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Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Silver. | 
| Brand: Sony
Category: CE
Buy New: £270.00
New (2) Used (4) from £179.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 9832
Media: Electronics
Shipping Weight (lbs): 7.9
Dimensions (in): 19.6 x 8.1 x 7.2
Legal Disclaimer: Layer One UK does not offer any warranty other than the one imposed by the manufacturer. Consequently, the warranty conditions proposed by Layer One UK will be an exact copy of the manufacturers.
MPN: RDRHXD870S.CEK
Model: RDRHXD870S.CEK
EAN: 4905524419511
ASIN: B000OQ9VO6
Release Date: March 10, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 NICE MACHINE SHAME ABOUT THE INSTRUCTION BOOKLET July 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having read all the reviews and seeing that this seemed to be a handy piece of kit I plunged in to purchase this DVD recorder. Having bought other Sony products I am usually very satisfied and their ease of use and set-up have been a plus factor for someone like me who is not as genned up as some of the other tech bods who do their reviews on here.
Well, when I tried to decipher the many tentacled illustrations regarding set-up with analogue/digital/freeview/ it left me scratching my head. I bravely attempted to sort it out but alas I was geting some signals on digital but none for freeview and so it went on in different variations. In the end I had to get someone in to help me with it and even they had difficulty deciphering the illustrations and instructions.
Now that it is set up it's a lovely machine and does all sorts recording/playing/pausing etc as described. But what a kerfuffle to start with. Please make an easier- to- understand booklet Sony because it will be a major consideration when I make another electrical purchase
 Wonderful Sony! May 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've bought a few peices of kit recently, and like most people I do the homework and then still wonder if I'll end-up buying a lemon! Well I'm glad (and relieved!) to report that this machine is as smooth as silk and a wonderful purchase. If you do buy this you won't need anything else to read for a while because the instruction manual will need plenty of deciphering...but once up and running this machine is just fabulous! The onboard EPG is easy and reliable and all the pros of HDD are there for the taking....pause live TV, catch-up TV, watch an HDD recording while it records something else, watch DVD while the HDD records another prog...and all the time done without the slightest fuss. Most importantly, picture quality is incredible...and I only play it through a
Pana CRT! To conclude...well done Sony; 5-stars thoroughly deserved, an extremely high-quality piece of tech that is a pleasure to own and use! Excellent value through Amazon too!
Easy to use May 2, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
We bought this dvd a few weeks ago and I think it's great; it was easy to set up, use and you can watch a program at the same time you are recording. It is good value for money as it has a large memory.
Excellent Product - Better than buying Seperate boxes April 8, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I've recently bought a whole string of new Audio and Video kit. This Sony box is by far the best of the lot!! It does everything with relative ease. Picking a program out of the EPG to record is easy, and adding series link isn't much harder either.
Freeview image is excellent and much better than any i've used/owned before. DVD's are clear and upscalling the image is a bonus.
I had a small doubt about the fact it only has 1 digi tuner, but believe me you can multi task still on the unit with ease. I often play something pre-recorded off the hdd whilst i'm recording another program. This works fine. Same is true with watching DVD's whilst recording. You do not have to do anything special to do these functions either, the Sony box just happily manages and multi tasks.
You can record off your sky box easily too by picking the program out of the alternative EPG provided in the Sony. There's a little link tool in the box that makes this possible.
Finally, Xvid and Divx files play perfectly and better than any unit I've used before. No skipping or lip-synch issues. I love this product!!
prices vary on the Web, so shop around. Amazon is always a reliable vendor.
 Good unit with one irritating flaw in the firmware. March 25, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
On the whole I am very pleased with this unit.
Good points:
Mostly does what it says on the tin. It has more features than I will ever use. The USB port on the front will even accept a keyboard for text entry when labelling titles and discs. This feature in NOT mentioned in the manual.
When not fast copying the HDD and DVD drives are quiet.
If you are copying stuff to keep, then you can record it to HDD, edit out the adverts and the start/finish announcements before burning it to DVD.
Bad points:
If you are using the remote control to enter text, the manual says that you can either select the letters on the screen or repeatedly press the number keys SMS style. It would be helpful to have the letters included in the legends on the remote control.
I have my sky + box connected upstream of the recorder to the Line 1 input so that if I want to copy stuff across it makes use of the RGB output from the Sky box. Unfortunately this means that you cant watch the Sky box whilst recording from the built in Freeview tuner. It would be good if the Line 1 input could be passed through even when recording Freeview. (I don't have an HDMI input on my telly). I have found a `plug around' around solution to this problem, but it involved me having to purchase a SCART distribution amplifier (30) and use 2 SCART inputs on my telly.
If you want to record stuff using the AV inputs on the front then you can have any format as long as it is 4:3. A means of selecting 16:9 would be helpful.
The Manual is appalling. It is so bad that even Sony miss understood one section when talking to me an the phone - more of which later. I am fortunate to have relevant engineering experience and background to assist me with setting up and using the kit, but I don't know how the average non techie who just wants to `plug and use' would cope.
There appears to be a serous bug in the firmware. Fast dubbing between the HDD and DVD is fine. However, if the material on the HDD has been recorded at SP and you wish to copy more than 2 hours worth to a 4.7Gb DVD, then there is a problem with 16:9 material. 4:3 material copies across just fine but 16:9 material is copied across squashed into 4:3 format. To give Sony their due, they did respond to my message on their web site with a phone call to try and help. However the chap I spoke to told me that the it was due to `having to compress the material to make room on the disk'. I know for a fact that this is wrong particularly as I can work around the problem by loading the files from the DVD to my PC, modifying the WSS flags and then copying them back to DVD-r. I have tried further communication with Sony, but they seem reluctant to talk to me any more. I get the impression that they think I don't know what I am talking about. I am convinced that a modification to the firmware would sort the problem. You could argue that all I need to do is force my widescreen telly to display 16:9. However if you are replaying the discs on a 4:3 set then you don't have that option.
I find the menus a bit clunky to use however I can put up with that.
I see from the above that I have written more about the bad than the good. Will I be sending the unit back? No. Would I buy it again? If the Aspect ratio problem was sorted then defiantly yes. If not then I would certainly look elsewhere first.
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