Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVDR3505/37 1080i Upscaling DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner

The Phillips DVDR3505/37 has the best "digital tuner" picture quality out of the two other DVD recorders that I have tested with "digital tuners" (Panasonic and Samsung). The Phillips DVDR3505 produces an amazingly clear OTA digital picture on my old 27 inch Sanyo analog "box" TV using an indoor antenna. The Phillips 3505 and the 27inch TV are connected with regular "composite cables". The resulting OTA digital picture is amazingly detailed and clear with little or no annoying "dot crawl". Another important feature for me in selecting the Phillips DVDR3505 is that it allows you to choose "4.3 pan & Scan" to view OTA digital programs in full screen on a "box" TV (no black bars caused by "HD" OTA programs). In the 4.3 pan & scan mode the OTA digital picture is shown in full screen but is not distorted looking (no long and stretched faces) and the picture framing matches the full screen picture seen on my analog OTA TV in a side by side comparison. In addition the picture clarity/sharpness in the "4.3 pan & scan" full screen mode is superb! The same effect should be achieved when watching a purchased or rented "widescreen" DVD movie on your "Box" TV in the 4.3 pan & scan mode. The cons for the Phillips DVDR3505 are its slow channel change and slow recording set up. One additional problem I have experienced is that the unit looses its channel set up under certian conditions. At this point in my life, the quality of the picture that you see from your cable, Sat, or OTA programs is what is most important to me and my family when watching TV. The truth is that I have put up with poor reception using analog TV with "rabbit ears" antennas long enough, so the amazing picture quality of the Phillips is what sold me. The Phillips DVDR3502 wins hand down in that category and is the main reason that I sent the other more expensive feature rich DVD recorders back to the store. My family and I have been able to work around or forgive all of the "cons" reported about for the Phillips DVDR3505 and because we are basic users the Phillips meets our needs for recording OTA TV programs while providing a "Wow factor" in picture clarity when watching "real time" OTA digital TV through our analog "box" TV. Also, a "Wow factor" is achieved even when watching OTA digital program recorded on DVD using the Phillips DVDR3505. Image reproduction is excellent in two highest image recording modes. Before buying see if the features on the Phillips DVDR3505/37 matches your basic needs. If viewing pleasure has been lacking for OTA broadcasts then get ready to receive the "Best Picture" award from friends and family when using the Phillips DVDR3505.

I have a 32 inch HDTV, and I do all my TV viewing OTA (no cable or satellite). We enjoy watching PBS, and other broadcast stations. But the VCR could not record any of the digital channels. So I started looking for a DVR. My HDTV does not have a video out port, so I could not use a tunerless DVR.

So I bought this DVR mainly because it has a digital tuner, thinking that the quality would not be so good because it does not record in HD like a Tivo. But I was wrong. The quality of recording is so clear, I can't tell a difference between the original HD broadcast and DVD playback.

You can record at different quality settings. The higher the quality of recording, the less stuff you can fit on the DVD, because the higher quality recording takes up more space. At the highest quality setting, you can fit one hour of shows. At the next highest quality setting, you can fit 2 hours. At the next quality setting, you can fit 2.5 hours. And so on and so on all the way to a 6 hour disc capacity.

I recorded snippets of HD broadcast shows such as "CSI" and "Without a Trace" just to test out the DVR, and I must admit, I was impressed. At first, the screen was too dark, but I just had to go into my HDTV's options and adjust the brightness. With my Sony HDTV you can adjust the brightness of each input channel independently of the others (which, by the way, is a very useful feature).

So after I got the brightness up to normal, the quality of the recordings I made was really good. In fact, I couldn't tell any difference between the original show and the playback. Also, I couldn't tell any difference between the highest (1-hour) and second-highest (2-hour) quality settings. They both looked great to me. So I am really impressed with this DVR.

It is pretty slow executing commands and stuff, but that doesn't bother me. I just really like the fact that I can record shows now with such good picture quality.

I think I am going to get a cheaper upconverting DVD player for daily playback, and just use the Philips for recording only. You can get an upconverting DVD player for only a few dollars now (even a region-free one). My HDTV has 2 HDMI inputs, so I can just have each DVD come in on its own HDMI channel. So that seems like a good way to go.

The picture is wonderful. The features are terrific. The ease of use is astounding. FYI - I'm a James Bond fan and own a few titles. One of the movie channels had a Bond-a-thon a few days ago, so I decided to put my Philips DVD recorder to the test. I recorded one of the titles that I already own from the movie channel broadcast to my DVR. The next day, I recorded the movie from my DVR to a DVD. I then had my family watch the first 10 minutes from each movie on one of our other DVD players and, based upon picture, sound quality, etc., tell me which one they thought was the store bought version and which one was the recorded version. My wife and all three kids picked my recording over the store bought version of the movie. Truly remarkable. The primary reason that I bought the recorder is to build upon our DVD collection without having to fork over the big $ to buy the movies from the store (the HDMI connection and upconverting were icing on the cake). At $180 for the recorder and about $1 per blank DVD disc, the thing is going to pay for itself with 10 recordings and then it's all gravy from there. Also, I travel a lot and have about 80 hours of programming on my DVR that I never seem to have enough time to watch. Now I'll be able to burn those programs to a DVD and watch them on my laptop when I'm on the road! How awesome is that?!?!?!

Five stars for the Philips DVD recorder - no doubt. I had tried a few other DVD recorders before I found this one (including a tunerless Philips) - for most, I had paid more and received less. For those of you with complex audio/video setups, beware of DVD recorders that don't have a built in tuner. I don't need the tuner for OTA broadcasts, I need it to make my A/V life hassle free. I'm sure glad that I found this baby...

Accepts almost all media types, has lots of features, DIVX, HDMI with good upscaling picture quality, and the SD channels come in clear.
This recorder does have an integrated QAM tuner that allows free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by your cable provider. The instruction manual does not state this fact and neither does most websites.
The only down side is that in my area Comcast provides cable service and ABC, CBS, and NBC are on channels 86-431, 85-433, and 86-432.
This recorder's tuner only accepts two digits of the sub channel number. Therefore if you have three digits like in my area you have no chance of watching or recording any of those stations.
The digital channels I am able to get do come in clearly and picture quality is an A+ on recordings. If you don't have this problem in your neighbourhood then this is a great recorder for the price.
I did end up returning this unit for the Panasonic DMREZ27K because of the problem with the two digit sub-channel.

The Philips DVDR3505/37 DVD Recorder records ONLY in a 4:3 aspect ratio [full screen]. It will NOT record in a 16:9 aspect ratio [wide screen]. Rather, it chops off part of the picture on each end. I had wrongly assumed that it would record whatever was received through the inputs without modifying the aspect ratio. This information was not made readily available or I would not have purchased the unit. I found the info buried in a note box on page 38 of the User Manual. Otherwise, it is a pretty good recorder and has good video quality. But, if you are going to watch the DVD recording on a wide screen TV don't buy this unit. The lack of 16:9 aspect ratio recording is a deal buster for me.