Customer Reviews

Sony SLV-D300P Progressive-Scan DVD-VCR Combo

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

I bought this combo unit to replace my recent new purchase of a similar Panasonic unit which had "seemingly poor" reviews such as this Sony unit has had here. (clumsy, unintuitive remote and user manual made the unit difficult to use as well) I like Sony products and have preferred them for many years and am one who returns products if they don't live up to my slightest expectations. I bought this unit 2 weeks ago and THEN read the few reviews here about DVDs pausing midplay and was concerned. The VCR portion seems acceptable (Timer TV recordings aren't as HQ as I would wish though) and the DVD player has worked flawlessly with burned CD's as well as movies from Blockbuster. It even does a nice job with the JPG images burned on a cd (which is a nice way to show your photos to a group) which the Panasonic choked on in random fashion. I'm wondering whether the few units which had the same DVD play problems was a MFG batch problem which has been taken care. (sounded like a firmware glitch) I like this unit! It has a nice remote which WILL also operate your TV (unlike the Panasonic) so one remote handles 3 of my ever expanding devices hooked up to the TV and Stereo. It has features such as up to 128 x fast forward on the DVD, as well as "zoom" to get a closer look at images from your digital camera or DVD movies. When you first plug it in, it automatically sets the clock AND Channels for you and retains this for 24 hours if the power goes out. The easy to read manual allows you to use the many extra features this unit comes with and the unit has done so for me without a hitch!

I just returned this unit because of the same problems people had with the earlier SLV-D100. The first line on the addendum says "DVD's with scratches may cause the disc to pause". Not a good sign. Scratches or not the machine paused on every dvd I played. New, used, played once or twice it didn't matter. They all froze at some point in time during playback. I tried eight dvd's and had trouble with them all. I called Sony and of course they had nothing to offer. I wanted to keep this item but I had to return it, it was useless. I'm going to look at Panasonic next, hope they are better. I really used to admire Sony products. I have an older Trinitron TV and the picture is still amazing, nothing like it today. But today's Sony equipment is price competing junk.

We purchased this DVD/VCR combo with a little hesitation due to some negative reviews here and on other sites but have found that, for the money ($179) it is a very decent DVD player/VCR player-recorder. Setup was a breeze -- less than 5 minutes with only a glance at the instructions.

Since buying this unit last week, I've played about 10 DVDs on it. All played flawlessly with a beautiful picture. Last night we watched a DVD from the library and near the end, the picture began to break up as some other have complained about the unit. When we examined the borrowed DVD, we saw that it contained several severe scratches near the end and this is why the picture was breaking up -- not the fault of the player.

The VCR works flawlessly -- mostly we just record the news and Comedy Central and we use our tapes over and over. Even old tapes that had been recorded on many times played back beautifully on this player. (...)

I can't quite give the unit a rating of 5 because the response time on some of the commands is a little slow. Also, I have had one incidence of having no response when I pressed the eject button the DVD player. I had to switch the power off and on and press the button a couple more times before it worked. That was the second time I used the DVD, but it has worked every time since then. We have not yet completely read the manual nor learned to use all of the controls on the remote, but we are quite satisfied with the performance of this unit.

After debating, I must say to others to pass on this unit. While not enough for me to return my item to the store, if I knew what I know now, I'd pass on getting it.

I've not had most of the problems posted in previous reviews. No problems with the VHS deck, no blue lines, no physical damage done to tapes. My only real VCR concern was an odd entry in the options setup where you tell the tape size, 120, 160, etc. Why? Shouldn't the unit ONLY care about the tape size when it detects the clear leader tape at the beginning and the ending? If not, then, it appears to me this option is for some kind of fast rewind, which I've always hated in VCR's. They did nothing but tear up my tapes because they never recognized the leader tape.

Main points that stick out that potential buyers should know. First is the included remote. Unfortunately, should you need a replacement, you probably won't be able to ever control the unit again. The buttons on the console itself are few. The remote commands are too numerous, meaning a universal remote probably will be useless on this, though I've not tested this. The remote buttons are fairly small, and, you will need a full light source to see what buttons are where and what they do.

Next, the manual is surprisingly lacking. Several set up options weren't covered anywhere in the manual I could see and key areas that should have been included in the Index at the back were not listed.

Finally, the main reason I believe people should not buy this unit. It does accept DVD writable discs, however, it is WAY too picky! Within the manual itself, it warns the unit may not be able to play discs that have label stickers on the label surface. While it is not recommended to use labels as they may peel off in the drive, to have the drive somehow detect labels or the drive bay have so little space for a margin of error that it physically prevents the disc from playing is simply outrageous to accept! The manual also warns that scratches on a disc may prevent playback. While this is certainly acceptible, IF scratches are what were causing my discs not to playback, then, this unit is too sensitive to them. When I read here of the DVD being picky, I loaded all of my library, disc by disc, to see the results. 11 discs simply refused to play with the drive's "THIS DISC CANNOT BE PLAYED! CHECK THE DISC!" error. No other explanation. Just a generic error that blames you for it. Were there more detailed error messages, it might be tolerable.

No, the laser within the disc reader is simply too picky. Using rewritable DVD discs, I was able to rebuild these 11 discs into a format the drive liked. However, all 11 of these discs played before, and I tested them again, STILL played fine in four other test players that they had passed in before! A Panasonic DVR, 2 PC drives (One of the the Sony DRU-500, amazingly!) and the Playstation 2. (Another Sony reader!)

Bottom line, 2 other Sony drives played them fine, but, this unit didn't even want to read them. The DVD drive is just too picky here. Not enough for me to return it because it has yet to fail on any DVD pressed discs, just writable ones. Granted, there are a lot of miracles involved, more than people realized, in getting a writable DVD disc to work. But, for discs that worked before in drives that still work, including 2 from the same manufacturer as this combo unit, that's simply something a buyer shouldn't have to accept.

A few annoyances that can be lived with, but, were I someone else knowing what I know now, I'd pass on the drive. Again, not enough for me to return it yet, but, I also cannot recommend anyone else getting it.


EDIT: I DID end up returning it.

The VCR part works great, we've never had a playback problem of either a new or rented tape, and the rewind speed is awesome!

The DVD part plays back fine, both video and audio, but does have the irritating problem, mentioned by many other reviewers, of occassionally pausing for some 20 seconds and sporadically freezing altogether requiring the stop button to be pressed followed by the play button. I take one star off for this annoying habit.

As at least one other reviewer mentioned, there is a design flaw in the video outputs: only the standard RCA outputs share the VCR and DVD signal, the SVHS and component outputs are DVD only. If you want to use a single video cable for the VCR and DVD signals, it therefore has to be the standard RCA output. Our TV won't display the standard RCA signal if a SVHS cable is plugged in, so unless we want to connect/disconnect everytime we switch from VCR to DVD mode and back, we can only use the standard RCA signal for both VCR and DVD playback. I take a second star off for this design flaw.

The letter I wrote to Sony after returning the SLV-D300P says it all: On 24 July 03, I purchased a Sony DVD/VCR combo model # SLV-D300P, serial #0325864 3B. The DVD component works only intermittently, sometimes playing just as the directions say it should, sometimes not playing until after six or seven tries, following the directions precisely each time.
Even worse, the VCR leaves a horizontal blue line across the screen approximately five inches down from the top, which it goes right through the actor's eyes in most scenes. Not only do the programs I recorded from the TV have this blue line, but also when I played back a prerecorded video, it was permanently damaged with the same blue line. As a result I have an expensive, hard to find prerecorded video of the 1989 Tony-nominated production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" that now has a horizontal blue line running through 2 ½ acts of the 3 act play. When it dawned on me it was actually being damaged, I pulled it out half way through the last act. When played on a different VCR, the blue line stops at the point I pulled it out of the Sony.
When I called Sony customer service on 19 Aug 03, I was coldly informed by the female supervisor who would not give me her name that the fine print on the warranty card stated that Sony is not responsible for any damage done to media by its products. She actually whined that any other company that I might buy from would have the exact same policy.
What this tells me is that your customer service employees have been complained about so many times that they defensively do not give their names, that you do not have effective quality control because you don't have to, and that you neither believe in your own product, nor do you stand behind it. As I told your customer service employee, if I had bought some cheap brand, I would simply think, Well, that's what I get - but you're Sony! That's supposed to mean something! I can't believe you have so little value for your good reputation. I can't believe this is how you treat a return customer of over 25 years.
It is not my fault you let a lemon get out of your factory. There is no way I could have known a top of the line Sony would permanently damage my videotape. You are responsible for a $48.00 videotape being ruined.
Several years ago, I read a "Newsweek" article contrasting Japanese and American business ethics. It was noted that salespeople carefully look over merchandise in Japanese department stores, removing any damaged goods before the store opened because it would dishonor the store if they sold a cracked vase, for example, whereas in the U.S., a store owner would turn the crack in the vase to the back of the shelf and hope to unload it on a customer unaware of the defect. Clearly business ethics don't export as well as hardware - and it should make you ashamed.
I trusted you. You owe me $48.00 and an apology

When shopping for a dvd/vhs combination player, I compared the various makes and models out there. Ultimately, I chose to pay a little more to get a Sony, based on my past great experiences with Sony products.

The unit worked fine until, as fate would have it, it suddenly stopped working, right after the labor warranty expired (90 days). It won't even turn on - it just died. In contrast, a Toshiba provided a few years of heavy use before it gave up the ghost.

This was a real disappointment. Now, I can chose to ship it to Sony and pay the labor charges to fix the unit (which will likely be more than buying a new unit) or I can throw it away and buy something with proven reliability. I should have done my homework. Unlike a lot of Sony products, this unit is made in China. I can only surmise that based on most everyone else's experiences, Sony has a serious problem with their factory there. I have a feeling we'll all get some class action lawsuit paperwork in the mail down the road.

Just bought mine at Wal-Mart as part of Sony's pre-packaged home theater system. I should have checked the reviews here firat. I tried 3 different DVDs and it stumbles on all of them -- pauses and pixellation. Very disappointing. Everything goes back tomorrow!

As mentioned by other users, this unit experiences difficulty in playing DVDs. Not only does it pause on occasion, but the screen also gets pixelated in the process. Interestingly though, the unit does do a good job at playing back VCDs. The VCR unit also operates flawlessly.

I used be (and still am) a Sony fan, but this one disappoints me.
Like other reviewers already written, this player doesn't play DVD's properly. It pauses while playing DVD's, forcing me to push the stop and play buttons again. Note that this happens even with new DVD's.
I won't recommend this one to anyone.