Philips DVDR3455H DVD Hard Disc Recorder 160 GB with Instant Replay

First of all, I bought this marvel about 2 years ago, so I was an "early adopter" =paid it dearly. It did work fine until... it just didn't record. All my beloved TV programs were in the HD, I could watch them, but not get them to DVD. The best official service in the country, after more than 2 months and many phone calls, determined "The circuit" had broken. They charged U$S 300 to repair it, which was almost half of the price of a new one. It had lasted less than a year.About 6 months later, it just didn't turn on. Same old story with the central repair shop: "the HD broke". I had, of course, no backup of all the programs on the HD. Had all the coverage of our historic land crisis. Gone. They (Phillips) didn't recover it. No charge ($), but had to phone Phillips (the company) to warn them I wasn't going to pay them again or "buy a new one" as they kindly suggested.Finally now, half a year later, it started to make my own recorded DVDs (for personal use) "blank" or "unrecognized format", alternatively. No warning. I tried the discs, later, on other DVDs (I've got another Phillips, 3380). No way. Neither did they work on the PC. I'll try to recover the info, but I'm afraid that it is gone. Consequently, loosing one of a series is rather painful. Besides, it's erratic. It broke me 5 DVDs in a row. Sometimes without even recording anything, just by putting them inside the tray and trying to open the menu. I was about to send it to service and voilá, it didn't break more DVDs.I took a day off work, recorded almost 100 GBs and then, just when I was finishing to recover the TV I had on my HD, it started AGAIN to make coasters out of valuable DVDs. I am sending it to repair, and not going to spend another dollar on this piece of junk, and if I were you, I'd think twice about this product. There must be other brands or models. This is my second Phillips DVD recorder that turns out badly (see my review of the 3355). When it works it's the 7th wonder of the world. You can edit titles before recording them, the image quality is almost the same as the original in SP+, you can even personalize tracks, for instance, choose an image.So you don't have to worry about commercials or different programs being one after the other: you just record the "whole period of time" and then you divide it into tracks. With a DVD recorder without HD, with the time you loose before the DVD finishes, ejects, and the "boot" time for the next one, you'll surely loose the introduction. Not with this one.An Amazon reviewer's sample: The machine crashes and locks up (...).The machine crashes and trashes the DVD (...).The buttons on the remote are tiny. optical disk recording success rate is roughly 90% (FamiconGS (Richardson, TX)). Once it trashes your favourite DVD, "The DVD tray on my unit constantly locks up and won't open". The best, by another techie Texan: "Everytime this thing acts up my wife gives me the dirtiest look. (...) My advice is to wait a few generations until the technology gets better and the price gets lower".The fan doesn't do much noise. I had to say something good ...I wouldn't buy it if I plan to use it every day. Maybe fine for occasional use.

ONE MAJOR FLAW: I have had this unit [Philips DVDR3455H/37] for 6 weeks. Feature packed and menu navigation is ok [haven't used others so I do not have anything to compare to] and Philips tech support has been very friendly and helpful. All this said, if you want a unit that will "dub" [copy] from its internal DVD drive to its internal hard drive this unit is not for you. There are other similar units [Toshiba RD-XS52 or Pioneer DVR-520H DVD Recorders for example] that do offer this function and I only wish I had looked deeper before I purchased. I don't know about Toshiba's or Pioneer's units or their tech support, etc. so I'm not recommending their products, just pointing out that their units will allow dubbing.According to Philips own presales personnel it does provide this dubbing feature, but speaking to their tech support it definitely does not and there is nothing in the owners/user manual referring to a dubbing feature. Tech support says this is to prevent copyright infringement. This seems somewhat ridiculous as it has copy guard to prevent copying [dubbing] copyrighted material from other sources to its inputs. I am able to copy to its HDD or directly to a blank DVD disc from my satellite dish [DirecTV], a VCR or another DVD unit. I would assume all of these sources' programming would predominantly qualify as copyrighted. Also, tech support says it does not know if there is any firmware updates planned [and doubts there will be any] to correct this.I purchased this unit believing it would dub from the DVD drive to the HDD but didn't review the small print. Actually nothing was written about this feature and I suppose the reason I didn't notice this is because this seems such an obvious feature [to me anyway] that I just assumed it would. It seems the only recourse is to purchase a separate DVD player to connect to this unit's input. Alas, space required for yet another piece of equipment, more cables and remotes, more instruction manuals, etc., etc., etc. for something that this unit should do and the afore mentioned other units will do.I am very disappointed!

I cried, kicked, and screamed to get my wife to agree to let me buy this thing. It works great most of the time. My personal experience has been problem after problem with the DVD Player/Recorder. It is extremely particular on what kind of discs you put in it so be careful. Lots of times I have to unplug it to get it to reset. The DVD player will get stuck and nothing you do on the remote will help you. Speaking of the remote, there is no menu button on it so navigating to a DVD menu requires you to either stop the disc completely or press the next button until you arrive at the menu.Everytime this thing acts up my wife gives me the dirtiest look.Other than that, it is great. It automatically records whatever you watch and allows you to store the shows or record them to disc.My advice is to wait a few generations until the technology gets better and the price gets lower.I would love for future units to have an option where you could record on one channel and watch another simultaneously like the old TV/VCR option on old VHS recorders.At the current price it is too expensive for all of the bugs it still has.