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

I bought this DVR a couple years ago.

It has been problematic the whole time.

It takes forever for the unit to come on. You turn it on and then watch the pretty "Philips" screen for 15 - 30 seconds before it finally comes up and is usable.

The unit I have frequently quits responding to the remote and will not turn off. I finally plugged it into a switched outlet so I could turn it off (count to 5) and then back on.

The DVD player/recorder tray wouldn't always open so I could get the DVD out and finally it just quite working all together. It wouldn't play or record a DVD.

Today the power went out and the stupid thing just reboots over and over. I think maybe the hard drive has completely failed.

Other than all of that - it had a good picture and was relatively easy to learn how to use.

I'm not going to replace this unit with another Philips DVR. I'm going to look for something more reliable that works reliably.

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.

I have owned mine for about a year and a half. I have had no major problems with the unit itself (I did perform the update offered at Philips' site a while ago).

My biggest complaint is the remote. Without the remote you cannot play DVDs. (I moved across country and the remote was packed separately from the unit. I could not play movies until I found the remote.

My other complaint about the remote it there is no MENU button on it. You cannot jump back to the menu when you like during the playback of a DVD. I have to skip through the video to the end and let it go back or turn it off and then back on.

One last issue I have once in awhile is if I leave the unit on for days on end, it will freeze during layback forcing me to shut the unit off by unplugging it (won't respond to anything else) and then replugging it in and re-powering. Once finished, it works well again.

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.

After reading all the reviews of this product, my expectations weren't very high at all. However, when I received the unit and installed it, I spent only about 1 hour figuring out the remote and setting up all the features. Very user friendly. I have been using it daily now for about a month, transferring home movies over to DVD, recording TV and watching DVD movies (I have an expensive JVC DVD player hooked up also, but have yet to find the need to turn it on.) The Phillips 3455 does exactly what it says it does and has exceeded my expectations so far. The only problem I have experienced (once only) was that after leaving the unit on for a couple hours w/ the screen saver on, the unit froze and I had to unplug it.