Customer Reviews

Philips DVDR3505/37 1080i Upscaling DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Phillips DVDR3505/37 has the best "digital tuner" picture quality out of the two other DVD recorders that I have tested with "digital tuners" (Panasonic and Samsung). The Phillips DVDR3505 produces an amazingly clear OTA digital picture on my old 27 inch Sanyo analog "box" TV using an indoor antenna. The Phillips 3505 and the 27inch TV are connected with regular "composite cables". The resulting OTA digital picture is amazingly detailed and clear with little or no annoying "dot crawl". Another important feature for me in selecting the Phillips DVDR3505 is that it allows you to choose "4.3 pan & Scan" to view OTA digital programs in full screen on a "box" TV (no black bars caused by "HD" OTA programs). In the 4.3 pan & scan mode the OTA digital picture is shown in full screen but is not distorted looking (no long and stretched faces) and the picture framing matches the full screen picture seen on my analog OTA TV in a side by side comparison. In addition the picture clarity/sharpness in the "4.3 pan & scan" full screen mode is superb! The same effect should be achieved when watching a purchased or rented "widescreen" DVD movie on your "Box" TV in the 4.3 pan & scan mode. The cons for the Phillips DVDR3505 are its slow channel change and slow recording set up. One additional problem I have experienced is that the unit looses its channel set up under certian conditions. At this point in my life, the quality of the picture that you see from your cable, Sat, or OTA programs is what is most important to me and my family when watching TV. The truth is that I have put up with poor reception using analog TV with "rabbit ears" antennas long enough, so the amazing picture quality of the Phillips is what sold me. The Phillips DVDR3502 wins hand down in that category and is the main reason that I sent the other more expensive feature rich DVD recorders back to the store. My family and I have been able to work around or forgive all of the "cons" reported about for the Phillips DVDR3505 and because we are basic users the Phillips meets our needs for recording OTA TV programs while providing a "Wow factor" in picture clarity when watching "real time" OTA digital TV through our analog "box" TV. Also, a "Wow factor" is achieved even when watching OTA digital program recorded on DVD using the Phillips DVDR3505. Image reproduction is excellent in two highest image recording modes. Before buying see if the features on the Phillips DVDR3505/37 matches your basic needs. If viewing pleasure has been lacking for OTA broadcasts then get ready to receive the "Best Picture" award from friends and family when using the Phillips DVDR3505.

I purchased the Philips DVR3505/37 refurbished (the new ones being either too expensive or unavailable) from J&R store through Amazon so I feel obliged to write a review about it because there were a handful of questions I would have wanted answered before I made the decision to purchase it. I was thinking I would, more than likely, have to return it, and lose some money mailing the damn thing back. But as it turned out, I didn't have to return it after all.

Keep in mind that I paired the device with a 42 inch plasma TV and connected the audio out through the coaxial output to my home theater receiver as well. I'm giving you this information because I think it is relevant for people with a home theater system with a free coaxial input or a free optical audio input (you can get powered coaxial to optical audio converters on Amazon if your receiver doesn't have a free coaxial-in but has an optical-in instead. That is what I did and the home theater receiver even displays the DTS or Dolby Digital logos when DVD sound from the DVR3505 is played on the home theater receiver and DTS or DD is selected through the DVD menu. In this case, the sound becomes 5.1 surround sound when watching movies with DD or DTS tracks. TV can also play the sound when watching DVD or TV since it is connected to the TV via an HDMI cable and HDMI cable is able to send both HD picture and sound. Without having the receiver turned on, you get a decent stereo sound on your TV and some TVs have better sound than others. Mine has decent DD stereo and SRS Surround that can produce an OK virtual surround sound but connect the unit to your home theater receiver to get great sound during prime time TV shows which are broadcast most of the time with 5.1 surround sound, or to watch DVDs with 5.1 surround sound tracks.

Others questions in Q/A format.

Is Philips DVR3505/37 an HDTV tuner?
Yes. Using the HDMI connection, it outputs 1080i (720p and 1080i are two different HD resolutions that most HD programs are broadcast today) signal, so that makes it an external HDTV tuner. It will also up-convert 480i and 720p broadcast and send them out as 1080i signal if it is connected to your TV via an HDMI cable.

If it is an HDTV tuner, why does the product description say it is an SDTV tuner?
Unfortunately, most people who make these products don't actually use them themselves. At one point, it might have been more marketable to call it an SDTV tuner since more people had standard televisions and let's face it, most TV stations were broadcasting in SD/Analog formats. And yes, it is an SDTV tuner if you happened to own an SDTV today. Let's say it is an external TV tuner with both SD and HD output capabilities.

I have an HDTV with an unused HDMI input, will this until connect to my TV via an HDMI cable?
Yes, it has an HDMI out. That will connect to your TV's unused HDMI-in.

My TV is a standard analog TV, will this thing work?
Yes. It has AV-out (Yellow video cable and the red and white audio cable a.k.a RCA cable). It will be sending out analog signal directly to your TV. You need not use a government coupon type converter box.

Will I need to make separate connections for DVD and TV?
No. Connect with whatever suits your TV and that connection is used to both watching TV and playing DVDs. Just one connection out from the unit to your TV for everything the unit does.

Will it display analog stations?
Yes. There is a DTV/TV button on the remote control to switch between analog and digital stations.

I have a 16:9 HDTV, how will my picture look like?
Great. Go to the unit's setup menu and set your TV type to 16:9. With your TV's remote control, set your aspect ratio to normal (or natural) and HD programs should now appear wide screen, at least during prime time. ***Important*** Most users have complained that the unit didn't record on 16:9 mode, or rather, it recorded 16:9 programs on 4:3 mode. This is not true in my case. Once you have set your TV type to 16:9, wide screen programs will be recorded the way they were broadcast. Programs broadcast with black bars on the sides of the screen will also be recorded with black bars. You might stretch your screen in case of annoying local stations that are in love with side black bars that ultimately could cause plasma screen burn in if you own a plasma TV.

If it can record shows on wide screen, why does the user's manual say the unit can only record on 4:3 mode?
Again, the user's manual is wrong. Probably written by some underpaid college intern. If your TV is 16:9, and you have set your TV type to 16:9 on the DVR's setup menu, then wide screen programs will be recorded in wide screen and 4:3 will be recorded panned and scanned, unless the station broadcast them with black bars such as letter-boxing and postage-stamping. In this case, it will record the shows with the black bars included.

Will my clock reset itself and record wrong programs overnight?
Yes. But go to the clock setting, set the time, and turn off auto clock setting and turn off daylight saving options. It will stop doing that until you lose power next time.

How much material will it fit on a DVD when recording TV programs?
High Quality (HQ): 1 hour; and Standard Play (SP): 2 hours. I am not going to bother with other lower settings that are supposed to give me up to 6 hours of recording time on a single disc. You might play around with it. Use a Rewritable disc so that you can reuse it again and again.

Will this unit connect with an external device such as a VCR?
Yes. There is one A/V line-in in the back and there is another on the front panel. The front panel also have a DV-in slot for your video camera.

Does the unit have component-out?
Yes, it has the Y/Pb/Pr out and audio stereo out for it. Component and HDMI cables are not included in the box.

Does it play DivX?
Yes.

Does it play DivX through a USB slot on the Front panel?
No. This until does not have USB slot like my two other Philips DVD/DivX players do. You can play DivX files after transferring them to a DVD.

Will it play DivX files that are burned on a DVD Rewritable disc so that I can delete them and reuse the disc later?
Yes! Burn your DivX files onto a rewritable DVD. Burn with 4x speed. I have no problem. I use a free program called IMG Burn and it formatted the rewritable DVD right before it burned them the first time the DVD was inserted into the computer. You might want to try that program. That burning software is amazing.

Will it give me 5.1 surround when I watch shows like 24 or when I watch DVDs?
Yes, if you have home theater receiver with a digital coaxial in. The unit has a digital coaxial out. This option will send 5.1 channels from this unit to your home theater receiver with a use of a digital coaxial audio cable. If your home theater receiver just has an optical-in, use a digital coaxial to optical converter. It works great for me as I mentioned earlier. I vouch for it.

I have a plasma screen. Will this unit give me ghost outlines in place of black colors?
Yes. It is a common problem with plasma TVs. I had crazy ghost images in the beginning when watching channels through this unit, especially when actors were wearing black color clothes. Go to the unit's setup menu and go to HDMI setting and change your color output from RGB to Y/cb/cr. It truly took care of that problem for me and I am very happy with it. If you have plasma screen instead of an LCD screen, and if you can live with it, reduce your brightness and contrast to 50 or less in order to avoid burn-ins or ghosting. Programs with black bars on the sides or top and bottoms also could cause ghosting in your plasma screen. If your TV allows you to change picture size (this is not an issue when watching HD 16:9 broadcast) use it to increase it until black bars disappear. Don't pause movies for longer than 20 minutes if you have your DVD screen saver disabled. If your plasma TV has picture shift option, turn it on. It is meant to shift the picture when it becomes static, preventing phosphor burn-in.

Will this unit record shows on a DVD?
Yes, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW. It will not record on CDs.

Does this unit have a hard drive on it to record shows?
No. You can only record shows on recording media mentioned above.

What does the record timer look like?
It allows me to pre-program 8 shows, that's it. There's no option for recording the same show daily, weekly, or anything. There are these 8 blank lines that show up when I press "timer" on the remote control, and I just have to punch in the date, time, channel, sub-channel, record begin time, record end time, and recording mode. You have to do this five times if your program is aired 5 nights a week. There is no option for programming something and then choosing "daily" option. The user's manual says something about repeating the program by pressing the side arrow key, but I realize that the user's manual shows the menu different from what I saw on my unit's setup menu. So there must be a couple of different models floating around under the same model number. You might get the matching one with the user's manual. I also got a different (probably worse) remote control from what was shown on the user's manual.

Does changing channels really take a long time?
Yes. It could take up to 7 seconds to change from one DTV station to the other. On my unit, it takes about 4 seconds. You might want to press the channel numbers on the remote control to jump channels. There is no previous channel option on the remote control, at least not on mine.

Does it really take forever to read DVDs?
No, I thought not. It takes longer than a regular DVD player, but it isn't as long as some of the reviewers are complaining about on Amazon.

Do I have to finalize the disc in order to play it on a different DVD player?
No. I put the disc without finalizing into a different DVD player and it played just like it would play any other discs. Some DVD players are pickier than others so try it without finalizing and see what your DVD player has to say. I tried playing the recorded show un-finalized using two different DVD players. Both played without a frown. Yeah!

Can you tell me other things?
Yes. The fan is quite noisy. You can actually hear it during audio-less moments when you watch TV or watch movies. Sort of like a laptop fan. I don't know if you are bothered by that kind of things. It is definitely worth mentioning. DVD pictures from HDMI look great on my plasma screen. Empty out your disc before going to bed so that your show is sure to be recorded on the empty disc at night. Don't rely on the unit to overwrite your existing recording.

Would you recommend it?
Yes. It has some flaws but it is great for what I needed to do, record programs that are aired too late at night for me to watch them. I am only recording one or two programs a day so I am not a heavy user so I am perfectly happy with this until. If you are thinking about recording crazy amount of programs, you might want to consider the one with a hard drive.

Are you happy with this unit?
Yes. I needed an external tuner for my older HD ready tuner-less plasma TV. The fact that it does that plus record shows on DVD RWs and plays DVDs makes this product perfect for me. This unit also gives people with analog TVs a DVR in addition to allowing them to watch DTVs without having to use a converter box.

Explain your 3-star rating. You said you are happy with it, right, so why not a 5-star rating?
It has a few, but significant flaws: a very-very user-unfriendly remote control that is absolutely difficult to see even for someone with a 20/20 vision; very out of place play/skip/ff/stop/pause buttons on the version of the remote that came with my unit; and a noisier than normal cooling fan. I give the product a generous 3-star.

Thank you for reading. Leaving a comment on the review if you have a specific question. I will reply, promise.

Update: As you can see below, someone pointed out that I omitted the fact that it does not have a built-in QAM tuner. Product says it has Built-in ATSC tuner and never claimed it has QAM tuner. It doesn't make coffee and clip your nails either. Should I have mentioned those facts in my review too?

Having said that, the reason I had no reason to mention the QAM part was that I do not have a cable running at my home. However, on the unit's menu, when you first do your channel scan, you have choices of cable, digital cable, or air to scan from. I don't know if that qualifies it as QAM. Not all of you might have this option since there are a couple of different firmware versions floating around under the same model. Even if the unit tunes cable channels, and your service provider uses two or three digits subchannel numbers, the unit won't be able to handle anything more that one digit subchannel number. For example, if you service provider has channel numbers such as 18.233, it won't display. Whereas it will display 18.2, 18.3, and so on. This was mentioned by another reviewer. I have not the opportunity to test it myself.

Please refrain from writing rude comments. I am not getting paid a penny to write this review.

The picture is wonderful. The features are terrific. The ease of use is astounding. FYI - I'm a James Bond fan and own a few titles. One of the movie channels had a Bond-a-thon a few days ago, so I decided to put my Philips DVD recorder to the test. I recorded one of the titles that I already own from the movie channel broadcast to my DVR. The next day, I recorded the movie from my DVR to a DVD. I then had my family watch the first 10 minutes from each movie on one of our other DVD players and, based upon picture, sound quality, etc., tell me which one they thought was the store bought version and which one was the recorded version. My wife and all three kids picked my recording over the store bought version of the movie. Truly remarkable. The primary reason that I bought the recorder is to build upon our DVD collection without having to fork over the big $ to buy the movies from the store (the HDMI connection and upconverting were icing on the cake). At $180 for the recorder and about $1 per blank DVD disc, the thing is going to pay for itself with 10 recordings and then it's all gravy from there. Also, I travel a lot and have about 80 hours of programming on my DVR that I never seem to have enough time to watch. Now I'll be able to burn those programs to a DVD and watch them on my laptop when I'm on the road! How awesome is that?!?!?!

Five stars for the Philips DVD recorder - no doubt. I had tried a few other DVD recorders before I found this one (including a tunerless Philips) - for most, I had paid more and received less. For those of you with complex audio/video setups, beware of DVD recorders that don't have a built in tuner. I don't need the tuner for OTA broadcasts, I need it to make my A/V life hassle free. I'm sure glad that I found this baby...

Accepts almost all media types, has lots of features, DIVX, HDMI with good upscaling picture quality, and the SD channels come in clear.
This recorder does have an integrated QAM tuner that allows free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by your cable provider. The instruction manual does not state this fact and neither does most websites.
The only down side is that in my area Comcast provides cable service and ABC, CBS, and NBC are on channels 86-431, 85-433, and 86-432.
This recorder's tuner only accepts two digits of the sub channel number. Therefore if you have three digits like in my area you have no chance of watching or recording any of those stations.
The digital channels I am able to get do come in clearly and picture quality is an A+ on recordings. If you don't have this problem in your neighbourhood then this is a great recorder for the price.
I did end up returning this unit for the Panasonic DMREZ27K because of the problem with the two digit sub-channel.

The Philips DVDR3505/37 DVD Recorder records ONLY in a 4:3 aspect ratio [full screen]. It will NOT record in a 16:9 aspect ratio [wide screen]. Rather, it chops off part of the picture on each end. I had wrongly assumed that it would record whatever was received through the inputs without modifying the aspect ratio. This information was not made readily available or I would not have purchased the unit. I found the info buried in a note box on page 38 of the User Manual. Otherwise, it is a pretty good recorder and has good video quality. But, if you are going to watch the DVD recording on a wide screen TV don't buy this unit. The lack of 16:9 aspect ratio recording is a deal buster for me.

I needed a new dvd player and decided to upgrade with a tuner to be ready for digital broadcasts next year. The tuner is excellent and I can't tell you enough how nice it is to actually see the ball in a baseball game. The picture was so good that I upgraded to a larger tv. I also like being able to "tape" in a clear, crisp format. The recorder is quite easy to use so I'm not sure where others have been having problems. I should note that I bought this at Wal-Mart. They originally sold me an open-box item, that was not sold as so. (The previous owner had left a DVD in the player-clue#1). The antenna hook-up on the first dvd-r was loose, and the channel changing was quite slow, 5-10sec. I returned it, and the new one has a 3-4 sec. channel change speed and the antenna input works fine. There are still many features that I haven't tried yet but timed recordings and viewing/playback have worked well.

Pros: Excellent tuner for OTA signals, great digital recordings, easy to use, also plays CD's well, great picture, allows OTA users to easily switch between analog or digital signals.

Cons: Does not equilize the volume so ads are way too loud, no universal remote, does not remember play-back times on DVD's or CD's and every viewing must begin from the beginning.

I was very glad to find what seemed to be a reasonably priced OTA digital tuner with a DVD recorder.
When it works, it works fine. BUT. . .
It does not always hold your timer recording info.
The firmware (dated 6/22/07) at the Philips site was already on the unit I have. It took forever (felt I had won a video game) to finally access the info about my machine to see that the firmware "fix" was already in and there was no fix.
I will live with it, but will check the recorder before each recording :(.

I tried two of these players, and they both had the same problem. It's very slow to act on navigation commands, like skip chapter, FFWD, etc. It got annoying having to wait for literally 5-10 seconds every time you wanted to go to a different spot on the disc. Other than that, the features are good. It records on both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, and the editing capabilities are nice. But I opted for a recorder that is also a good player, so I got the Samsung DVD-AR650. Both are at Wal-Mart, which means a good price, cheap extended service/replacement plan, and 3 months to return it. The Samsung only records on DVD-R/RW, so you have to finalize the disc before playing it on another player, but the menus and front panel display are much nicer than the Philips, and it plays discs without a hitch.

I was very impressed with recording quality of the Philips DVDR3505/37 until, unfortunately, it broke down and would not record anything. No problem, it was under warranty. These things happen. And that's where the problem began.

I phoned Philips Customer Service Tech Support to report the error message and was told that it could not be repaired but, since it was under warranty, I could send it back (at my expense) and receive a new recorder within 10-15 working days after they receive it.

Sent it back via FexEx ($58) and waited. And waited. Called Philips Customer Service. They never received it. Called FedEx. Philips did receive it. Called Philips and was told they did receive it but now it would be 30 days before I received the replacement. I had a fit, was transferred to a supervisor, and was assured that my new DVDR would ship promptly. Waited and waited again.

Called Philips again. Where is my DVDR? They sent it to the wrong address in the wrong state and it was returned by the shipper. Never bothered to contact me. Now it needed to go back into processing and it would be another 10-15 working days before I receive it. I strongly suggested that they send it sooner.

Bless Philip's little heart, they did send it sooner. Except it was not a new replacement but a repaired unit. I phoned to check on that and was told that "Philips reserves the right to replace defective products with repaired replacements" instead of the new one I was promised.

So, basically, my original could have been repaired right here where I live and I wouldn't have been without it for almost 2 months.

Great product, but the usual crappy customer support.

I bought this at Wallie World for $167 and was disappointed immediately. It's VERY slow to operate commands or read a disc. When you first load a disc it takes several minutes to format. When you record a program, it takes a minute or so to complete writing before you can access anything. Even entering the menu to select a recorded show to play takes too long. I've never seen a DVD player so slow to read data.

Worst of all was the time record function. It worked fine for the first couple of weeks and the quality was pretty good - though it certainly was not comparable to the original signal as some have stated. But soon we started getting a "Disc Full" error, even with a new disc in. Or a disc would work a couple times, and then suddenly say the disc was full even though we had one 30-minute recording on it in SLP mode.

I tried calling Philips customer service and was answered by a poorly-qualified customer rep. After about 30 minutes of her trying to give me different advice (much of which contradicted the manual and didn't work), we were either disconnected or she hung up on me (I honestly believe it was the latter). So I returned the device and got a basic DVD player for $47 that responds much, much faster than the Philips recorder/player. Then we picked up a digital recorder from our cable company that records 50 hours of video in HD quality to a hard drive and does SO MUCH MORE than the DVR and so much better. Finally, TV viewing is fun again!