Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-VR330 DVD Recorder

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

I've had this player/recorder for about 2 months. I found it at my local Ckt Cty for two-hundred twenty plus tax. I have recorded some of my older VHS tapes (Kung Fu stuff that is not on DVD and may never be) onto blank DVD-Rs and DVD+RWs. Both discs worked fine and I did not wait an inordinate amount of time for the discs to be finalized (maybe 2 minutes). The picture quality was just as good as the tape (no loss) as I expected. (I figure DVDs will last a lot longer than those ratty VHS tapes I had been keeping, that's why I transferred them.)

The recorder is supposed to handle pretty much any type of DVD media and it records at 4 different speeds for DVD. For VHS, it records at the standard 2 speeds (SP, SLP, EP). The manual claims slowest speed for DVD can save up to 8 hours on a standard single-sided disc; VHS can get 6 hours from a 2 hour tape (3X), just like other VCRs.

I have my recorder connected to cable and a powered antenna with a splitter. The tuner works fine for both sources, even with my cable source being split off for Internet. I have time-shift recorded using both disc and tape and was happy to see that works well, too. I recommend recording stuff with commercials to a VHS tape first since there is a record pause button that I like to use for eliminating commercials before I commit shows to disc. The chapter breaks for DVD are automatically set for every 10 minutes, but I wish there was a way to (on the fly) chapter stamp where you wanted to. You can edit chapters afterward, but it sounds too complicated and time consuming in the manual.

So far, I have had no reliability issues. Each time I have performed an action the player/recorder has worked as expected. I have also gone the other way and recorded DVDs to tape (mostly as a test, but also because there is no way to record from DVD to DVD). Note: I am not suggesting breaking the law, merely pointing out what is possible.

The player starts tape and DVD playback quickly and you can switch back and forth between VHS and DVD very easily. I sometimes record a TV station and watch a DVD at the same time, too. My only complaint besides the chapter thing would be I wish the DVD section played at least 3 discs since most TV series have 3 (sitcoms) or 6 discs (dramas) and I wouldn't have to change discs so often.

Update: Thanks to a question by a reader of this review I went back and tried my homemade discs in other players. Turns out the Samsung will definitely not make working copies of video recorded on 8x discs. The 4x DVD-RWs play fine, though. And make sure you've finalized the discs. This can be done later if you forget at the time you make the disc. Read and re-read that manual!

I tried a Sony RDR-VX511 for 3 months and found the DV input was flakey and it would not play DVD+R dual-layer made on my computer even though finalized and would play on my laptop, a Panasonic and also this Samsung. The Panasonic (forgot the model) will not record the second layer of a dual-layer until you close out the first layer! This is ridiculous if you want to record on a dual-layer. Luckily a small note on the box warns you of this but I didn't see it until I read the manual.

This Samsung works very well for me. The DV input works and as a bonus will send commands to the DV output on my Sony camcorder. Very handy for dubbing from the DV tape camcorder.

The other bonus I found was it controls my Samsung TV. It can be set for other TVs too, a real plus.

The only disappointment so far is the lack of an S-Video input on the front AV2. That would sure help dub from my Hi8 analog tapes. Too bad, I could have rated 5-stars otherwise.

One other worrisome point is that it takes forever to finalize some disks, my dual-layer for example. It goes to 95% for as long as nearly a half hour. The first time I thought it was frozen so I unplugged and restarted. The DVD seemed to play OK but this was bad. The second time, I just left it and started looking on the internet for any clues. Then all of a sudden after around a half hour it completed the last 5%. Very weird.

I will try to contact Samsung on this. I do not see any software update yet for this model. (You burn a DVD with a downloaded file and the player will update its flash memory..Good plus.

Layout of the remote is a bit crowded and the unit itself won't win any beauty contests but it's the best I've found for my purposes.

Since I make DVDs for some customers, I would like to think that I understand these type of gizmos to a certain extent.
Most of the complaints on the reviews were caused by customers who do not understand how the DVD burning process works. I can refute almost all of the complaints.
The quality of transfer from video to DVD is outstanding. I could not see any loss at all on my 37" television. It took all of a second for me to do it. I pressed the "to dvd" button. That is all it takes. DVDs do have to be finalized in all of these console units if you want to play the DVD elsewhere. Your computer burner/software likely does this automatically.
Like all high tech items, it has presented some interesting findings. DVD+R discs have to be initialized. The unit tells you what to do so this is easy. DVD+R discs seem to take longer to finalize but that could be due to a slower write speed on the DVD+R disc that I used. I do not seem to be able to pause a recording without flat out stopping it. If that problem continues, I will be upset. I suspect it is me not knowing what to do. Playback on a disc that has had recordings stopped goes much better on the Samsung than on other units. Using the SVHS input requires that you go into the menu and instruct the machine to use the SVHS input. I called Samsung and talked to a rep who did not know too much before finding what I needed in the pretty lenghty instruction manual. The manual seems OK....it is just...big. Accessing the A-B repeat function could be better, it could be worse. The remote is a good design except that the skip chapter button is 1/4" from the fast forward button. That is a matter of finger dexterity I suppose. If you transfer a DVD to video, the loss in quality is noteable. That is why DVDs are replacing video however. I like the fact that the highest quality mode allows for 1 hour and 14 minutes to be put on a disc. Better chance of putting an entire event on one disc with the highest quality. Also easy to use dual layer discs which almost double recording capability. Also plays SVHS tapes and I have a few lying around. I really like the function where a graph shows you how the tape is tracking in the Samsung. It automatically picks the best tracking and units are supposed to do that. But this machine shows you if your tape has tracking issues that require significant automatic adjustments. I believe the Samsung also allows manual tracking adjustments which is pretty awesome.
I bought the machine to mostly transfer old movies to DVD and I could not be happier with its performance in that critical respect.
I've only had the unit for a day. I wrote the review mostly to straighten out some erroneous complaints. It is incredily easy to use for dubbing video to DVD and that is what it is made for. Just remember that the disc has to be finalized if you want to play the disc in something beside the Samsung.
I think Pioneer likely makes the best DVD recorders. They are priced accordingly. I bought the Samsung because it is a bigger bang for the buck for me. This unit has several features that separate it from a unit simply made to make and sell cheap. It is for the person who can appreciate some quality features they may not have expected in a unit of this price.

I spent weeks trying to find a DVD recorder, and finally decided on the DVD-VR330. I'm very happy with the operation of this unit. I wanted to transfer our old VHS home videos to DVD, and the process is very easy, and it works very well.

Samsung is NOT known for their easy-to-follow instructions, so it takes some time to interpret them and you may need to experiment for a while to figure out exactly how to work all the features, but all in all, this is a very nice unit.

This machine plays DVDs great. It also records pretty well--so far I have only used it to transfer from my MDV camcorder through a fire wire. It ended up being a little blury no matter what recording level I used.
It does not read picture CD's very well as our previous DVD player did--it skips 3 or 4 pictures for no reason.
Also, I did have trouble playing the longer recorded DVD's on other people's machines. The short ones worked fine.

At first I loved this machine and gave it a 5 star review. Then I noticed that when you record a long program, after about 60 minutes the video goes out of sync with the audio. I've learned this is a common problem with this unit. The Samsung customer service people were of no help-one suggested I try a lens cleaner disc, the other said to try 8x dvd blanks instead of the common 16x discs I was using. Neither remedy did anything but cost me $25, so they said to send it for repairs -another shipping cost, plus the delay of waiting for it's return. And I'm almost willing to bet it will still have the same problem when I get it back. Other than that, it's great...
I got this unit because it was the only one that records on dual layer discs. My advice is to go with a different brand like Panasonic or Phillips.
UPDATE 7-16-07 Got the unit back after 2 weeks and just as I predicted, it has the same problem with the video/audio sync. They are now telling me to send it back for repairs again. If this sounds like fun, buy this unit. In fact, buy mine!
UPDATE 9-6-07 Got it back from the 2nd trip to the factory. The sync problem is better, but still not right, and noticeably worse with 16x media-the kind that's available. Try finding 8x-almost impossible but that's what works the best, even with 8x Maxell it's not totally in sync. I'm really sorry I bought this defective piece of junk.

I bought this unit back in October 2006 specifically to transfer my VHS tapes - with some over 20 years old - to DVD's. The copy process is really simple and the DVD quality is as good as the VHS tape, so I had no problem copying the 20 plus tapes to DVD. There is one restriction that I didn't know about - you cannot copy anything you taped off of television. This was new to me, but I think it is an industry-wide restriction. The DVD and VHS tape playback picture quality is also good, so I can say that overall this unit meets all my needs, and I have no problems recommending it to others.

There is one thing you need to keep in mind. When you copy anything to DVD you need to "finalize" the DVD before you can use it in other DVD players. This function is not automatic so you need to go back to the main menue to finalize, otherwise other players won't be able to recognize the DVD. To my knowledge this isn't unique to Samsung, but is true in any brand of DVD recorder you buy today.

Also, I chose Samsung because I have had no problems with the 2 TV's I have bought from them - one small CRT about 8 years ago and one DLP wide screen that I have had 4 years with no problems.

I have just been reading up on a lot of the other customer reviews here and it's now at least I know it's not me!

Like many others, mine worked for about a year (of course the time of the warranty) and then began not being able to read recordable DVDs. At first I thought the DVDs themselves might be faulty and even threw several out. After all, why would a major company like Samsung produce a machine that all of a sudden stopped working after a year? Several movies I had to watch on my laptop b/c it would not play.

I could finally, at times, get some of the discs to work, but literally after trying 15 or 20 times! Then they started not working for a lot of pre-recorded discs as well, and even discs I made on this very machine! I bought a whole box set produced by 20th Century Fox, but can I watch any of them on this machine? No!

I just burned a 2.5 hour movie from VHS to DVD+R (sometimes the plus-r's will not "initialize" correctly because they are "damaged" Bull! It's this machine that is truly damaged!) At any rate, when the movie was over I got the usual message after I pressed the stop button to wait. So I waited. And waited. And waited! Usually after 30 seconds or so the message disappears, but this one was on for literally 15 minutes! I could not shut the machine off or press stop. I had to unplug the damn thing and then it came back as a blank disc! I lost everything!

I just bought a new non-name brand recorder, that will probably be much much better. Tomorrow Samsung goes into the garbage and hopefully my new machine will never give me this problem.


To hell with Samsung and all of their products!

We've had this thing for a little over 8 months, and the more I use it, the more I hate it.

Don't get me wrong, it works and everything. It records to DVDRW and/or VHS tapes; however, the recording-to-DVDRW is screwed up -- the audio doesn't synch with the video most of the time when we've recorded a TV show, so it's practically worthless for that function.

It plays DVDs but takes forever to start up, and it takes forever to eject a DVD when I hit the eject button. "forever" being a wait-time of around 45 seconds, when I'm used to the other Samsung DVD player we had ejecting almost immediately upon pressing the button. I don't know what the stupid thing's waiting for!

The VHS player functions as expected, except the image quality kind of sucks for a 4-head VCR.

The user interface (on-screen display) reminds me that I'm using a device engineered by non-English speaking folks -- the English menus and messages suffer from poor grammar, leading to a product that appears to be low-quality. The interface also is not very easy to use.

As I said above, the device functions, just not very well.

We've owned this for just over a year (key information: the warranty is only good for 1 year). When it was working properly, it was fine -- DVD recording worked fairly well, and we were able to transfer several of our old VHS tapes and laserdiscs to DVD with little or no problem. The only issue for us at that time was that the sound was sometimes out of sync; most of the time, this was minimal, but sometimes it was glaringly obvious (usually when it was a very short event, like dropping something on the floor -- you would see the item hit the floor silently, followed by a "crash" a split second later). Still, not a deal-breaker for most of our uses.

Then, around the 1 year mark, the machine began to get flaky. It started with recording onto DVD: the machine started to give error messages when a recordable disc was inserted (saying that the disc was unplayable or damaged), but would usually accept the disc after ejecting and reinserting. Then it would take 3 or 4 times doing this for it to accept the disc, until finally (now) it simply will not recognize any recordable disc, leaving us without the recordable DVD function.

In addition, it has recently started the same thing with pre-recorded DVDs: put a DVD in, and it's rejected as unplayable, but try 4 or 5 more times, and it might accept the disc. A few of our DVDs simply will not play on this machine now, and we're assuming that there are probably only weeks or, at best, months of use left in the machine as a DVD player at this point.

We'll buy another machine within months, no doubt, but we know for sure that it won't be a Samsung.