Customer Reviews

Aspire Digital AD-8091 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This is a competent DVD recorder once you get past the poorly written and edited instruction manual. It is also very important to download and install the ROM upgrade that Aspire offers on their Web site (www.aspiredigital.com).

The main plus of this unit is its low price. It makes good quality recordings using DVD+R and +RW media. I use it for archiving shows I've recorded on my cable PVR, and sharing them with a few friends who don't have cable. I also transfer a lot of movies I have on Beta that haven't come out on DVD (and probably never will!).

My main problem was figuring out how to "finalize" DVD+R discs. This is necessary for making the discs readable on ordinary DVD players. (DVD+RW discs do not have to be finalized for compatibility, though the target player has to be able to read DVD+RW discs to begin with.) When I went to finalize my first discs, the menu appeared to be not available. Then I found a review of the unit on the epinions site, where the reviewer had the same difficulty. He discovered that the recorder had to be in Monitor mode to access the menu for finalizing. If anyone has this problem, just hit the DVD/TV button on the remote to get "MONITOR" to display, then go into the Setup menu to Play/Edit Disc, and select Edit Disc. Finalize Disc is finally available!

There is really no excuse for such a crummy manual, and that is the main problem with this recorder.

In less that 3 weeks after I received this item it became defective by having only audio - no picture. I wrote them an e-mail using the address that was in the owner's manual. There was no response to my e-mail. There was no way that I was going to use the phone number listed in the manual and have to be on hold indefinately, all the while paying for the phone call myself.

An e-mail to Amazon was returned in less than 24 hours saying they would give me a refund and pay for the postage to return it. My thanks to Amazon for standing behind their sales even when the manufacturer won't.

Do not buy this unit. Somewhere between 70-90% of the DVDs that I have attempted to burn have turned into coasters. The worst is when you spend 3 hours filling a disc with stuff only for the unit to freeze up. At this point, the only way to get the AD-8091 to respond is to unplug the unit. After plugging it back in, the DVD+R disk is fried and not recognized by the unit, so the unit locks up again. Then you have to use another DVD+R disk. Then you may have a 50/50 chance of recording and burning a full disk without the system crashing on you. Don't touch this thing with a ten foot pole!!!

I shelved this piece of junk moonths ago. It doesn't always record as scheduled; the machine sometimes doesn't turn itself on to do a scheduled recording. If you have weekly recordings for the same day, only the first one will be recorded. If you set the machine to record once a week at, say, 8pm it will turn itself on everyday at 8pm. If you try to play a blank DVD, the machine will freeze. The clock is faster by one minute each month. In its first year, the tuner stopped working. I got a new unit with the manufacturer's warranty. A year later it froze every time I tried to record. Needless to say, that's game over. This piece of junk is useful only as a player, not as a recorder.

This thing is the biggest piece of junk, I just bought it and the menu won't even come up. I have tried hooking it up 10 different ways and still nothing. I contacted their customer support and got No response. I downloaded their firmware upgrade and it wouldn't even load. Trust me when I say follow the old saying "You Get What You Pay For" buy a great brand name and get a great product, buy a cheap brand name and get a cheap product.

I recently purchased the Aspire Digital DVD recorder and am blown away by it. When I found out I could set the recorder to record programs and also move all my VHS tapes to DVD I was amazed. I have a friend who has the Phillips piece and a comparison of the two the Aspire works just as well. I'm more impressed with it's ability to also play music and DVD's. At this price point consumers can't go wrong.

Do NOT buy this worthless junk. I thought I could use it to record TV shows.. First time I tried to play the recorded show back, I immediately noticed the audio volume is at least 10X LOWER than the TV source or any of my other VCR's also connected to my TV. So, to barely hear the dialog from the Aspire DVD, I have to crank the TV audio up to maximum... which allows to me to hear a lot of hiss and hum, and will knock me over if I accidentally switch back to the TV. I called the Aspire "tech support" and finally got through after many hours and learned the "problem" was that I was using the Aspire internal tuner to tape TV programs from (excuse me?)... seriously, he said to get proper audio I would have to use a second external tuner and feed it into the Aspire.

I taped three programs and learned pretty quick the unit was unreliable for turning on and taping at a specified time. I learned that the reason is it may not be "recognizing" the DVD-RW disc when it spins up and then it just shuts off and records nothing. Silly me, I bought ten brand new top quality DVD-RW discs thinking they would work in a machine specifed to record on DVD-RW. Well, they do sometimes.....

The last salt in the wound was that when I tried to watch the three programs I had recorded, I immediately noticed something was wrong. One of the "thumbnail" images for each recorded program was changed and was the same image as the previous one.... and when I clicked on the one that had been corrupted, it refused to play and just made lots of whirring and clicking noises. Program destroyed and lost forever.

So, in summary: unreliable for recording, may destroy a program you did manage to record, audio is defective by design. Other than that.... no problems to report.

I have no idea how this dog ever got out of the kennel.

I saw many bad reviews for this recorder but for the price of $76, the cheapest I could find at this time so I purchased it. The remote was not working and could not set up or program. I could open and close the tray from the recorder without the try but nothing else. Had to return to amazon. No wonder the price is getting cheaper but it will not be worth to try this recorder.

I have no problem with this machine, especially the cost. The only hangup is using DVD-RW and trying to erase/format the disk for another round of recording. It is still new to me at this point, but it takesa lot of back and forth with the remote to get it to finally accept the fact I want to erase/format and even to finalize a disk. I hope it will be easier-so far it isn't going along as the instrction book says regarding this problem. The pictures are extremely good even at the slowest speed-I am ridding myself of all my VCR's now!

My experience with this unit has been PERFECT. Over the past several weeks, I've recorded off of TV 2-3 times a week, I've copied from my miniDV camcorder, I've even used it as a digital audio recorder to archive some of my LP records (remember those?). The Aspire Digital recorder has been everything I could hope, and at a GREAT price. I highly recommend this model. I do recommend using good quality recording media, as I've heard of many recorders struggling, glitching, and locking up when using cheap, no-name discs.