Samsung DVD-R130 DVD Recorder

by Samsung

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 17 x 9.6 x 2.3 inches ; 4.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 8 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: B000EHODY8
• Item model number: DVD-R130
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,344 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #81 in Electronics > Televisions & Video > DVD Players & Recorders > DVD Recorders

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Samsung's stylishly black DVD-R130 puts the power, quality, and convenience of digital video recording and playback at your fingertips. The stylish, slender component stands less than 2.5 inches tall but delivers everything from convenient DVD recording (write-once DVD-R and rewritable DVD-RW) to progressive-scan video and playback of MP3 music and JPEG digital-photo files. A front-panel DV (FireWire IEEE 1394) input enables you to connect the family video camcorder and edit and record footage directly to a DVD disc--all via a single cable and without losing image quality. The EVQ (Enhanced Video Quality) feature provides sharper images and truer color reproduction for both movies and home videos. EVQ reduces pixel noise produced during digital signal processing, mitigates the cross color phenomenon occasionally produced by separation of Y & C signal.

You can program recording via the timer, or choose easy one-touch recording (initiating playback at 30 minutes and adding 30 minutes with each additional press of the button, up to the available disc time or 240 minutes, whichever is sooner). Chapters are created when you record your favorite TV show or video clips from a camcorder onto a DVD disc. The chapters are automatically created, which eliminates wasted time searching the whole DVD to find the right spot. Up to 99 titles can be recorded onto one disc. With the simple and easy edit function menu, you can delete, copy, rename, and lock, among other things. You can also create a playlist and edit video in a specific sequence.

It offers the following connection options:

• Composite video: 1 out
• S-Video: 1 out
• Component video: 1 out
• Firewire: 1 in
• RF: 1 in, 1 out
• Analog audio: 2 in, 2 out
• Coaxial digital audio: 1 out
• Optical digital audio: 1 out

Tech Talk
Component video (also called Y/Pb/Pr) features a three-jack video input, which provides separate connections for luminance (Y), blue color difference (PB) and red color difference (PR). This results in increased bandwidth for color information, resulting in a more accurate picture with clearer color reproduction and less bleeding than you would get with S-Video or composite (RCA yellow video plug) connections. You will need a separate RCA left/right audio cable for sound.

What's in the Box
DVD recorder/player, remote control (with batteries), printed operating instructions

Product Description

DVD-R/RW Recording

DV Input

EVQ (Enhanced Video Quality)

Progressive scan Output

Slim design (45mm)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Change the remote and it's fine, June 1, 2006

By 

I. Gross Georg "imgeorg" (Edmond, Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung DVD-R130 DVD Recorder (Electronics)

I was attracted to the Samsung R130 by the price and sold on the name. It's a name-brand machine that's being sold at the price of a no-name import, and I think the Samsung name gives it the promise of being reliable for as long as I want to keep it. I have a three-year-old JVC DVD player which I love, but it doesn't record. (Why not a JVC recorder? I would have in a heartbeat, but JVC doesn't make one in this price range.) Also, I absolutely love the slim line and the color. The Samsung's finish is classy and is either black or very dark gray depending on how the light hits it. I love it because it matches the rest of my simple set up, a JVC TV with rabbit ears, my DVD player, and a Panasonic VHS recorder, all of which are black. Most DVD recorders I've seen are very bulky, but the Samsung is only a hair taller than my JVC NBK50 player and an inch less deep. I do think its interface isn't as "friendly" as the JVC's, meaning there's no "hello" when you turn it on, and there's no comforting and adjustable blue light, but the starkness of it isn't something I can't live with.

It must be told that the Samsung has a HORRIBLE remote control that cannot control your television set. I found myself juggling remotes, which I hate passionately. Recording isn't that difficult once you figure out where all the damn buttons are, in fact the chapter selection is really neat. When you use DVD-R discs, you cannot edit so much. You can rename the disc and delete chapters, that's it. Therefore, I'm now looking for a good universal unit to control all my devices with.

Setting up was fairly easy, although I found out that there is an important difference between how a VCR connects to TV and how the Samsung connects. My VCR had only the two antenna connections and could transmit sound and picture to the TV. The Samsung won't do that; in fact the manual says audio and video output must be used. I wondered why this has to be, given both DVD recorder and VCR have tuners. At any rate, because of the need for an audio/video cable, the picture is as beautiful as that from my JVC player, and the sound is actually richer. I've lost my connection to my dvd player, though, because I had to transfer the Monster cable from the JVC to the Samsung.

Cable users should note that the manual has the cable box between the recorder and the TV if there are few scrambled channels, and between the cable box and the TV if there are many scrambled channels. In either case, it says you can't watch something else while recording through the cable box. Since I don't have cable, I don't have that problem.

Making recordings, at least, is very similar to working a VCR, but with a few quirks even so. It takes 15 seconds to load the disc, which is not interminable, but definitely must be planned for especially when doing timed recordings. I also noticed that sometimes if you delete a title or chapter, it doesn't register unless you first open the drawer and close it again so it can update the information. It also doesn't like for you to name a DVD before you've recorded on it, and if you use DVD-R like I do sometimes it doesn't understand that even after erasing everything on the disc, there's nothing on it anymore, and it tells you there's no more free space. So, if you've never done DVD recording before, be prepared to sacrifice a few DVDs in the process of learning. Buy a spindle of quality discs; I use Taiyo-Yuden.

Dubbing my non-commercial VHS tapes has been fairly straightforward. I find the two-hour setting, SP, the cleanest. I found the sound and picture transferred reasonably well, with no out-of-synch issues that I noticed so far. For off-the-air recording, say, 4 days worth of Oprah, LP is the best setting, although you lose some clarity in the picture. I would not record anything above LP unless it's the news or something where picture quality isn't that important.

Feature-wise, the R130 is really neat! After recording a couple snippets from the TV channels you go to menu, and there it plays a little preview of each chapter. You can set it to commercial skip, and set how much you want to skip, and I set mine to 30 seconds. I found the Samsung tends to run hot, so I put coasters between it and my VCR so that it can get plenty of ventilation.

I've only had the machine three weeks as of this writing, so I can't speak to longevity or reputation. I'm not one of those people who buys a lot of things, burns some stuff, then takes it back to the dealer or sells it, so I can't say there's anything better out there for my purposes. I don't see myself completely doing without my VCR, but I do see myself buying less tape than normal, and since I'm decluttering, that's a good thing.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Finally gave up and shipped this unit back to Amazon today, July 27, 2006

By 

Electronics Maven (Baton Rouge, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung DVD-R130 DVD Recorder (Electronics)

Confirming other customer reviews, finalized DVD-R discs recorded on this unit will not play on other DVD players. I recorded and finalized several DVD-R discs on this unit. Although I was successful in getting them to play on my PC, I has no success playing them on any other DVD player. Check the customer reviews on the Circuit City web site for this unit. Per one review dated 6/12/06, "Recordings will not play properly on other DVD players. Confirmed this is the case (and no fix) with Samsung tech support."

I also experienced a problem with the timer recording feature. If you set up several programs to record, the unit will record the first one and then power off. Even though the manual states that "When the start time is reached while the unit is powered off, the unit will automatically power on and start recording" my unit never woke up again to record the other programs. So if you plan on scheduling multiple programs to record, either plan on sticking around to power up the unit after each recording, or avoid this unit!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good price/value ratio, August 3, 2006

By 

Kimo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung DVD-R130 DVD Recorder (Electronics)

I have had this machine for several months now and I have to say that I'm fairly satisfied. It performs pretty much as expected and the quality of recordings is very good - both from TV and VHS. The only negatives (and reason for 4/5 rating) I have with the product is the fact that it doesn't play VCDs and it sometimes hangs if you press a number of buttons in succession or touch a button while it is initially trying to read a disk. The remote is not much worse than any others I have used - just have to get used to the button placements and functions. I have always used DVD-R/RW disks since they have historically been the most compatible so that was not an issue.

All the negative comments about players not recognizing the disks might be due to three things:

1. Make sure the disk is finalized properly in the Setup Menu, this allows other players to understand the information written on the disk.

2. Most new DVD Recorders seem to format disks as DVD-VR by default. This is great if you're planning to do some minor editing of the footage on the DVD Recorder. If you want the disks to be more universal, reformat the disk to the DVD-V mode BEFORE YOU START RECORDING (if you do it after it wipes whatever you already have), but you loose the ability to edit the shows (eg. take out commercials) unless you transfer the footage onto an editing program on your PC.

3. DVD-VR disks are hard to read on older DVD players (both standalone and PC). I had to buy a new Samsung Double Layer DVD-Burner for my computer so that I can transfer multiple recordings from DVD-VR disks. I could not do it with an older NEC Single Layer DVD-Burner, I could only import the first recorded show, and WinDVD would only play the last recorded show! The newer DVD-Burners should state in the specification that that they read multi-session disks which is what DVD-VR allows you to do.

So before giving up on this machine, try formating disks in the DVD-V mode, and make sure you finalize the disk using the Setup menu before playing it on other machines.