Customer Reviews

Sharp DV-HR300U DVD Player/Recorder with 80-GB Drive

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

 

 

After searching near and far to replace my Panasonic showstopper 2000 (problems with over heating hard drive) I came across an article in Sound and Vision that reviewed the Sharp DV-HR300U. They gave a very good review of the Sharp and I completely agree with there assessment. The actual recording on the hard drive looks 10x better then the my old Panasonic.
There were only a few quirky things to get used to. One was that fact that this DVR does not have a menu like Tivo or Replay. You will get a grid very similar to the Tivo and Replay but there is no listing of the shows. For me personally it took a little getting used to, kind of had withdrawals. But, once I got past it I was just fine. The Sharp DV-HR300U comes with its own tuner so you can watch your own TV and record on separate channel. BUT **BIG BUT* if you have cable as I do and your premium channels are 99 and higher then you need to get a little creative. I had to keep in mind that Sharp made the DV-HR300U more like a VCR then a PVR. So on my cable box I used the component out for the component in on the Sharp DV-HR300U and record directly off the cable box. I leave the Sharp DV-HR300U on channel three and my cable box on the channel that it needs to record. Sounds like a pain in the but.. HUH! Well I would agree with you. and I was ready to return it, until I discovered that my cable box has a channel timer. Now I simply set the cable box to switch to the channels I want, at the time I want and set the Sharp DV-HR300U to record at that time and I have my personal clone of Tivo/ Replay type of user friendly menu.
Like I said if it were not for the fact that my cable box would switch channels for me I would not have kept it. And that would have been a real shame, because this thing puts out some awesome pictures. I also like the fact that I am not paying Tivo and Replay the $200.00 life time or $14.99 monthly service to record. It's a give and take. =)
One last thing to review is the dvd recording. Simply put its looks great. Don't expect some of the older dvd players to be able to play the DVD-R or RW. I nor any of my family or friends had to worry about it because we had dvd players that were fairly new and played the whatever I had recorded. The software is bit technical but once you understand it you will have no problems. I have even uploaded home movies that I recorded on my sony digital camcorder. It's a nice touch to be able to put those home made movies on dvd..
I hope this review helped and with these parting words I recommend it highly as long you can meet the same needs that I had. good luck ....

I posted a favorable review of this unit about 6 months ago. Granted there were some catches, but one day the DVD recorder just stopped working for me. 20 DVD-Rs later, Sharp had me ship the unit to them (at my expense). One month later, the unit was returned to me and SURPRISE! the DVD Recorder still doesn't work for me. Livid, I call back saying that this time the shipping is on them. They agreed and it was returned to them using their Fed Ex account. Two months go by and I don't hear anything and finally, the unit arrives back at my doorstep in a box that's 50X larger than the unit (way to save on materials, guys!). SURPRISE! the unit still doesn't work. I returned it once again, sure that they would just replace the old unit with a new one. Apparently, not surprisingly, they stopped making this piece of garbage and agreed to reimburse me for the cost of my unit. That was two months ago and still no check and every time I try to get someone on the phone over at Sharp, they either don't have answers for me or I get disconnected.

My advice... avoid Sharp products at all costs - they clearly don't have the resources to take care of their customers and I'm out $300.

First off, don't take this as a reason NOT to buy this unit. The player/recorder worked great right out of the box. It records great to -RW and -R discs and to the hard drive.

The dubbing feature from the HD to the DVD burner is a little slow (it's actually 1x mode) unless you activate highspeed dubbing, but has a neat timing feature where you can schedule a dub from HD to DVD in the future. I pop the DVD in when I go to bed and it's ready to pop into a stand alone DVD player when I wake up. I was so happy to see that the DVD-R played in my 6 year old Sony DVPS-550S player!!!

My biggest beef is the lack of editing support. You can edit scenes, add chapters, and move things around but the menu is clunky and it take for ever to change the name of a title with the remote control. I now burn to DVD -RW, finalize the disc, and dump it onto my PC for advanced editing and then reburn to -R disc. I was debating on whether I needed a HD unit or not. A HD makes it a lot easier to use the unit as a VCR, which I have started to do.

Overall, VERY satisfied with this unit. I was lucky to get it on Amazon for 379!!!

I got this recorder about a week ago. I was originally thinking about Panasonic, but didn't want to have to buy the top of the line or last year's model to get the ilink for dubbing from my camcorder. Was a bit concerned since Sharp wasn't such a well known brand to me, but so far so good and this deck is a great deal. Haven't had any major problems, one DVD-RW failed to initialize, but others are working okay. I have noticed you can't interrupt the deck and try to do something else during initialization/finalization. Manual is very complicated (and I am an EE), BUT, I'd have to say I don't see how it could be simple considering all of the functions. Overall, I'd recommend it (especially at the $379 price I got it for including shipping and no tax!)

Few other things...I was also successfully able to use 4x discs (see the next reviewers comments), have not seen the flicker problem another reviewer mentioned, and also the black level seems to be fine (Toshiba bug)

After using this unit for a month the hard drive just quit recording!
I had it sent in 3 times to Sharp Repair , every single time came back in the same state it was beforet(unrepaired) but with a note from Sharp Tech Dept that nothing is wrong with the unit!
Only after filing a complaint with Better Business Bureau they decided to refund me the money I paid for the unit because THE UNIT CANNOT BE REPAIRED!
A Class Action Lawsuit should be filed against them because I think they knew that something is wrong with the design of this particular model but they still do not want to admit it!

The DV-HR300U is a fabulous product. VERY easy to setup and use. The manual can look a bit intimidating at first, but it is fairly well written for as much as it's trying to cover and if you are at all comfortable just diving in and pressing buttons, then the manual becomes more of a reference book since the on screen prompts are pretty much self-explanatory. Sharp isn't usually known as being the best in home A/V, but I have to say this unit seems to be built quite nice (the remote is absolutely hideous though) and it's features and performance are on a par with any of the "higher end" manufacturers. I haven't had any trouble recording to HDD or DVD, everything works just like it should, right out of the box. I suspect that if you are having as much trouble as some seem to have you might have a bad machine, as everything I have tried so far (recording from satellite, and camcorder to HDD then dubbing to DVD) has worked flawlessly and the picture and sound have been spectacular. It will not copy commercial, copy-protected DVD's (or VHS, I suspect) by itself...if that is your intention, you'll need one of the devices by Sima to bypass the macrovision (or one of the old APEX DVD players), or use your PC for copying DVD's and keep all the menus and extras. I bought this when the price was $379, but even at $449, it's a heck of a deal, especially when compared to the similar Panasonic models or the TiVo with DVD-R and there is no monthly fee. Easier than most VCRs to program to record. If you think you want/need it, get it, you'll probably like it.

Aside from the 860 Canon printer I recently purchased, this is the best purchase Ive made. Amazon, as always shipped this out sooner than soon. Great service. For the actual deck itself.. its fantastic! No lie, as the other customer said. "Right out of the box" Turn it on and youre ready to record from TV to disc, to harddrive, from hardrive to disc, from disc to harddrive..This gem does it all. Great menus, layout is superb and easy to understand. Made my first recording last night and guess what...no DISC ERROR death screen on this beauty. I set the timer to record Tripping the Rift on both a disc and the harddrive 2 hours apart and went to bed. I really expected to see some error, or a no go, but NO!!! this thing did it without so much as a burp. I am totally thrilled with this device. Thank you SHARP for making our dreams come true. I finalized my new disc and popped into my Sanyo player and Vavavavoom, I was soon enjoying Tripping the Rift, in superfine dazzling quality. This was to replace the lemon I bought from Philips...the 985. What a joke, after one year the damn thing shows errors on DVD+Rs almost everytime. Dont know how many coasters Ive created using it. As mentioned in the online reviews from other customers, it worked for exactly one year flawlessly. I didnt want to believe the reviews but folks 1 hundred customers cant be wrong. And they werent. So now it sits on my entertainment center as a DVD player, and an occasional DVD+RW since it does do that for the time being. Im not one for sending it back for service and pussyfootin with customer service, I chok it up as a complete loss and move on. Thats my way of ending a bad experience. I am really bummed out on that purchase. But hey, I came out winning with this baby. It does what its supposed do and much more. So check it out for yourselves guys. Its a no brainer. I love my new sharp!!!! And Amazon I love you, great reliable service!

I purchased this recorder to transfer recorded materials on 100s of VHS tapes, and I've already burned 3 DVDs and recorded 5+ hours on HD after I received this gem a couple of days ago. I decided to get this based on the other reviews I read on various sites, they were very positive so I had a good feeling... and these reviewers were right! After returning two other DVD recorders, I finally found what I was looking for. I'm not sure why the previous reviewer is having trouble recording from external source such as VHS tapes, I'm connecting through front input (L3) and specified audio settings as indicated in the manual (select DUAL MONO REC mode instead of STEREO when recording from external source), and successfully recorded directly to DVD as well as to HD. I like recording to HD from VHS first at FINE mode since I can dub selected items from HD to DVD in any order I like after editing these clips without losing quality. So I'm using the HD as my digital video scratch pad. I also recorded from my cable channels, it's great to be able to record stuff when I'm in shower and later edit out the parts I don't need. After I burned two old blank DVD disks that I had, I went out and got 25 more DVD disks and noticed some warning on the label about possible damage to the recorder with this 4X DVD disk format!!! But as it turned out, unlike some Pioneer models, it's compatible with 4X disks so I didn't have to get the firmware updates in order to use these 4X disks. I love this recorder!

I seldom purchase extended warranty options for items under $1,000, but I did on this one. Register it online and Sharp will prompt you with an extended warranty offer. Hm; wonder if they know something? If you buy the HR300U, part with the extra $40 for a year's extended warranty. You may need it.

I bought mine May 20, 2004. Happily recorded shows--mainly sporting events--to the hard drive, then dubbed them onto DVD. Worked great for about four months...and the original factory warranty is 90-days parts, 12 months labor. It still records to the HD like a champ, but after creating about 35 DVDs, that was all she wrote...literally. It won't dub a thing to DVD, presents a generic "an error has occurred" message that isn't documented, and the best Sharp customer service could suggest was to clean the laser lens. I don't even use this machine for DVD playback; I have an upsampling Samsung for that. So the unit has had very little actual DVD-in-drive time and, of course, cleaning the lens did nothing. Three different brands of blank DVDs and about a dozen in the trash now following failed recording, and my only option is to package the unit up and ship it off for "repair." Of course, I have about 20 hours of can't-be-replaced material on the hard drive that I can't move to DVD, and I'm not confident that will survive the shipping and repair.

Out of all the electronics purchases I've made the past three years, this is absolutely the one I regret.

I'm about to send this back to the factory a second time for repair.It's not recording again like it did a few weeks after purchase.I got this in June 2004 and it's a piece of junk. Another annoying thing is there's only one place to get thing repaired,in IL. So more money thrown away getting it there. More time wasted instead of shows recorded.Also it's VERY user UNFRIENDLY and impossible to transfer your personal video tapes to dvd.The instruction book is the worst. I work with electronics and computers and know how to do technical things and this thing confuses me. Do not waste your money...

update:
Since this review I've contacted Sharp and they are paying to ship the unit back to them for repair or possible replacement (hopefully replacement!). I will update this review after I see what they do...

10/27/04: The machine was just returned to me. NO repair work was done on it because they tested it and could not get it to
fail as it has for me.Great,what a wonderful thing.I tell them how it has failed for me but they repair NOTHING. I will never buy ANYTHING from Sharp ever again.

When the HDD fails,nothing is recorded.Personally If I set it to record a show,I'd like to depend on this machine,but it is NOT dependable and I can't count on seeing whatever show I wanna see,BAD machine
01/04/05 the piece of junk is back in the shop again,do NOT buy SHARP products
01/17/05 fedex brings the recorder back to me.
01/19/05 recorder fails to record program,the endless problem continues
01/20/05 fedex picks up "recorder" to go to the Sharp company again for "repair"