Customer Reviews

Philips DVDR3455H DVD Hard Disc Recorder 160 GB with Instant Replay

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This review covers three DVRs for comparison purposes:
Panasonic DMR-EH55S (200 GB hard drive) (Most expensive)
Phillips DVDR3455/37 (160 GB hard drive)
Polaroid DRM-2001G (80 GB) (least expensive)

Here are some of my observations on these three DVRs. I would call the Phillips and Polaroid "half-baked" and I returned them and would not recommend them. The Panasonic is nice and I recommend it, but it's not perfect.

In my review, strengths are marked with a +, weaknesses with a -.



Regarding the Phillips and Polaroid DVRs:

These two DVRs are similar. They may be the same machine. They use the same operating system and the on screen menus are all identical in the two units.

General comments first and then I will comment on the differences in the units.

+Tracks are easy to select for burning to the DVD

+As you select tracks for burning it shows you how much room on the DVD you have left.

+It's always recording, so even if you don't hit the record button until halfway thru the show you can still get the whole show.

+It pauses live TV and this feature is full featured and effective. Live TV behaves just as if you were playing back a disk with pause, rewind, slo-mo, and fast forward all available.

+Does not delete edits, but simply hides them on playback. When you write out to the DVD it does not write the deleted portions. This would allow you to go back and rethink your edits. Panasonic deletes them immediately. On commercials this is probably no big deal but on home movies it might be useful to keep those deleted scenes handy in case you change your mind.

+Allows editing tracks while recording a show. Since the machine is always recording it must support this feature, so it's not surprising, but it is way handy since we keep ours recording shows almost all the time and I am a heavy editor also. If I could only edit while not recording it would be hard for me to get it done. What is surprising is that my more expensive Panasonic DMR-EH55S does not support this feature.

+Technical support is good. I called them twice, got through to someone and they gave intelligent answers.

+Dividing tracks works well, unlike the Panasonic. It's easy to simply select "divide" instead of "view," and then divide the track at your stopping point for today and then you're ready for next viewing to start where you left off.

-Takes 15 annoying seconds to boot while you miss the kick off of the super bowl.

-fluorescent display is small with only medium readability from across the room.

-There are not many buttons on the front panel

-Track titles are only 10 chars - that's not enough

-The operating system is primitive, buggy, missing many useful features and has a generally clunky feel, as if they programmed only the bare minimum features required to allow operation. For example, holding buttons down on the remote will not repeat the key. This feature is sorely needed when inputting text with the on-screen keyboard because it's torture to have to keep repeatedly pressing the buttons on the remote to scroll from one side of the keyboard to the other. Another example, the editing screen has a bug where you hit the edit button to start an edit and the prompt correctly displays "hit edit to stop editing." Then you search forward to find the end of the commercial and you hit edit and it slices out that portion and the prompt correctly displays "hit edit to start [your next] editing." That's not a bad system, but the OS has a bug in it so that if an edit is started, when the info screen goes away it comes back incorrectly displaying "hit edit to start editing" when it should say "hit edit to stop editing." However, the edit feature still works correctly in spite of the display. But this can be confusing enough to make you forget where you are and make you exit the edit screen and start over.

-The info pop-up screen is really annoying. It's giant and it's never there when you need it and always there when you don't. There's no way to turn it off or on permanently. Especially when you are viewing something frame by frame - it's maddening.

-Text is slow/torturous to put in, made worse by the weak remote control.

-The machine crashes and locks up, sometimes without provocation, and you have to unplug it to get it going again.

-The machine crashes and trashes the DVD when trying to append tracks to a non-finalized DVD.

-remote control is weak and that's really annoying when you are editing text. You have to be close and at small angle from the sensor.

-Does not show new track time after you edit out the commercials.

-Only allows 9 characters per DVD track title.

-It has a manual, but it's not very good.

-It has a useful time shift buffer, but its interface uses arbitrary buttons on the remote, there is no on-screen help, and sometimes you have to use the hidden "hold down the button for 3 seconds" technique.

Now to highlight some differences:

Polaroid
+Has a way handy feature to jump to a specific time in a show. You just hit "go to" and then enter a time like 35 minutes, and it goes to it.

+DVD burner on this unit seemed faster than on the Phillips.

-Earlier version of the operating system - has bugs, features that don't work, and missing needed features

-No progress indicator as it burns to DVD, and you can't watch the program as it's burning

-Manual is rougher.

-Fan on this unit is too loud.

-A bug in the OS prevented me from entering the tens digit of a recording program start time.

Phillips

+Has an updated operating system with some welcome enhancements and bug fixes. More stable, but still crashes and trashes disks.

+Will show a progress indicator as it burns the DVD.

-Has a T/C (time code) button to jump to a specific time in a track, but it does not work.

-DVD burner on this unit seemed slow.


Panasonic DMR-EH55S
Over all opinion: Good. Reliable, high quality and studded with features, although missing some no-brainers. I don't expect any glitches. Probably the best available at this consumer level price point, but unfortunately has many limitations that reduce its usefulness to a heavy editor like myself.

+Text entry is very good, with great use of the remote control buttons to allow hot key shortcuts for various operations and screen positions. It's a clever system and fast and fun to use.

+Remote control is strong and the unit responds to its commands without fail.

+The scrubber for finding an edit point is great.

+The manual is very good, 77 packed pages with detailed technical information on all aspects of operation. It's much better than the "user friendly" Sony manuals that avoid tech talk. It also carefully lists the many limitations of this unit and the technology, including what burn speeds you can expect.

+The on screen TV guide is da bomb. It's far superior to the scrolling cable channel we have been watching for the last ten years. In spite of reviews here to the contrary, it worked perfectly for us, setting up with just few easy questions, one minor glitch requiring a glance at the manual, and then video nirvana. It finally makes it possible to reliably set programs for a recording device. I love it!

+The fan is whisper quiet.

+The manual warns you that high speed burn will be louder than normal. For me it's not bad. The high speed burn usually sounds like someone running water in the sink, with loud portions sounding like an electric shaver.

-In some disappointing passages, the manual points out that although this unit is "compatible" with 16X recording speed disks, "this is not the copy speed." (However, in many cases it can get better than 16x speed if you record at lower quality.) The manual also points out many other limitations such as: you can not record to the SD card, movies can not be played from the SD card, the Firewire port can only be used with digital video equipment and not computers, DVDs are copied to the hard drive only in real time, the advanced feature "flexible recording" fits the highest quality footage possible filling all DVD space but only burns in real time, the system is not smart enough to juggle overlapping record programs and will just drop earlier programs even if there is only a small overlap, it can not play DIVx files while recording other programs, it can not play still pictures while recording other programs, you can not rename/delete/edit/divide titles while recording other programs, it will drop scheduled recordings if you have the unit busy editing photos, finalizing the high speed burn may take four times longer than estimated on the finalize screen HUH? and various other limitations. I don't want all that...just make it work!

-Multi-tasking challenged. You can't edit any previously recorded tracks, not even renaming them, while the unit is recording. You can't even watch tracks while high-speed burning a DVD with finalize, which is silly, since you can watch without finalize. What's in this thing, an 8080 microprocessor? During high speed burn with finalize it won't even play TV from the tuner! This is a serious limitation for me, greatly reducing the utility of this expensive device.

-Copies DVDs to the hard disk (HDD) only in real time and with loss of a generation. The Pioneer DVR also copies in real time, I assume also losing a generation. I think what they are doing here is playing the DVD and routing its signal through the analog circuitry to allow any copy protection scheme on the DVD to confuse the input circuitry and cause that brightness fading in and out and color shifting. This is another serious limitation for me since I like to consolidate my home movies and etc.

-Will not pause live TV! Instead you have to start recording and then chase playback. That's an odd oversight on Panasonic's part and a sorely missed feature.

-When you divide or edit a track you have to do it in a small preview screen. That's silly, sacrifices a lot of usefulness, and so needless. They sacrificed screen space for useless stuff, including a useless title bar at the top, another one on the bottom, useless edit/divide preview windows, and huge on screen buttons for "divide" and "preview" operations. I like to edit and divide my programs while watching them, but since Panasonic has a special screen for editing/dividing, where the program is shown only in a small preview window, I have to view my program once, then go back and edit or divide it later. If you edit much video you know that editing time is a big problem, e.g. another reviewer mentions fifteen minutes to edit the commercials out of a one hour show. If you record many shows, that's hours of editing. So a needless time waster like this edit/divide screen is a problem. For me, this needless limitation is a fatal flaw. Today I had to bite the bullet and watch America's Funniest Videos in the preview screen because I just can't afford to watch a one hour track twice to get my edits. Also another problem, the system recomputes your track location with each edit. That's bad because it makes it impossible to have any idea of an edit decision list (EDL), where you might jot down approximate times of things you want to save or cut. Because it recomputes all times with every edit, what used to be at the one hour mark of your program will change.

-Does not show program length nor time remaining while viewing a program. The current track time is displayed on the front panel and available on screen.

4-2009 Update: The Panasonic has served me well for years under heavy use. Largely it works perfectly. However, it has developed a few glitches:
The unit sometimes, and way too often, aborts scheduled recordings. It starts recording at the scheduled time, then stops after 8 seconds. The error log simply says "recording was aborted." There is no explanation or fix from Panasonic (other than sending your unit in for service). I have found threads on the internet complaining about this problem but no explanation or fix. It's pretty much a fatal glitch, obviously.

The DVD drive can no longer finalize DVDs. I have found threads indicating that the spindle in the unit gets dirty and dismantling and cleaning the unit can solve the problem. Can anyone tell me why finalizing has to be so difficult and error prone?

The remote only lasted three years before some of the buttons now don't respond well. That makes a big difference in pleasure of use.

The fact that this unit disables many functions while its recording has greatly reduced its usefulness, as I mentioned in my review.

Panasonic has stopped making these hard drive DVRs-so there's no hope for continuing firmware updates.

The end result is that if there was another attractive option to try, I'd try it.

PROS: (1) This DVR is good for the money. (2) It has high quality recordings, (3) allows 20 timer entries, (3) and 80 hours of shows. (4) It allows me to watch recorded shows while it's recording something else. (5) It also plays back various AVI videos I tried putting on a CD. (6) Of course it also lets you pause rewind and fast-forward live TV. (7) Finally, while browsing your list of recorded shows, a tiny video plays from the first few seconds of each show. This helps when you're not 100% sure about the recording. (8) There are a few video editing features too. You can split a show into 2 with just a few clicks.

Contrary to other reviews, my unit does not "freeze up" at all. Also, if you name a weekly timer entry, that name IS used in the recording made. Someone mentioned he can't find VCR+ codes. If you want to use them, just look them up at tvguide, yahoo TV, or other websites.

CONS: (1) After using it a few times, it is pretty simple to set up a show and record. However, I have to say the user interface could have been simplified a little. For example, to select from recorded shows you press HDD. Yes it means "hard disk drive," but they could have called it something like "My Shows." The on-screen display uses a thin font that may be hard to read on a small TV. (2) The buttons on the remote are tiny. I don't mind, but some people might. (3) When naming a recorded show, you can use a keyboard that is displayed on the screen which is nice. However, when naming a timer entry, you must cycle through letters with arrows keys. It would be better if the keyboard were always available. (4) It can do something annoying while watching a recording. If you have a timer entry starting while you are already watching a show, the timer interrupts what you're doing. It switches to the channel it needs and posts a note that a timer is about to start. Once it does you then have to go back to HDD and start watching your show again. This seems like a bug they could fix in a later model. (5) It allows you to plug in a USB drive, but only lets you view photos and music files on the USB. This is odd, because if you insert a CD or DVD, it recognizes video, music, and photos.

For a remarkably low price, compared to other DVD recorders with similar capacity HD drive, this Philips model produced exceptional results. As stated by other reviewers, playback using the SP (2 hours on DVD-5) brings true the meaning of the 70's slogan "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" Of course now, it is "Is it live or is it Philips". On a non-HD TV display, I cannot tell the difference between a live feed and a SP recorded playback. Actually, even at LP (4 hours on DVD-5) the difference is still hard to distinguish. Playback on SLP (6 hours on DVD-5) is very decent as well, not as good as HQ-VHS but quite viewable. I have two other DVD recorders, a Sony DVDirect and a cheaper iLO and both
produced sub-par SLP recording compared to this Philips unit. Worst of all, they made recordings that skiped or stalled when playing back on other DVD players. That is not the case with SLP recordings from Philips.

This is not to say that the machine is perfect. I now have the unit for about 3 months and there are some minor
issues with it. Over the 2007 New Year Twilight Zone Marathon on Sci-Fi, I dumped 5 DVDs of the shows using SLP mode. Four of the 5 discs played back well. One of them simply will not read after finalization. The disc would keep spinning and locked the recorder which needed
to be powered off. It would not read on several other standalone DVD players and while PC based DVD players recognized the files and played audio, no video was available. To be honest, I have yet to come across a DVD recorder that yielded 100% success in recording
to DVDs ... be it data or video files on data recorders or on video recorders. Isn't it strange that you can get 100% success on VHS recorders (assuming that the is nothing wrong with the transport mechanism) but on digital recorders you cannot say the same.
Some discs would not read at all, some reads but skips, some appears okay but has some pixelation showing up on a frame or two ....

Returning to the unit under review, there were further occasions, when fully recorded DVDs would not finalize. It would not permit me to navigate to the menu finalize the disk. Although it would play back, there were no chapter markers at all (default was set to 5 minutes) and so viewing that DVD was a chore. As a result, optical disk recording success rate is roughly 90%. Kind of bad when you think of it, but then again, experiences with other recorders were worst. Despite the low success rate, I am still very enamored with this recorder.

Another quirk I noticed is perhaps a fault of the firmware. Even with the latest firmware (R19.10), the machine would occasionally think that it has only 30 minutes of recording time left on a DVD when it is paused and re-started even though it really has a few hours left. Because you know that it has more than 30 minutes of free space available, you are lulled into thinking that only the read out is incorrect and the recording will proceed beyond 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the recording does actually stop after 30 minutes, so if you had walked
away and not paid any attention to the information displayed, you would have caught only a half hour of programming. The way to correct this aberration is to pause the recording and re-start it again. More often than not, this pause/re-start sequence would correct the remaining time read out....of course then, you would have lost several seconds of program material.

The DVR is simple to use with fairly instinctive menus. It plays DivX files pretty flawlessly, from ones made several years ago using DivX 4 to ones downloaded from DivX's Stage6 show case. A some what obsolete feature is programming using VCR-Plus technology.
It really has seen its days. VCR-Plus code is no longer listed in our local newspaper's TV guide and with frequent
changes in channel line ups, it may be best just to program it manually. A further improvement would be
a battery to keep current time or time synchronization through the cable network. Thankfully, timer programming is preserved after
power is lost.

In summary, for those that do not own a DVR or Tivo and are thinking of getting a DVD recorder, a word of advice...spend a bit more, actually, 3x more, and get one with a HD drive.....it is so so so much more convenient to just hit the record button at the spur of the moment without
sticking in a blank DVD....it is well worth the extra cost. You can record to the HDD while at the same time dump recorded
HDD material to a DVD. Now that's parallelism. Philips have a good thing going here and perhaps a firmware update in the future would fixed the remaining time flaw.

I have had this machine for two months now. This machine is quite decent and easy to use. Once you recorded something to HD, transferring it to DVD is very fast - probably 5x as fast as real time.

The software has a few bugs still. It sometimes says "DVD is full" when it is blank.

One major issue I have with this machine is that when you transfer from Mini-DV camcorder, it does not recognize the time stamp (which shows the time and date of your recording). However, when you use the (analog) Video output from the same camcorder instead of the mini-DV digital output, the time stamp shows up again. This to me is a significant deficiency which must be fixed in a future version. I called Philips tech support a few times about this, but they keep brushing me aside by saying that I did not operate it correctly. But I am actually well educated...

This machine does not allow you to see slow motion of your recording at all. It's pretty surprising.

Overall, this machine is still a work-in-progress. Hopefully future versions will be much better.

Sometimes with new technology, you overlook some little problems. This unit has too many to deal with. No chase record, the YES function is something you pay for. Can't use many characters to title something. Very slow to start up and load. Not consistant in playing disks. On occasion the unit will completely freeze up and stop working. You have to unplug it to get it going again. And....where the heck is the "MENU" button?? I just hated the Sony unit I have, and I loved a Pioneer unit I also have. But, I wanted the hard drive and the Philips was in stock. Oh Lord, what was I thinking? Stay away from this unit. Clunky and disappointing.

I bought this almost three months ago and I am already packing it up and shipping it away, marking it my 3rd or 4th DVR that is not what I was looking for.

First off, the remote design is pretty simple and very easy to get the hang of, but I will complain that there isn't a menu button so when your watching a dvd the only way to get back to the menu is hitting DVD and letting it reload. Not a big thing, but it would still be nice to have a menu button.

There aren't any TV listings so you have to program everything in yourself instead of clicking and go, which is a real bummer.

The quality of its recordings, however, I found top knotch and very nice looking. The menus are pretty straight forward and look the same as most DVR's do.

Unfornetly, you can not rip anything from DVD to your HD. But it is very easy to burn things onto a DVD.

The two biggest problems I had with this DVR though, which made me decide to not keep it, is that during several recordings, where it would show the audio and picture fine, when watched later the audio was out of sync. It didn't do this on all of them and it didn't happen often, but it did ruin about 5 of my videos.

But what completely sealed the deal to take it back was that I have to unplug this thing every single week. I will be flipping the channels, or hit my HD button and the entire unit would freeze. The remote and even the power button on the unit are no help so the entire thing has to be unplugged from the wall and plugged back in.

My advice? Keep looking for another DVR.

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.

When I bought this unit, I was so overwhelmed with the various features on all the DVRs out there that I simply went with this one because it could be purchased at Walmart. The trouble with buying DVRs is that the reasonably priced ones (aka, below $500) all have unique pros and cons, and you can never get one that satisfies all your needs.

I've had my Philips 3455 for 7 months now and haven't had any problems. For those worried about the fan noise, I can barely hear it on this unit. I like how quickly shows can be viewed via the hard drive, but I think the DVD burner could be designed to go a little faster. I'm a little frustrated that you cannot watch a recording in progress that is started by the timer--Philips could honestly come out with a downloadable fix for that. However, you can rewind recordings in progress if you've manually started the recording.

Overall, I think this unit was worth the purchase. If you're going for a DVR, go get the really nice ones ($1000++). However, for a lower-budget individual, this unit may be right for you.

After reading all the reviews of this product, my expectations weren't very high at all. However, when I received the unit and installed it, I spent only about 1 hour figuring out the remote and setting up all the features. Very user friendly. I have been using it daily now for about a month, transferring home movies over to DVD, recording TV and watching DVD movies (I have an expensive JVC DVD player hooked up also, but have yet to find the need to turn it on.) The Phillips 3455 does exactly what it says it does and has exceeded my expectations so far. The only problem I have experienced (once only) was that after leaving the unit on for a couple hours w/ the screen saver on, the unit froze and I had to unplug it.

This appears to be a common problem with this unit. It is very annoying! DVD will continue to play, but no buttons will work (including power button), so I have to unplug and reboot. Remote is absolutely horrible! I would highly suggest you stay away from this unit.