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

I have owned this product (regrettably) for almost a year. I've finally given up getting Philips to assist with a Warranty repair...


To begin with, no foresight was given to the overall user experience. For example, when you initially turn on the device, wait about 10 seconds for it to fire up, then push the DVD button on the remote, the unit simply ignores your request and goes straight to the tuner. Menus are slow, response time is worse. Not only that, but the build quality is sub-par. The DVD tray on my unit constantly locks up and won't open. That's what I contacted Philips about. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I was told to fax them my receipt and someone would contact me. Still waiting to hear from them...

Don't buy this product. Philips just doesn't care about its customer base and simply shoots for market share at any price.

The DVR is exactly what I wanted. The product is easy to use and it does have the capability to time record. The instruction booklet was very helpful. If you follow the directions in the booklet, you will have no problems. I will never go back to a VCR!

There is a pretty glaring error with this product that makes it nearly useless for a lot of people: it doesn't work with some cable providers. I have cable from Charter Communications. My TV has to stay on channel 4, while I control the cable channels through the cable box. But the Philips DVD Recorder doesn't know about the cable channels; it only knows about channel 4 on the TV. That means you can't use the VCR codes to schedule recordings. You also can't record something if you're not already watching it. The whole purpose of the DVD Recorder is negated.

The one positive I can offer is that Electronics Expo didn't give me any hassle in returning it, so I only ended up having to pay for the shipping.

First of all, I bought this marvel about 2 years ago, so I was an "early adopter" =paid it dearly. It did work fine until... it just didn't record. All my beloved TV programs were in the HD, I could watch them, but not get them to DVD. The best official service in the country, after more than 2 months and many phone calls, determined "The circuit" had broken. They charged U$S 300 to repair it, which was almost half of the price of a new one. It had lasted less than a year.
About 6 months later, it just didn't turn on. Same old story with the central repair shop: "the HD broke". I had, of course, no backup of all the programs on the HD. Had all the coverage of our historic land crisis. Gone. They (Phillips) didn't recover it. No charge ($), but had to phone Phillips (the company) to warn them I wasn't going to pay them again or "buy a new one" as they kindly suggested.

Finally now, half a year later, it started to make my own recorded DVDs (for personal use) "blank" or "unrecognized format", alternatively. No warning. I tried the discs, later, on other DVDs (I've got another Phillips, 3380). No way. Neither did they work on the PC. I'll try to recover the info, but I'm afraid that it is gone. Consequently, loosing one of a series is rather painful. Besides, it's erratic. It broke me 5 DVDs in a row. Sometimes without even recording anything, just by putting them inside the tray and trying to open the menu. I was about to send it to service and voilá, it didn't break more DVDs.

I took a day off work, recorded almost 100 GBs and then, just when I was finishing to recover the TV I had on my HD, it started AGAIN to make coasters out of valuable DVDs. I am sending it to repair, and not going to spend another dollar on this piece of junk, and if I were you, I'd think twice about this product. There must be other brands or models. This is my second Phillips DVD recorder that turns out badly (see my review of the 3355). When it works it's the 7th wonder of the world. You can edit titles before recording them, the image quality is almost the same as the original in SP+, you can even personalize tracks, for instance, choose an image.
So you don't have to worry about commercials or different programs being one after the other: you just record the "whole period of time" and then you divide it into tracks. With a DVD recorder without HD, with the time you loose before the DVD finishes, ejects, and the "boot" time for the next one, you'll surely loose the introduction. Not with this one.
An Amazon reviewer's sample: The machine crashes and locks up (...).The machine crashes and trashes the DVD (...).The buttons on the remote are tiny. optical disk recording success rate is roughly 90% (FamiconGS (Richardson, TX)). Once it trashes your favourite DVD, "The DVD tray on my unit constantly locks up and won't open". The best, by another techie Texan: "Everytime this thing acts up my wife gives me the dirtiest look. (...) My advice is to wait a few generations until the technology gets better and the price gets lower".
The fan doesn't do much noise. I had to say something good ...

I wouldn't buy it if I plan to use it every day. Maybe fine for occasional use.

This is a feature packed unit at a very reasonable price. My problem is the connections for input do not blend with the Directv HDTV receiver. The receiver does not have a coaxial output althought it does have component output. The Philips has coax input, but not component input. So, back it goes. Very disappointed.