Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVDR3455H DVD Hard Disc Recorder 160 GB with Instant Replay

When I bought this unit, I was so overwhelmed with the various features on all the DVRs out there that I simply went with this one because it could be purchased at Walmart. The trouble with buying DVRs is that the reasonably priced ones (aka, below $500) all have unique pros and cons, and you can never get one that satisfies all your needs.

I've had my Philips 3455 for 7 months now and haven't had any problems. For those worried about the fan noise, I can barely hear it on this unit. I like how quickly shows can be viewed via the hard drive, but I think the DVD burner could be designed to go a little faster. I'm a little frustrated that you cannot watch a recording in progress that is started by the timer--Philips could honestly come out with a downloadable fix for that. However, you can rewind recordings in progress if you've manually started the recording.

Overall, I think this unit was worth the purchase. If you're going for a DVR, go get the really nice ones ($1000++). However, for a lower-budget individual, this unit may be right for you.

I cried, kicked, and screamed to get my wife to agree to let me buy this thing. It works great most of the time. My personal experience has been problem after problem with the DVD Player/Recorder. It is extremely particular on what kind of discs you put in it so be careful. Lots of times I have to unplug it to get it to reset. The DVD player will get stuck and nothing you do on the remote will help you. Speaking of the remote, there is no menu button on it so navigating to a DVD menu requires you to either stop the disc completely or press the next button until you arrive at the menu.

Everytime this thing acts up my wife gives me the dirtiest look.

Other than that, it is great. It automatically records whatever you watch and allows you to store the shows or record them to disc.

My advice is to wait a few generations until the technology gets better and the price gets lower.

I would love for future units to have an option where you could record on one channel and watch another simultaneously like the old TV/VCR option on old VHS recorders.

At the current price it is too expensive for all of the bugs it still has.

I bought this almost three months ago and I am already packing it up and shipping it away, marking it my 3rd or 4th DVR that is not what I was looking for.

First off, the remote design is pretty simple and very easy to get the hang of, but I will complain that there isn't a menu button so when your watching a dvd the only way to get back to the menu is hitting DVD and letting it reload. Not a big thing, but it would still be nice to have a menu button.

There aren't any TV listings so you have to program everything in yourself instead of clicking and go, which is a real bummer.

The quality of its recordings, however, I found top knotch and very nice looking. The menus are pretty straight forward and look the same as most DVR's do.

Unfornetly, you can not rip anything from DVD to your HD. But it is very easy to burn things onto a DVD.

The two biggest problems I had with this DVR though, which made me decide to not keep it, is that during several recordings, where it would show the audio and picture fine, when watched later the audio was out of sync. It didn't do this on all of them and it didn't happen often, but it did ruin about 5 of my videos.

But what completely sealed the deal to take it back was that I have to unplug this thing every single week. I will be flipping the channels, or hit my HD button and the entire unit would freeze. The remote and even the power button on the unit are no help so the entire thing has to be unplugged from the wall and plugged back in.

My advice? Keep looking for another DVR.

ONE MAJOR FLAW: I have had this unit [Philips DVDR3455H/37] for 6 weeks. Feature packed and menu navigation is ok [haven't used others so I do not have anything to compare to] and Philips tech support has been very friendly and helpful. All this said, if you want a unit that will "dub" [copy] from its internal DVD drive to its internal hard drive this unit is not for you. There are other similar units [Toshiba RD-XS52 or Pioneer DVR-520H DVD Recorders for example] that do offer this function and I only wish I had looked deeper before I purchased. I don't know about Toshiba's or Pioneer's units or their tech support, etc. so I'm not recommending their products, just pointing out that their units will allow dubbing.
According to Philips own presales personnel it does provide this dubbing feature, but speaking to their tech support it definitely does not and there is nothing in the owners/user manual referring to a dubbing feature. Tech support says this is to prevent copyright infringement. This seems somewhat ridiculous as it has copy guard to prevent copying [dubbing] copyrighted material from other sources to its inputs. I am able to copy to its HDD or directly to a blank DVD disc from my satellite dish [DirecTV], a VCR or another DVD unit. I would assume all of these sources' programming would predominantly qualify as copyrighted. Also, tech support says it does not know if there is any firmware updates planned [and doubts there will be any] to correct this.
I purchased this unit believing it would dub from the DVD drive to the HDD but didn't review the small print. Actually nothing was written about this feature and I suppose the reason I didn't notice this is because this seems such an obvious feature [to me anyway] that I just assumed it would. It seems the only recourse is to purchase a separate DVD player to connect to this unit's input. Alas, space required for yet another piece of equipment, more cables and remotes, more instruction manuals, etc., etc., etc. for something that this unit should do and the afore mentioned other units will do.
I am very disappointed!

The price is good, but there are a few issues. Very slow start up. sometimes it just freezes and you have to unplug it...usually happens when you are using the remote. The remote SUCKS. It is poorly designed, the buttons are way too small which makes it difficult (and I have v.small hands) and it seems stupid but the top and bottom of the remote is identical and ALWAYS you have the damn thing backwards. AND there's no menu button, so I still haven't figured out how to get back to the menu of a DVD - so you use the skip buttons, and this is when it freezes. Oh and it's not multi-region from start..it's set to your region and you have to contact Philips to get a special code so you can watch your overseas discs. All in all, it does the job but I kind of wished I'd paid more to get one where these issues above aren't a problem...because they happen everytime you use it, the small stuff gets well sweated!