Customer Reviews

DVD Player / Vcr Combo

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

 

 

Received as Christmas gift 2004, the Sylvania SSD803 DVD player stopped working spring 2005 (VCR still worked fine.) I'm home at most one day per week, and I don't always watch tv, so I didn't exactly overuse it. When I called the help line they knew exactly what was wrong (the guy on the phone said he dealt with the same problem "constantly".)

The next six months became an education in stalling tactics: I would produce the requested documentation, leave town, and come back two weeks later to find they needed something else. Finally Sylvania refused to replace the SSD803 but told me they would pay for repairs -- up to the cost of the item -- at an authorized repair shop. The repair shop didn't want to touch it for that price, and said he had trouble getting Sylvania to pay him.

After months of this the warranty ran out and Sylvania then refused to do anything, claiming I should have dealt with the matter when the item was under warranty. I called the store where the giver bought it (SAM's Club) and, though they were not required to do so, they reimbursed me instantly, apologized, and asked me to donate the item to a school or any other group who needed a VCR.

This is very great unit for the price and performance. I'm very pleased with the quality and would buy again.

Pros: Easy to set up timer, convenience of a combo unit

Cons: May get stuck with a half-working unit, requires remote for timer recording

About 3 years ago, I bought two of these from Sam's club since they were relatively cheap. I was initially very happy with the units. The programming is easy to set up, and you can turn timer programming on and off with the push of a button on the remote. The one problem with this is if you loose your remote, you cannot set up the automatic timer function (and as far as I know there are no 'universal' remotes that have this function). The standard 'record immediately' is both on the remote and on the face of the unit. I would think there would at least be an VHS menu option that would allow you to turn it on with a universal remote, although I can't imagine that it would be so difficult to have an extra button on the face of the machine. My major complaint is that after 2 years (of course things have to break after the warranty :P), one of the units would no longer play or record VHS tapes for more than 2 minutes. It displays an error message not covered in the user manual. Even the still-working unit occasionally has this error if I switch from fast-forward to rewind (or vice versa) without stopping the tape completely, and I wouldn't be surprised if this one also stopped working within the next year. I don't know if switching speeds too quickly is a general 'no-no' for maintaining VHS players, but there is no warning against this in the user manual. I have also seen a number of complaints where the DVD player stops working, although my DVD playback is still fine. This means that your two-in-one will likely become a one-with-broken-half after warranty expiration. I have not attempted to contact the company since my warranty is expired, and doubt that anyone would be willing to service my unit for a price reasonable considering the original cost of the unit.