superb sound without the wires

well i bought this as my old 5;1 was taking up to much space, the sound from this is mind blowing and it looks good.this is the cheapest you can buy one well known seller on the web has it on special offer at £329.

Wot no Freeview?

Have just bought and sadly returned this item today. The built in tuner is analogue only, meaning that it's not really suitable for me - it needs a separate Freeview box to be able to record channels others than BBC1 - Five. No Electronic Programme Guide means that if you're after something that can be used like Sky+ with the added benefit of a DVD recorder, you've bought the wrong thing!

Completely unreliable - avoid like the plague

Like many other reviewers I've had loads of problems with this infuriating machine. When it works it's great but it will often switch off suddenly during a recording or on playing a disc so if you want to record something it's a complete gamble. A friend of mine who has a similar Philips model has had the same problems.

Also it will not recognise some discs which it has previously recorded on so you can't even access wg=hat you've recorded. I ahould have known I suppose because my Philips dvd player also developed a fault. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Good Philips Buy

Maybe one of the newer HDD Philips Recorders on the market with 160gb hard disc space. Looked at reviews for the DVDR5500 which were not totally favourable, so plumped for the newer 5520. My first DVD recorder purchase mainly for the purpose of being able to download DV camcorder onto disc, wedding stuff etc.... but with nothing else to compare it too, I have to say that it is probably as good as any other DVD recorder on the market and being Philips better value than the other big names such as Panasonic and Sony which I also considered with similar specs with a digital tuner.

Pretty easy to set up but nothing in life is as simple as what our expectations would like so of course there will always be some that moan. So be patient. If just connecting recorder to telly for standard terrestrial / Freeview aerial viewing, no problem. If connecting with Sky etc.... again, be patient and read the instructions.

Overall, can't complain about any of the features, and quite pleased with the recordings done both onto the Hard Drive and directly to DVD disc.

I would definitely recommend the Philips DVDR5520H

Superior DVD Recorder

Well first off this is my first ever DVD recorder, so I knew I was in for a learning curve upon reading the instructions. I know the fundamentals of DVD authoring, but had to read the instructions nonetheless. Luckily they are written out so well, I was recording DVD's within the first day of operation. And it only took a few practice goes on a DVD-RW to fully learn all the most essential of operations.

The good:

- One touch recording. In other words, press the REC button several times for getting it to record for 30, 60, 90, 120 mins... and so on, as opposed to continuous recording (When you go to bed, go to work etc) which fills up the whole DVD. Very handy feature which I've never seen on a VCR before.
- Great (and simple) system and disc menus. The default (and only) disc menu is a little bland and boring though.
- Comes with 1, 2, 4 and 6 hour recording modes. 2 is DVD quality and 4 is VHS quality. I use 4 for everything I copy from videotape and many TV shows I record.
- Ability to split titles on RW discs. Means you can trim the (unwanted) start or end bits off recordings on these discs.
- You can append recordings. Ie- record at the end of an existing title rather than record a new title. Can be done on both R and RW discs.

The bad:

- The recorder occasionally hangs. Often this happens when you're disc editing and choose a new index picture. (The thumbnail pic shown in the disc main menu)
- No fast forward/rewind ability while in edit mode. Edit mode is used to split titles, add chapters etc. This is more a nuisance than a problem.
-"Hiding Chapters" doesn't work with other DVD players despite what the manual says. Ie- you use the hide chapter feature to"hide" commercials you have recorded, with the intent they don't show up during playback. Unfortunately, they still do on other DVD players, even though the manual says otherwise.
- Automatic chapter creation is ONLY set to 5 mins, rather than being customisable. Ie- a 21 minute TV show would be better with 7 minute chapters which would line up closely withy commercial breaks.
- Says that new recorder software can be downloaded via the Philips website, but at the time of this review writing, it can't. No such new software exists yet.

Conclusion:

I really do love this recorder despite the cons listed here. The pros do definitely outweight them due to quality rather than quantity. The main gripe I have with this recorder is the chapter functions. On RW discs you SHOULD be able to edit them by removing commercials rather than just hiding them (which doesn't really work anyway).

And it would be nice to be able to do that on R discs by virtue of making the"recorded commercials" into unretrievable space on the R disc since R discs can only be written once anyway.

There also exists a need to be able to choose from different disc and system menus rather than the bland default one, and be able to set chapter length rather than settle for 5 minutes only.

first impressions

I just received this today, courtesy of amazon.

It was very easy to setup with my philips flat screen tv, just a couple of cables, and up you go.

I lived in many countries, and therefore have an extensive collection of DVD from many regions. Thanks to the web, I was able to find very rapidly the code to key in on the remote control to have this unit enable for region 0, and all my DVD works fine...

I can see the difference with the upscaling factor, in terms of image quality... The sound quality 'sounds' great. I have tried multiple movies, like lord of the ring, and star wars, and the 'experience' is definitely better, visually and in terms of sound, than when using my old DVD player and my TC speakers..

A few comments:

* There is no HDMI cable in the box, but there is a SCART cable, and a couple of others, for example to connect the TV audio out to the device.
* The connection for external audios are conveniently located on the subwoofer, reducing the number of cables to connect to the main unit.
* The support for the main unit is too high to fit in my tv cabinet. It is easy to remove it, but there is no simple/lower replacement for it. The unit can just be put down like it is, at a small angle, but I would prefer to have a more stable support.
* Not sure yet about the fact that this system is supposed to 'mimic' a 5.1 system by projecting sounds to the wall behind the user, but it sounds good.
* The remote control power button is in fact only an 'off' button. Once the unit is in 'standby', it can only be 'waken up' by using the play button of the remote control. Strange but it works.

Videos don't play well

We bought the Philips DVP3100v DVD/VCR combi as it plays a large range of media types and has a 6 head VCR player with PAL I and PAL B/G which is suitable for UK and Australia. The DVD player does recognize my home movies in divX format (converted from wmv format - Windows Movie Maker files) and standard jpeg photos on CD-R discs - which is great. Unfortunately, we have not managed to make this machine multi-regional despite attempts at the more widely recommended hacks. However, the biggest problem has been the poor quality of VCR playback with some videos virtually unwatchable with flickering black screens enough to frustrate even our four year old. The manual tracking function doesn't help and now the Automatic Tracking doesn't seem to work (despite pressing"0" as the manual suggests). We have no problems with our 10 year old 2 head Panasonic VCR so it's not a problem with the tape. The menu system seems very primitive for the VCR so it would seem that they may have chosen to cut costs here and enhance the DVD player. The manual is very sparse and not well organized so that doesn't help with troubleshooting either. It is a shame as it's a nice looking machine and not too expensive but I wish now that we'd just bought separate DVD and VCR players or chosen another brand.

Corrections to earlier reviews about player’s shortcomings

Have owned the Philips DVP3005 for a few weeks and am impressed with its performance. Previous reviews about its shortcomings do not tally with my experience in two areas:

1. This machine WILL play in slow motion (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16) - it’s a case of pressing the Up arrow (a case of RTFM - in this case page 21) though admittedly there is an on screen display of the selected speed.

2. When using the zoom feature, the on screen indication of zoom level selected disappears after a few seconds. (Another reviewer indicated they were using zoom to view widescreen movies on a standard 4:3 format television - I thought that’s what 4:3 Pan Scan settings were intended for... ).

The differences in what is being experienced with this model’s features may be down to a firmware upgrade but new players should clearly have the latest firmware installed.

I have used this player with MP3 CDs and sound quality is good - however gapless playback is not supported which means that mix CDs (where one track leads immediately into the next) will unfortunately exhibit interruptions of a couple of seconds of silence between tracks - however, few MP3 players are capable of gapless playback so this is to be expected.

The best there is for the price

I have had this DVD player for close to a year now and even to this day I have yet to find a better DivX/Xvid player.

A lot of people complain about the loader and yes there is some problems but none that will break the player. The only thing with it is sometimes you wate a extra 10 seconds (WOW) loading it in.... and most loaders you have to wait for it to come out then it gets jammed so really there is no problem. But what is a extra 10secs?!?

the player will play everything I have tried and the xvids/divx is encoded right play just like a DVD does. ALso Philips have updates sometimes that keep your DVD player always up-to-date.

The only thing I would ask for is more updates as some more audio support for xvids would be great as some have newer formats which will be used more.

[...]

Lasted less than three months

I ordered this portable DVD player because it had quite a large screen and at the time I was having to go on longhaul flights for my job. While it worked at the beginning, it was very good but, unfortunately, it lasted less than three months before it would no longer play DVDs. Over that period it gradually deteriorated - some would play, some wouldn’t and some would if you kept removing and re-inserting them frequently. I tried all the ’help me’ stuff, like cleaning the laser head, etc. I was very disappointed.