Customer Reviews

Sylvania DVR90DF DVD Recorder with NTSC Tuner

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This particular DVD recorder/player is known by many names. Funai Corporation, which is the manufacturer of all of them and parent company to some, sells these under numerous brand names, including the Funai brand as well. Some of these are sold exclusively at Circuit City as PYE. Some are manufactured as Sylvania and Emerson. Mine, available only at Wal-Mart, is known by the name SV2000. Even electronics giant Philips has handed over the manufacturing of their Magnovox brand to Funai! So whether yours is known as PYE, Emerson, Sylvania, SV2000, Magnavox, or Funai, we all have essentially the same machine.

As it is, this DVD player/recorder known by many names is a value-priced, budget-friendly wonder found well under the $100 price range. No, it will not go head to head with the $500 plus players like NAD, Rotel, Denon, etc. It will, however, deliver as much performance (and hopefully longevity) as such $200 machines manufactured by Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung.

To begin, all of the standard hookups---as expected---are to be found here (S-video, etc.). The player also has a "substantial" appearance and feel to it. In other words, there's very little plastic here and a whole lot of metal! The remote, on the other hand, is cheap, plastic garbage. The buttons are miniscule and not well laid out. There's nothing ergonomic about it either. With that being said, budget components have to cut their production costs somewhere and this is obviously where Funai has seen fit to cut.

The sound and vision of this unit are spectacular, especially for the price. There is certainly no truth whatsoever that all DVD players perform essentially the same. They do not! This machine, however, delivers the same level of performance as what one could normally expect from a much more expensive player, and delivers a superior performance to the likes of the el-cheapo, "Black Friday" $19.99 players like Coby, Durabrand, Cyberhome, etc.

I've not had much experience with the recording feature of this unit, but I can at least say that "it works" and does so relatively well. I've not yet recorded from a pay-per-view, but I suspect this would be the best fit since there are no commercials during a ppv movie. Otherwise, owners of a Tivo unit might find a nice complement with this machine since they have the option to go back and edit out commercials and such.

Overall, this is a fine unit that will not break the budget!

This may be a very good recorder, unfortunatly the one I received is defective. These things happen the problem is with the warranty service.

The company providing the service requires the item to be returned to them for repair and it takes 4 to 6 weeks before you can expect it back.

Most companies will replace the product with a new one if returned within 90 days, not this one. Good luck hope you get one that works.

The dvd recorder is a useful piece of equipment. As I am a novice, There is much remaining for me to learn about the recorder. It appears to have many features and to be top of the line for a reasonable price.

Works okay most of the time. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, a disc will not record (even though same disc has previously recorded just fine). Then you will need to try another. Unfortunately you are not likely to discover this until the next day after an event which was programmed with the timer. It is also finnicky about which discs it will record. Usually I can use Sony 1x-2x DVD-RW discs but it was all experimenting to discover which ones would work.
Also, discs recorded on this player do not play on other DVD players. I was careful to record at speeds recommended in the instruction manual and made sure to finalize the disc, but still the discs will not play in computers or other players. Not a problem if you have no plans to play them in other players.

lasted 6 months and 1 day, so of course couldn't return it after 6 months...\

great for recording TV - I got 10 hours on one DVD-R which is great.. also good for backing up old home movies from Tape to DVD.. I managed to fit 5 x 2 hour tapes on one DVD - def reccomend this recorder..