RCA DRC8300N DVD Player/Recorder and VCR Combo

by RCA

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 20 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B0002ARL3C
• Item model number: DRC8300N
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,377 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Incorporating DVD recording, progressive-scan DVD playback, and a 4-head hi-fi VCR, RCA's DRC8300N offers numerous features to enhance your viewing and recording. The player/recorder gives you a choice of recording your favorite television shows and home videos straight to DVD or to VHS tape. It stores digital video in high-quality MPEG2 and encodes audio in space-saving MP3. For playback, Scene Again instant replay accesses previously viewed DVD or tape segments in 10-second increments, and a 30-second "advance" function lets you skip ahead to preferred scenes on either DVDs or tape.

With just a couple button presses, you can transfer your home videos from a VHS tape directly to a DVD with no cables to connect, no levels to set. More sophisticated editing is also a snap with programmable tape playback, letting you select only those scenes you want to copy before recording to disc. You can even split titles or hide unwanted chapters after recording the content to a DVD+RW disc.

The RW format offers numerous advantages. These discs can be played in most computer DVD-ROM drives and DVD players, and you let you append, edit, and overwrite video right on the discs themselves. This means you can record video using the DRC8300N and record data with a PC drive, all on the same disc. There's only one recording mode for both video and data, and the finalization time for a DVD+R is the fastest of all DVD formats.

Special features include DVD title and chapter creation for easy access to recorded materials; chapter hide/unhide, which lets you skip playback of selected sections of a recording; text title labeling; user-selectable disc write and title-write protection, and quick disc erase. Recorded discs will playback on most DVD players, and the unit itself plays all DVD and audio CDs.

More than just a recording device, however, the DRC8300N is also a first-rate media player, offering MP3 music file decoding and Digital PhotoView, which displays JPEG files (from recordable CDs only) in a rotating slide show format--with MP3 playback during the slide show.

And, whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DRC8300N is ready to deliver the full potential of prerecorded DVDs. Progressive scanning, called 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.

An onscreen DVD library stores up to 400 titles so you can easily sort and locate any title you've recorded using the DRC8300N. You can even find the discs with the most available blank space for new recordings. The onscreen keyboard makes it easy to create and edit program names for all your personal recordings. Choose from six recording modes, from 1 to 8 hours, while SmartRecord automatically adjusts the quality of the recording to fit the available remaining space.

Other features include S-video inputs for simple recording and playback from camcorders, a time-base corrector, and digital noise reduction circuitry, which eliminates picture jitter and even reduces noise from videotape playback to significantly improve the quality of recordings from videocassette recorders or camcorders.

Easily integrated into an existing home theater, the DRC8300N includes a Dolby Digital and DTS-compatible optical digital-audio output, 2 composite-video inputs, 1 composite video output, analog audio inputs and outputs, an RF coaxial input/output, and a component-video output.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too bad I thought it was great but it's not!, October 8, 2004

By 

D. Johnson (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: RCA DRC8300N DVD Player/Recorder and VCR Combo (Electronics)

In my orignal review I was in love with this unit. Last week however the unit started freezing up while recording. I would unplug the unit and reset it and it would work fine and then for some reason it would lock up again. Finally, it locked up completely just because I tried to open the dvd door while in the TV mode. Not a good sign. I am returning the unit. May look at the new Sony combo.


Original review below:

I could not imagine a more straightforward way to record from VHS, Satelite or even your camcorder. I use the one remote to operate everything, including my TV, Direct TV and of course the DVD/VCR. So far it plays my home made and purchased DVD's as well as my photo cd's. And it has recorded wonderfully from my Direct TV. I am using S-video cables for my connections so the picture is clear and bright. My only regret is that I can not plug in my digital camcorder using a firewire port and will have to rely on S-Video only.

The manual is clear and concise and the onscreen menu is a breeze. I was up and running in about an hour and that was only because my unit was in an entertainment cabinet which does not make things easy to connect.

It is funny to me how these reviews can vary so much from one reviewer to the next. I would recommend this to even the most electronically handicapped. You are guided every step of the way by the manual, or by the onscreen instructions.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A good idea but...., October 13, 2004

By 

video addict (PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: RCA DRC8300N DVD Player/Recorder and VCR Combo (Electronics)

A dvd recorder is a great idea and I would like to say this RCA is a great recorder but the truth is somewhat different. I purchased mine from a local dealer about a month ago. It records fine, the picture is great and the vcr in the same unit is handy. Now for the bad news. After the disk is recorded it needs to be finalized to be able to play in other dvd players. I am experiencing a failure rate as high as 3 out of 4. This is a big waste of time, and disks, as I have to try, try again and hope for the best. My dealer tried to help me but didn't have much experience with the dvd recorders. RCA is no help! Their website is a disaster and out of date, it doesn't even list this model and they have been selling them since June. They doesn't have a 800 number for contact and as for emailing them remember keep the message short. They don't give you room to explain the problem. If I knew then what I know now I would have researched a lot more brands and would probably brought something else. BUYER BEWARE.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your $, January 5, 2006

By 

Nonesuch Explorers "sizhao" (Too Close To L.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: RCA DRC8300N DVD Player/Recorder and VCR Combo (Electronics)

This will teach me to read the amazon.com reviews before buying anything. This unit refuses to read discs (commercial and handmade) literally nine times out of ten. I am a West Wing addict like one of the previous reviewers; I bought this because my old DVD player didn't want to read my West Wing DVDs and I figured it was time for an upgrade. I also test-drove it with The Ten Commandments and several other discs that I know for a fact are the right format and in good working order. Repeatedly, they digitized and froze up.

Using the DVD-RW disc that comes with the unit, I made a test recording last night by transferring a couple hours' worth of material from a homebrewed VHS tape. It played back fine; imagine my surprise tonight when I put the disc in and was first told there was a "disc problem", then that it was formatting the disc and erasing everything I'd put on it the previous day! Imagine if that had been something irreplaceable instead of a mere test recording.

I haven't even gotten started. I'm fairly tech-savvy and I do not expect to be spoonfed; however, I do insist that things work with a minimum of fuss. That there is no one-touch record feature for making DVD-R recordings straight from television, I can (sort of) understand; you have to take time to program in how long you want the recording to be, at what speed, &c., &c., &c. Maybe this is normal for DVDs. But you also have to do this for the VHS, because on this unit, everything is run from the menu. You can't just sit there watching television and make spontaneous, impromptu recordings (say, of historical moments such as a major newsflash) in which you decide where a recording begins and ends. You are not in control.

Did I mention the freezes? I've lost track; enough, perhaps, to start a new ice age. Take the disc out, wipe it carefully, put it back in, and after a bit of stammering the screen turns a gorgeous shade of green. Pull out the plug, put it back in, how many times do I have to do this? Fortunately, I still have my receipt.

Please, save your money and buy something that works.