12 von 12 Personen fanden diese Produktbewertung hilfreich.
Excellent easy to use DVD recorder
Bewertet am: Apr 10, 2005
Fazit: This unit meets all my needs, is relatively inexpensive and has been problem free and produced quality results. Technical support has exceeded expectations.
This is my first DVD recorder and I read a lot of reviews before I bought it. I was nervous because it seemed like there were lots of complaints about every model out there. Fortunately, this one is a jewel and I'm very pleased with my purchase.
I'd heard that DVD recorders could be very finicky about which blank DVDs they used. This one worked perfectly with the Sonys I bought. Later, when talking to Panasonic technical support I was told they recommend Panasonic (of course--but at $38 for 10, forget it!) and also Pioner and TDK disks. They also recommend buying DVDs in jewel cases rather than spindles because any warping or flaws because they're more likely to cause failure than when burning CDs.
Basically the unit works very much like a VCR (and it even has VCR plus built in, though with TiVo, I don't need that feature). I have recorded from TiVo (to permanently keep programs and clear space for new ones on TiVo), from VCR tapes, and from TV. All worked flawlessly.
The RAM disk they supply with the unit allows you to record over and over 100,000 times they say. I find it useful for recording from TV occasionally and I also used it for practicing before I burned "real" DVDs (since DVD-Rs allow you to erase a program on them but not reclaim the space I didn't want to waste them).
Set up on a normal system is very easy--mine is rather complicated with all my different components so I called their tech support for guidance. I only had to wait 5 minutes and got excellent assistance. Later I called again because there were several things I didn't understand in the manual. Again I waited only a few minutes and got patient answers to all my questions.
About the manual--it seems like it was written by someone with attention deficit disorder. It jumps around a lot and although it has plenty of information, it's rather confusing, especially if you're not familiar with recording to DVDs.
You can select images from the programs to use as menu thumbnails and you can edit the chapter titles using an onscreen sort of keyboard. My wrist got prettty tired moving up and down the layout picking letters, but it is workable.
Overall, I'm very glad I bought it. It is a lot easier to use than I thought it would be and works a lot better than all the reviews I'd read of other units led me to believe it would.
