Customer Reviews

RCA DRC8030N DVD Recorder with 80GB Hard Drive

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I purchased this DVD recorder about a year and a half ago, I was very skeptical about how well it would perform. I have had problems with previous RCA products, however, the price on this unit was just too good to be true. Boy have I been glad I purchased it. This recorder has far exceeded my expectations. It has almost no delay when you hit the record button. It accepts many different DVD disk formats. Hard drive recording and program transfers from the hard drive to a DVD disk have been flawless. It takes a while to learn to use the unit. It is a little complicated but the effort will be worth it. The Remote is well designed and works very well. There are several record quality settings which can allow a lot recording on a DVD disk with just a little loss in picture quality in the higher compression modes. At any rate, I would highly recommend this recorder to anyone if you can find it. Mine has been a real winner. It is still performing flawless and I have recorded hundreds of hours of programs with it. If this recorder were to quit today, I would say that I got more than my money's worth from it and I would definately buy another one just like it.

I bought two of these units...one for home and one for work. I love them with all my heart. If it ever becomes legal to marry inanimate objects,

these will certainly become my first two wives. (with pre-nups of course)

I highly recommend these to replace your current VCR and or DVD recorders.

The hard drive is the key component and makes it tough to keep from buying. At the price I got these refurbished units...they are virtually disposable. Buy as many of these things as possible.

I've had this unit about a year and a half and it has filled my simple needs quite well - recording films not now or ever likely to be on DVD to the hard disk via timers - since the films I want to see often come on in the dead of night or while I'm at work - and copying those films to DVD if I decide they are good enough to keep. You can even edit out commercials if necessary via the "Hide Chapter" option. I have noted a few problems, but these may be present on other DVRs:

1. Anything running longer than about 80 minutes or so records in "real time".

2. If you are around the border of that time - 80 minutes - the recorder will get confused and chop the film off before it is finished recording. Solution: leave some buffer at the end if you are around that limit.

3. DVD-Rs often have artifacts in them. I did not have this problem when I graduated to DVD+Rs as recording media.

4. One day I decided to record a big block of films in one 10 hour block. When I came home, the DVR had arbitrarily divided the recordings into two blocks, one that lasted about six hours and one about four. When I tried "chopping up" the six hour block of films into individual movies for recording purposes, the DVR got "lost" and the entire six hour block of movies was lost to me.

On the plus side, it is easy to use, gives great video/audio quality, and most importantly apparently is lacking that "feature" that many newer DVRs have of refusing to copy modern movies or any movie that plays on "either side" of one time-wise. If I've copied a movie made in 1930 that aired just after a modern film, this can cause problems.

I have owned this DVR for 14 months. It works okay most of the time. Sometimes it does odd things and has to be unplugged to reset it. My biggest fault with it is that it doesn't give you standard information about a DVD like how long it is and how much time is remaining. All it tells you is how long it has been playing. In spite of this I was basically happy with it until the DVD door stopped opening. Of course this happened right after the warranty expired. So now I can no longer record to DVD's. If you buy one I suggest also buying the extended warranty.

This is an update on my previous comments. Since the DVR was out of warranty, I figured I didn't have anything to loose by taking it apart and trying to see what was keeping the disc door from opening. When I opened it the door opened and I was able to remove the disc. I reinserted it and it hung up again. I tried another disc and it worked fine. It seems that there was an error when the burner wrote to the disc and it just kept trying to read it and wouldn't open. I discarded the stuck disc and it has been working fine since then. If I was to rate it again I would give it 4 stars.

I've had this unit for about a year now. Not bad for the price. Able to pause & rewind on the fly. Recording to DVD-RW is kinda slow. While recording to disc, you can not watch TV. The unit has frozen up on us a couple of times. When this happens, you're unable to turn it off and on to reset. We had to physically unplug the unit from the wall. Controls are easy to use. Timer is easy to setup. Good unit over all.

easily the best value for what's offered. when i first got it, it wouldn't turn off the subtitles...but a couple reboots fixed that. it has a great picture for recorded shows and dvd's.

I have a Sharp 46 inch 1080p TV......when I use my Sony DVD player, the picture is perfect 16X9......nothing chopped off on either side. but when I switch to the RCA, the picture is a little bit stretched. I've tried all the settings on setup. But this machine records like a champ!!! Recording to the harddrive or dvd is awesome. This puppy only seems to want to record with DVD positives.......but every DVD negative has recorded perfectly on my RCA. Other than the slightly stretched picture this thing is great. If u need DTS forget this machine. BUY BUY BUY

This DVR is simple. I Love the many wonderful ways I can use this unit. Recording the videos that I want to keep on DVD is simple, as well as recording, editing, and deleting to the internal hard drive. Connecting my digital camcorder and recording all of those home movies to DVD to send to family and friends is a plus...and the best feature is that I can store so many songs and albums to this unit to use as a jukebox. And at a great price!

Not wanting to pay for TIVO or our cable company's monthly fee for a DVR, I began looking for an alternative. Many google/amazon/ebay searches later, I found this dvd recorder. I thought the price was fair in case it didn't work...and a great price if it did! It's been great to record a show and delete it, instead of wasting a dvd/vhs!

The only negative thing I can find about this machine is that I'd love to buy one for our 2nd (but older) tv, but, it doesn't work through an RF adaptor (or at least I can't figure out how).

If you're looking for an inexpensive hard drive dvd recorder, try this one! I don't think you'll be disappointed!

This DVD recorder is terrible. I am on my second one in a year. It doesn't do half the things it says it can do, tech support is useless on this. The manual is very uninformative to say the least. In fact I was told by many people I have called on their 800# that they have just been bought out and have many angry customers. They got sold right before they were supposed to send me my new replacement DVD. I finaly got it but all the # I have for them aren't them anymore. In my opinion JUST STAY AWAY!. I wouldn't trust anything RCA. My whole experience has been a nightmare.