Customer Reviews

RCA DRC8040N DVD Recorder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I believe RCA customers should seriously consider filing a fraud complaint, and/or class action lawsuit.

Like other consumers here, I followed the manual to the letter. This unit did not burn one CD successfully, but ruined 10 blank discs and I lost media I thought had been successfully burned, before I gave up. This unit is so bad, 4 out of the 5 designated RCA service centers in my area refused to service it, or said "exchange only", though exchange and refund are not covered by the warrantee.

The one place that did agree to "fix" the machine sent it to an RCA tech. When I picked it up post-repair and tested it at home, the machine froze, requiring a hard reset, within 2 minutes of powering up. Again never successfully burned a DVD, though would indicate the materials were in the "library" and something had recorded onto the disc. The repair shop concurred it was a lemon.

RCA finally agreed to replace the unit, and did so with their new DRC8060N model. The new model was just as bad as the 8040, right out of the box. (See my review under that unit).

Though it is less than 1 year from my initial purchase, RCA/Thompson refuses refund and requires another round with the designated repair place. Even the repair tech said to stay far away from RCA DVD burners (as well as the Toshibas), and pay extra to go with Panasonic or Sony instead if you want a technology which is actually ready for market.

The RCAs should not even be on the shelves, and the behavior of the RCA customer service people at the management/supervisor level indicates they know it-- their purpose is to wear out or wait out the consumer until the warrantee runs out. It is fraud.

Buyer beware! I purchased a DVD Recorder, RCA Model DRC8040N, [...]to record movies off of my Tivo. After returning the unit twice and receiving a brand new unit, I still don't have a functioning recorder.

The sad part is, I thought the new unit was working. I recorded about 20 movies over the course of a few months, and after each, I played back a few minutes to see if it looked ok. It did. However, the first time I tried to watch a movie (full playback), I discovered that the movie did not record successfully. Part way through the movie, the picture either freezes, skips large portions of the movie, or jumps around. I tried to watch a few more recorded movies. Same problem on all of them.
[...]

I purhcased this unit recently, with the idea of downloading from TiVo and at the same time eliminating my VCR. What a huge disappointment. I haven't even tried to record discs yet. I played some of my very clean CDs, some of which were brand new, and noticed a few skips and freezes. When I watch rented DVDs, the system locks up all the time, and skips huge portions of the content. I'm in the process of trying to return it, or get it fixed. But, if I can't, I'm just going to bash it in with a sledge hammer.

I bought this unit a couple of months ago, hooked it up, but could not get the remote to work with it. I then emailed RCA and the seller(glynns16) and never heard from either company, not even an automated reply.

The rating system here won't let us go zero stars. Too bad. This deserves negative stars, actually. The only thing worse than this unit is the customer service from RCA. I bought two of these units from a Warehouse-Type Club, one unit for the upstairs and one for down. The downstairs one skipped chapters, refused to play brand new DVD's or simply locked up tight. This went on for months. The unit is total ca-ca doo-doo. Don't even think about buying one. Then comes the RCA Customer Service Shuffle. RCA, GE and Proscan are all owned by Thomson Electronics which is no more than Thomson Pharmaceuticals, a French drug company that bought those three companies. Thomson seems to know exactly nothing about electronics and less about customer service. I hand-carried the defective unit to a local Authorized Service Center. The runaround began. A part was bad. The part was ordered. The wrong part arrived. Part ordered again. Part arrives broken. Part ordered again. No parts available anywhere in the country for a 5 month old unit. They say they'll send a new unit. More than a month later new one arrives at service center. Outside box is in perfect shape. Inside box is smashed. Unit is tested and found to be non-functional. They put a smashed-up box in a good box and shipped an already broken unit. I haven't yet mentioned that the whole time this was going on I logged literally hundreds and hundreds of long distance calls to them because they have no 800 number. After two and one half months had gone by altogether since I'd dropped it off, another new unit finally arrived. I took it, unopened, as well as the other one I'd bought back to where I'd bought them and they gave me my money back. I went to Best Buy and bought two Panasonic DVD recorders for 10 bucks less apiece. They've been working flawlessly ever since. NEVER buy ANYTHING from RCA, GE or Proscan! NEVER!! Unless you enjoy banging your head against a brick customer service wall for more than two and a half months.

Although it seems to be pretty well panned by most of the other reviewers of this unit, we just bought two of them last week (2 TV rooms and all). They were the last two units on the shelf and $150.00 each, and so far they've been great! The TIVO'esk pause, and replay live TV buffer of the hard drive is really the best feature for us. We've recorded several TV shows via the timers and that's worked fine also. I can only think that the units bought in '05 and mid '06 had "issues". Nice looking unit, ours are all black and not like the photo in the sales add here. Easy to use on screen menu, and the varibles of the recording modes are good too. Only problem that has sometimes happened (on both our units) is sometimes after using the time delay the picture will still stay a few seconds delayed. If that happens we now know to go to "menu" and back to "watch live TV" to fix it. Just pressing the "live TV" button on remote doesn't fix it. Can't 'skip' commercials, but you can fast to really fast forward through them. As with so many things you buy now a days, the manual isn't an awful lot of help past the ultra basics of operation and setup. Comparing the different brands that are similar to this one for the price this is we feel a really good value if you're looking for this type of replacement unit. We had a DVD recorder poop out on us and so when we went shopping for a replacement and saw this unit at the store and at that price we said why not! And bought two of them!

I have had this Recorder for over a year....I did find that it will not record to the 1x 16x disks, but only the 8X..Since I have had this, I have recorded plenty with about 2 coasters...So If you can't record, Please make sure that you disks are 8x....I just love this....I have had a few freezes on watching rentals, but dvd's do skip when other people rent and don't take care of them...All prerecorded bought new have played perfectly....So, no problems so far!!!

Why buy a DVD recorder without a hard drive when for the same (or lower) price you can purchase an RCA DVD recorder with an 80 Gig HD (#DRC8030N)?