Customer Reviews

RCA DRC8320N DVD Recorder

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I should have known something was wrong when I saw a big stack of these at the store and none of the salespeople recommended them. I don't know if this thing actually records because it never worked. It seemed to overheat after I hit Record and shut off. In the process, it made coasters out of the discs. I did some research and these are actually manufactured by some schlock company in China. RCA just puts their name on it. I guess quality control is nonexistent. I took it back for a refund. I should write RCA and tell them to reimburse me for the discs it destroyed.

I bought this machine at a Meijer store, and the salesperson had no recomendation on this one versus a few other brands. I purchased it based on what the outside of the box said.

I thought it was easy to set up and I never even looked at the directions. I was able to transfer several tapes to DVD, both home movies and old VHS movies I own. They played back fine in this DVD player.

Soon I found that in some DVD players, the disks won't play at all. In other players, the DVDs paly but there are no chapters (which I put in) and won't pause, rewind, or fast foward. They only place they will play is in the machine they were made on.

At the time I wasn't sure if it was the recorder or the disks, and sadly I had to put the project aside for a few months. Now that I have again tried, I'm not sure I will ever get it to work properly. Unfortunatly I'm way passed the alowed time to take it back to the store. I'm feeling rather burned right now.

I am planing to contact RCA over this machine and my RCA Lyria mp3 player that only works half the time. Based on these two experiences, I will never again buy from RCA.

I used to own the previous model the DRC8312N, but the VCR was such poor quality I decided to purchase a DRC8320N. Not only is the manual impossible to understand, it took me from 1000 am to 4am to figure out how to work it. Mine had a malfunction that kept the disc tray from loading. Instead when the power was turned on the tray kept opening and closing by itself. When I pressed set-up on the remote the tray would open and close. The display on the screen would show "Input Rear SV, CH3, Tape Eject" I took it back to Wal-Mart for an exchange but this one did the same thing. I called RCA who couldn't help because my problem was not in their troubleshooting section. So they told me to send it back at my expense and they would either repair or replace it. I told them if the have an 8312 laying around to send that instead. Stay away from this unit at all costs. Get an 8312 if you have to.

I wanted a simple machine, but with high quality picture, primarily to convert home videos from VHS to DVD. The salesman in the store recommended the DCR8320N, stating that it is the latest. The machine looks good and the descriptions on the box were addressing my needs.
It took half a day to read through the manual, which is not great, but on par, and may be a bit better than manuals for similar machines, i.e., it was written in a reasonably good English. Installation and setup were OK, except for the Remote and Channel Search. The buttons on the Remote had to be pushed hard to effect functioning, and many times that resulted in skipping past the desired function. After long search for channels I got two that were OK and one with bad picture. Repeating the process and trying various things did not produce a better result.
The DVD playback picture quality was good, however, the picture kept breaking up with newer DVDs and on some the player was showing both the movie and portions of the additional features on the disk. I discovered that playing an old DVD cleared the problem temporarily. Then there were icons continually displayed during playback of newer DVDs, which were not easy to get rid of.
The picture quality of the VCR was bad, both with newer and with older tapes, as well as, with home videos. There were noises coming from the tape drawer when a tape was put in and removed, that sounded as scraping of a spring.
Aside from the bad picture, the transfer of VHS content to the DVD was trouble free and easy. Creating chapters and indexing was easy, except for the difficulty with the Remote, as I described above.
After three days of wrangling, I returned the machine.

WTF? If you push any button during some 'ongoing action', the disc is toast. Unplugging and re-starting is the only way. Mostly. I just love the poorly translated instructions. Old Low Norse into Chinese into American English apparently is a bad thing. I guess, ya' know, this whole technology is not done fermenting. Garbage-in = Garbage-out

Out of the box the remote didn't work. I tried different batteries with the same result - nothing. Then I let it sit for awhile and it worked for awhile - long enough to get past the initialization of the unit (it won't work until you get past the initial setup). Once again the remote wouldn't work so I tried the front panel copy button and that seemed work and so I waited for the DVD recorder to finish. I played the DVD in my player and was greatly disappointed with the product. I told a friend that it looked like the original AFTER the 100th copy. I repackaged it and returned it the next day. P.S. the instruction manual also gets a very low rating - reminds me of the level of work school aged children produce when they don't want to do the work required.

The firmware is toast, everytime I turn it on it wants to do the whole initialization thing, then it doesn't pick up any channels during auto-scan, it will only record to one DVD format, although the box claims many. When you get it home, and after you wade through the nearly incomprehensible user's manual, that's when you find out about the DVD format thing. This is, no doubt about it, the worst ever consumer electronics product I've ever bought. I'd send it back, but that would deprive me of the pleasure of taking a hammer to it.

OK, I'm not sure about my overall rating yet, as I just got this. So far, the hardest part has been figuring out the instructions and connecting the machine to my TV, which is an older TV, and it is not stereo; it took trial and error and guess work to figure out how to get the sound to work, and that I only needed to connect one audio output to make it work. My TV set up was a little different than shown in the manual, but I could not tell from the picture where the hook ups went on this unit. I happened to have some dvd discs around that are dvd-R. I wasn't sure from the manual if they were compatible, and what the difference was. I called up the help line. The rep said that + was prefered and automatically would finalize while the - would not. I asked if If coud finalize myself, and he said yes. But so far I don't see in the manual if this can be done manually on a dvd r disk. I'm trying out a vcr to dvd copy now, so I'll see what happens. I thought a lot of setting up was guess work. It would help a NON techie to be more definitive with more specific steps within the manual. Other than that, My TV picture has NEVER looked so good, even better than the dvd/vcr player I was using before this. I tried playing a vcr and it looks great. I haven't tried a dvd yet or other disk. If I have any problems, I'll report back. VCR's won't be around forever,so I'm not going to be too picky about this if I can actually convert the tapes I have to disc. I can't say yet if this is useless, but I'll report back if it turns out to be. For now, if it works I'll keep it. If it does not, I have 90 days.

I purchased the RCA8320N DVD + VCR recorder four months ago. All of a sudden, it stopped working. The DVD in the player is stuck, the VCR tape is stuck, the screen reads, "Please Wait". I've unplugged it several times hoping that would reboot something but to no avail. When I called the RCA folks, they told me I would have to send to the Service Center or take it to my nearest RCA Authorized Dealer. I cannot believe I have to pay shipping for this thing and only having it for 4 months. I am sure if I take it somewhere or send it, they will try to charge me a boatload for this piece of junk.

Don't buy it. You'll be sorry if you do.

RCA DRC 8320N - DVD recorder/ VCR comboI purchased this device several years ago to transfer VCR tapes to DVD. The unit was installed on a seldom-used TV, and was used less than 50 hours total - mainly for viewing DVD's and some of our VCR tapes. Every time I tried to transfer my home VHS tapes (no copy protection), there were errors and I ended up with unreadable DVD's. My archiving project went on hold due to frustration, and I delayed completion. Finally I vowed to complete the VHS to DVD project and the unit quit completely. It also started to jam with tapes in and finally died with a tape inside. It would not power on (nothing but a faint ticking noise inside) - no display - nothing. I pulled the cover, checked the fuse (it was fine), and tried to figure out why it would not power up. Tape still stuck - no luck, manual of no help - RCA of no help - turned to the internet for potential solutions. Came upon this thread and it confirmed my suspicions. Thomson Electronics should be ashamed and embarassed by this product - I had a large RCA camcorder for years that gave good service, but as with most trusted brands, they kept the name and cheapened the product to make a quick buck. This is my last Thomson purchase - there are still plenty of good electronics manufacturers that maintain some level of quality before they allow a product to be sold under their name - I would suggest anyone considering purchase of this unit to try another brand.