Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-VR375 1080p Up-Converting VHS Combo DVD Recorder

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(55)

 

 

I am far from an electronics expert, and I was looking for a way to convert many of my VHS tapes to DVDs. I decided to take advantage of this reasonably priced machine, and am very glad I did. Stick a DVD-R in the disc compartment, the VHS tape you want to dub in the tape compartment, and following the instructions, you have a DVD copy! One piece of advice - when you put the VHS tape to be dubbed in and it starts to play, the tracking will start automatically. Let it finish, as even the oldest of your tapes should then play perfectly. If you interrupt the automatic tracking by pushing stop or fast forwarding or rewinding, and then attempt to automatically fix the tracking, the results won't be nearly as good. I can't speak for the many advanced features on the machine but I can say for my simple purposes, it works wonderfully.

I've had this Samsung DVD-VR375 for about 3 weeks now. I give up and will be returning it!

To clarify, my reason for buying a VCR/DVD burner was very simple: I wanted to convert my old VHS tapes to DVDs that would be able to be played in OTHER machines, not just this Samsung unit.

Here's the problem with this Samsung unit: Every DVD I have burned so far has sound-sync problems. The sound is off by a few seconds. If you fast-forward or chapter-search, then the sound goes REALLY off and the DVD is unwatchable because of this.

I have tested my newly-burnt DVDs on two players in my home: My iMac computer DVD player, and my Sony DVD player, which is hooked up to my TV. Both players give me the same problem: the sound is out of sync.

I have tried every imaginable iteration of dubbing on this machine to see if I could produce ONE USABLE DVD ... to no avail. I have used DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD-RW discs. All produce the same sound problems. I have used the "Simple dub" option as well as the EZ Dub button on the front of the machine ... same problems.

The instruction manual is really poorly written. I'm a pretty smart "techie" guy, and it's still confusing.

So, I cannot recommend this DVD/VCR -- especially if you're buying it to convert your old VHS tapes. I'm returning this one and either buying a different brand, or sending my old tapes to a conversion company who'll do it right.

I purchased this item primarily to copy from my DVR to DVD. It works well for that. I also recommended it to my brother for converting old family VHS tapes to DVD and it is working well for that as well. It is much easier than copying the old VHS tapes to the computer and then burning DVDs. The DVDs have also been playable in all of my DVD players which is a plus.

If I didn't own the earlier model Samsung 357 it would be a 3-4* item based on the other combos I have had (LG/SONY/TOSHIBA). However,I fell in love with the 357 & have been unable to find it for its previous price-this was released & the 357 went up in price $50-100. So I bought this one. These combos die too fast to spend more than $150. I use an HDMI cord/to an LG HDTV/run thru a Samsung Dual tuner DTV satellite DVR. Viewing quality is excellent-recording is another story.

CON (Compared to 357)
*The LP recording is equal to EP quality on the 357 - very poor-blurry for any text on the screen-so if you are keeping DVDs for long term quality recordings you are forced to use more discs since you have half the time per disc.
*it loads slower
*it is extremely loud, when loading it wooshes/stops/ whooshes/stops & whooshes again. The whooshing actually woke up my husband the first few nights I used it.
*Everything you do to a disc viewing menus, loading, removing,etc. everything causes a square to pop up while it registers the information. 357 is a quiet quick load and unload, no time between menus etc.
*When you delete the 1st title on +RW disc, you don't gain the time back-on 357 (and every other +RW recroder I've tried)you can re-record another show in that time frame without deleting the following titles
*When you record on a 4x +RW disc, it reads as dirty when you try to play in any other machine (except for 1 of my 2 phillips players) any higher speed is fine
*You have to go to the menu & then the information pg to find out how much time is remaining on a disc-on 357 you press a button on remote & it shows what record mode you are in & time remaining for each mode.

PRO (compared to 357)
*Much cheaper now that 357 price was raised
*finalizes faster
*It auto formats a blank disc(357 requires going through menu)
*has more settings LSP/SPP/ESP etc. in addition to SP/LP/EP of the 357
*Dividing and editing on +RW is much faster-so slow on 357, I stopped editing out commercials-this is very fast-but not instant like on an LG
*records everything from my DVR to disc, no copyright problems that rquire you to qatch a show or movie right away(357 has no copyright problems either but its something you should know before buying a combo-many are so sensitive you can't record a soap opera.

For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of using the 357, you'll like it just fine. But the downgrade in quality from the 357 is heartbreakingly obvious and a huge dissappointment - but admittedly better than anything else in the price range.I just hope it doesn't die as fast as the 357-about 18 months-2 years of heavy recording. Perhaps that's why they made a lower quality version-to make it last longer.

Over the past two decades, I have purchased and owned five Samsung video products: three televisions and two VCR's. All were outstanding, long-lasting performers. That's why, when reading through the mixed reviews for this product, I put my faith in the most positive ones. Unfortunately, I lived to regret that decision.

It's par for the course that the product manual is inadequate, incomplete and sometimes incomprehensible. That's unfortunate because not all the features of this machine are intuitive. For example, one of the reviewers mentioned that his recorded DVD's auto-finalized. That's because the machine is default set to EZ Record, which finalizes disks automatically. You must turn off this feature if you do not want auto-finalize. Where in the manual is this explained? Nowhere. I had to search through the almost equally baffling FAQ on the Samsung website to unearth this important information.

Once I mastered the idiosyncracies of the machine, the few DVD's I recorded were excellent quality - a step above those recorded on my old Sylvania unit. But, after a few days of use, I started experiencing screen "flutter" when in DVD or VCR mode. At first, I could correct this temporarily by fiddling with the video cables, but it wasn't long before that no longer helped. In frustration, I called Samsung product support, who informed me the "apparatus" was faulty and that I would need to ship it to a service center in New Jersey for repair.

Having just purchased the unit brand new, I was not going to accept a reconditioned machine, so I elected to return it to Amazon. I must say the return process could not have been easier. I received my refund notification from Amazon today, four days after dropping the unit off at UPS for return. I have since ordered a Toshiba unit and am hoping for a better experience.

I could not obtain all of the menu functions from the first of three days I owned it. Disk selection type and editing were not available. The OTR worked fine. It finalized disks after using timed or OTR recording automatically, which it was not supposed to do. I was using DVD-R disks. On the third day, the component input quit. I returned it and am looking for another. Oh, BTW, it has the bad copyright function installed and will not let you record movies from pay channels or the movie channels (HBO, CMAX, etc.). You can record TMC, History, AMC, etc. channels without a problem.

Everything seems to be working fine as I transfer VCR tapes to DVD discs, or simply play VCRs or DVDs. I was frustrated at first after transferring VCRs to DVDs to find that they would not play on another DVD machine, until I realized that there is another step necessary after recording, namely, to go back into the onscreen menu, and "finalize the disc."

I bought this primarily to preserve home movies I have of my family, mainly my brother who passed away last year. I spent most of my time this past weekend copying VHS to DVD for myself, mom and my younger brother. I have watched one of the DVD's and the quality is much better than the video it came from. It was also so easy I could not believe it. Just a few steps and I was on my way to copying a large video library. If you have home movies you want to preserve this is perfect and was so easy. Even for someone who usually cannot work the electronics without help. I would recommend this for any parent who does not want to lose those precious memories of their children.

I purchased the DVD-VR375 specifically to dub VHS media to DVD. The VHS content to be dubbed was not professionally produced, copyrighted, or copy-protected content. The DVD-VR375 repeatedly produced DVDs with audio and video streams that were out of sync. The streams were reasonably well synchronized at the beginning of a recording, but drifted farther out of sync as the recording progressed. After the recording reached the 35-40 minute range, the streams were out of sync by nearly a second. I tried changing many of the configurable settings on the DVD-VR375 that I felt might be related to the sync problem, but was unsuccessful in correcting it. I also tried different types of DVD media, but this did not have any effect in correcting the problem either. I finally was able to get through to Samsung's technical support and explained the problem. They suggested I perform a "Cold Restart" by pressing and holding both the channel up and channel down buttons for several seconds until the restart screen appeared. I performed the "Cold Restart" and this seemed to solve the problem (temporarily). The first recording I made after the restart produced a DVD with much better audio video synchronization. However, the problem returned when attempting to make subsequent copies. I performed the "Cold Restart" again and the next copy was better, but not good. I have spent many hours struggling to get this unit working properly with inconsistent results. I recently gave up and returned the unit (thank you amazon.com). My decision to purchase the DVD-VR375 was based largely on Consumer Reports favorable review of the previous model DVD-VR357. My assumption that the current model would be as good or better than its predecessor did not prove to be accurate. I can't comment on how well the hi-def up-scaling or other features work - I never tried them. I purchased the unit to dub VHS to DVD and it could not do this without introducing an unacceptable audio video synchronization problem. Stay away from this unit if you intend to dub VHS to DVD.

Plays older DVD's perfectly. Only problem I have is playing older VHS tapes ( recorded in the early 80's ) I get alot of stuttering. I understand that this is a common problem with the newer VCR's. So I still need to hook up an older player to copy to DVD,not to happy about that hence the 4 stars.