Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 75
 This is all you will need and more! December 18, 2006
Barry S. Wallace (Hitchin Herts)
110 out of 112 found this review helpful
This is review is really just to answer some previous reviews and to second some of the corrections made by others. You can add time onto a current recording and yes you do have to wait 2 mins to un-pause live tv. But if you are going away from the tv for less than 2 mins just don't pause it, we got by for years not pausing on conventional tv tut! It's only 2 mins!
It will accept just about any dvd you use unlike alot of others i looked at that will only accept dvd-r(w), as opposed to dvd+r(w) and vice versa. There is a slight delay on button response from the remote but you get used to it and you'll only notice when navigating menu screens, not on play, rewind and forward etc.
One review said wait 6 months until the software is sorted out then buy. The trouble with that is that technology moves on so quickly that if you wait for something better you'll never buy anything!
Lastly, this won What Hi-Fi magazine's DVD product of the year with 5 stars out of 5. I did ALOT of looking around and in my admittedly humble opinion, was the best I could find.
Added September 09: Nearly 3 years old now and I've not had a single problem! After reading some of the problems others had I think must have got lucky! I bought a new external aerial, brilliant. Even the analogue picture is good! All Freeview 100%. Now my Sony Vaio, THAT does suck....
Outstanding December 8, 2006
Mr C
63 out of 64 found this review helpful
I had been thinking for some time about replacing my ageing VHS and I am glad I did. Having read countless reviews I settled on the 860S as it has a good sized hard drive, Freeview and DVD drive.
Make no mistake, this product has far more to offer than a VHS and therefore if you want to get the most out of it, it is a bit more complicated (The manual is 120 pages, not to mention all the buttons on the remote!).
Recording from Freeview works very well and is quick too. The series record function is also useful, and with an 8 day EPG guide you can plan the weeks recording in advance and watch at your convenience. If you have a satellite or cable TV box plugged into it, setting a program to record takes a little bit longer, and you have to set the satellite/cable too. Having now got used to this, the results are just as good and I can watch the cable whilst recording from the Freeview.
If you have more than standard TV recording / DVD playing in mind, it is worth speaking to your local Sony centre or going in store to try before you buy, as I did with recording old VHS tapes to DVD. Connecting the VCR to the unit with a scart lead and recording 4hr tapes to the hard drive, and then to DVD worked really well.
Burning to DVD works well and you can adjust the quality and therefore the amount of space needed when you first record to the hard drive, and when you burn to DVD. High speed dubbing to DVD is also a useful function.
Recording quality is absolutely excellent and for this reason I give it the 5th star. In Standard SP mode you can't tell that you are watching a recording, I haven't felt the need to record in HQ.
Overall an outstanding solution to replacing VHS & DVD player alike, and once again very quick delivery from Amazon.
A Really Useful Box of Tricks March 30, 2007
Crazy Seahorse (Cambridge)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
My motivation for buying a HDD/DVD recorder was to remove a myriad of shiny boxes from underneath my new wall mounted plasma screen. What is the point in having a slim TV if it has a stack of silver boxes underneath and doesn't save the space?
I chose the Sony for three reasons, firstly that it had HDMI output, secondly because it supported DivX and thirdly because, being a Sony, I was confident I would get good compatability with my Camcorder (also a Sony).
It was easy to set up out of the box, I plugged in the HDMI cable to the TV, the aerial routed through the recorder to the TV and the digital coax to the sound system. Tune in to the digital freeview was fast and efficient - in two minutes we were up and running.
The first thing to strike me was the quality of the picture, the picture was of much higher quality than the native tuner of the plasma screen (and the screen is a premium brand), and this was a delightful surprise. The DVD player is easy to use and remembers where you are in a film if you want to stop. My old DVD player would do this for any disk you put in and remember it if you took it out and watched another, but the Sony does not do this, which is a shame as it has a hard drive and should be capable of it. Picture quality of the DVD is even sharper and crisper than the freeview pictures.
The HDD recording function is very useful, programming is via the standard EPG table and you click on the programme you want to record and that's about it. There are lots of other nice features around this, where it will delete watched items if you haven't looked at them for a long time and allow you to lock treasured items. Pausing live TV works as well, but you have to pause for a minimum of two minutes.
There is a lot of flexibility in how you can use the box, I have watched both HDD and DVD whilst recording another program on the HDD and I watch other live programs on the TVs own tuner if I am recording. Recording from the camcorder was also quite satisfying. One touch of a button and the camcorder rewinds to the start, recorded, reround and powered down at the end. Marvellous! I haven't tried editing a film on it as although the functions are there, I think I'd rather use PC and mouse than mess around with a remote.
There have been some comments about noise. My box sits in a glass fronted cabinet so I haven't noticed it. You get a buzz of a fan when you power down, I have to say it doesn't bother me.
In summary, this box has allowed me to remove a freeview tuner, a video recorder and a DVD player, and get rid a spaghetti of ugly thick black scart leads and replace them with one sleak HDMI leads. The picture quality on my TV is improved and because the thing is so easy to programme I spend less time in front of the TV trying to work out if there is anything to watch and more time watching what I want. Overall it means less time in front of the television. This all makes me very satisfied and results in a five star review.
Very impressed December 11, 2006
Paul D (UK)
50 out of 51 found this review helpful
Very impressed. I bought this to replace a broken video recorder. It does this and much more. No more need to hunt for blank spaces on a tape or to remember which tape something was recorded on.
The on-screen menus allow easy browsing through a list of potentially hundreds of hours of programmes. It is very easy to use - simply select the programme (or whole series) you want to record from an on-screen programme guide and it is recorded and listed by programme title and date.
It is possible to watch a DVD or another HDD recording while recording to the HDD too.
Excellent quality picture (though recordings made at the longest of the six possible long-play settings show some loss of quality).
It has one very neat extra feature that really impressed me: I started a recording via the programme guide part way through a programme. The recorder registered this fact and in addition to recording this show it also set itself automatically to record the repeat that was on later in the week (unbeknown to me) so that now I can watch the whole show.
Just an additional point in response to an earlier review: it is possible to automatically add on an specified extra few minutes (1, 2, 5, 10 mins etc) to the end of all recordings set via the programme guide so that you can make sure you don't miss the end. (See page 100 of the instructions).
Forget the rest, this is the DVD Recorder to buy! March 5, 2007
Mr. G. A. Bassett (UK)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
This DVD Recorder does it all!
I had a vast list of requirements, and this device from Sony does the lot.
1. It has a Freeview decoder
2. You can record to the HDD, and watch something you recorded to the HDD at the same time.
3. You can record to the DVD, and watch from the HDD at the same time.
4. You can record to HDD, and watch a DVD at the same time.
5. It has a Firewire connector, for connecting my Camcorder, and a one touch button to dub a tape to dvd or hdd, it rewinds the tape automatically and starts recording, unreal!
6. The remote allows you to enter a code from a list of common manufacturers, so that it works with your TV.
7. The Electronic Program Guide is updated daily, and always available, unlike my old freeview decoder.
8. It is so easy to use, even my wife can use it. I was up and running in no time with this beauty!
9. It is extremely quiet! My Dads Tosh fan makes a right din!
10. Just go a buy it, it has one all reviews, simply so a search in google to view...
Simply marvellous! :-)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 75
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