this DVD recorder to live in the same corner as a digital television, DVD player, and Sky + box, but the instructions seemed to imply that only an analogue signal could be received through the DVD recorder, which also has a digital input and hard drive recorder built in that allows you to pause live television. However, there is a way around it: For example, if you want to record two things on Sky +, record another on the DVD hard drive, and watch another through the television, you will need to...

tuckers87 22.07.2009 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD 790

Sony RDR-GX120

Advantages: Clear instructions to use. Simple
Disadvantages: Not at all reliable in our experience!

...I\'ve had to send two of these machines back. Both in warranty. The second as a replacement for the first model we had. They might be from Sony but our experience is one of complete lack of reliability and both machines just stopped recording and playing any disc back within a month on the first occasion, and we managed to get 2 months out of the second machine. I liked aspects of the machines though, not least the user friendly on screen menu which I think is one of the best I've seen, but absolutely no good to you if the machine isn't reliable enough. It also set up easily enough from the box and the instruction manual is clear and comprehensive enough for most newbies into the DVD recorder market to understand. Its just a shame we've had such a poor experience with the actual machine. I certainly cant recommend it to anyone...

runetune 28.07.2007 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-GX120

  'Sony' 172 Pages Of Instructions!

Advantages: Goes way beyond just being a TV recorder
Disadvantages: You have to read through 172 pages to find out to what extent!

...Like it or not, Freeview TV is coming - that's the over-the-air digital TV that bit by bit will see off analogue TV, and in fact the process has started, with the whole country slated to be 'cut over' by 2012. Just being able to watch it, assuming you can (I'm conveniently forgetting any aerial upgrades that may be needed), merely requires either a set-top box or a TV with the digital tuner built in. Try recording it though and your options get slimmer. You can either buy a set-top box that also contains a hard disk drive and two tuners, (aka Personal Video Recorder or PVR), or buy a machine like the Sony RDR-HXD870 which can not only receive Freeview, but record to a hard drive, and thence to a built-in DVD recorder if the need to archive anything should crop up. This also means that it doubles as a DVD and CD player. So...

BNibbles 09.12.2007 (11.12.2007) · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD 870

Sony RDR-HXD870 - great picture performance

Advantages: Picture quality, series recording, connectivity, editing features
Disadvantages: Software issues, Freeview EPG takes time to populate

...Sony RDR-HXD870S We've used the Sony since summer '07 as our sole Freeview box and as a way of archiving TV series and films recorded via our Sky+ system. The only difference between the 870S and the 870B illustrated above is colour - the 870S is silver (to match the rest of our AV kit). I'll start with the bad points, of which the Sony has 2 major ones: 1. The Freeview Guide can take a very long time to populate. If you are used the the Sky guide, or other Freeview boxes for that matter, it can be a pain. Delays of over 2 minutes are not uncommon even when looking at the same day listings. We are running the 870 from a newly installed digital aerial, aligned and tested by a professional, and the 870 itself says the signal is perfect, so this is not the cause. 2. The originally supplied software that deals...

SvenP 04.02.2008 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD 870

User review of Sony RDR-HXD 710

Advantages: Multiple recording settings, record tv & watch DVD simultaneously
Disadvantages: when recording cannot switch channels

...I purchased one of these recorders from my local sony centre a few months ago and I have not been dissapointed, well not by much. The device is relatively simple to use in its basic functions, allthough I have yet to try the more compex features. Its 160GB capacity hard drive is ample for storage as there are various levels of recording compression you can use - I have several full length movies and multiple TV shows recorded at the standard setting and I'm only at around 30-40% capacity. The built in Free-view decoder eliminates the need for a separate box and multiple scart cables. The recorder supports several mainstream disc formats, although I have been unsuccesful in playing discs recorded on PC's - possibly due to file formats rather than disc types. All of the main surround sound types are supported such as Dolby Digital...

Jay-S 10.08.2006 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD710

Sony RDR-HXD-890 Hard Drive & DVD Recorder

Advantages: Record to hard drive, DVD drive, watch and record at the same time.
Disadvantages: I needed to read the instruction manual!

...Last weekend our old video-recorder started chewing tapes, so it was about time that we upgraded. We already had a DVD recorder, but had been using it in tandem with our video recorder through an aerial booster that split the signal between the two machines without loss of quality. When it comes to such gadgets, being the sort of person that likes to see what I am buying, I went off to Comet's to see what was available. Being a Sony lover I was impressed by the RDR-HXD-890, one of the latest hard disk drive/DVD recorders from Sony's Range. It seems that black is back in vogue which I have always preferred; when I bought the last recorder, all I could get was silver, but there is a choice of black or silver with the RDR-HXD-890. When I got the machine home, I discovered that there were so many options on this machine that I had to...

derek-j-a 23.11.2008 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDRHXD890B.CEK

sony

Advantages: pretty much does everything it says on the tin plus a bit more.
Disadvantages: only downside is lack of dual digital tuners

.... Able to play DivX formats, the RDR-HXD970 can also use DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs for your recordings. its also got a digital tuner so you get all your freeview channels its very very sexy looking and has very good build quality, remote is much better than the previous version and with the addition of being able to read usb memory sticks and record directly from camcorder via firewire this is one of the best equipped sony pvrs to date FEATURES: Region - Zone 2 Standard - PAL, SECAM DivX/MPEG4 compatible Compatible Media - DVD play: video DVD, DVD+RW/+R/-RW/-R CD play: CD (CD-R/RW) MP3 play: DVD+RW/+R/-RW/-R, CD-R/RW JPEG play: DVD+RW/+R/-RW/-R, CD-R/RW DivX play: DVD+RW/+R/-RW/-R, CD-R/RW Removable recording supports - DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW Internal 250BG hard drive Integrated Audio Decoder - Dolby Digital...

Jemma_C 19.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of Sony RDR-HXD970