Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony RDR-VX535 DVD Recorder & VCR Combo Player with 1080p HDMI Upscaling and Bonus HDMI Cable

I am very dissapointed with this machine. I bought it to convert my old VHS tapes to DVD and it will not do it. It claims that they are all copy protected. I am checking out other options right now.

I bought this machine through Amazon for several projects where I needed to make DVDs of some of my VHS tapes. One of the projects involved editing the duplicated DVDs for some business films. After I purchased the Sony RDR-VX535, at a cost higher than it is currently, I was able to copy DVDs from my tapes just fine, but after going through the time and expense of copying, labeling, packaging and mailing some of these DVD duds as special Christmas presents, I learned to my chagrin that they wouldn't play or even register on ANY other computer (Mac or PC) or DVD player except the Sony used to duplicate them! This made the machine useless to me, as I need to be able to edit the DVDs. What a waste of my time and money, on top of the embarrassment of sending my friends useless gifts! The fact that the duplicated DVDs won't play in other players should be disclosed clearly to people who are thinking of purchasing the machine.

I hate to write a negative review, but I am so disappointed; this has been a tremendous rip-off. Sony will never be able to steal money from me again, because I won't ever buy another one of their products.

I've got quite a bit of experience dealing with VCRs, DVDS, and other things digital. Part of my business is dubbing VHS tapes to DVD for customers. I bought this unit to hopefully expedite and streamline that process - rather than using an older Pioneer DVD recorder tied to a Sony VHS machine to record VHS to DVD that way. So I was excited when this unit arrived. Setup was fairly easy and the first dub appeared to go off without a hitch - that is until I tried playing back the DVD on two separate Blu-ray players in my house - both Panasonic units - but different models. Yes, the disc was finalized - but guess what? No playback on the VX535 dubbed DVD. I tried playing back the same disc on an older plain-Jane DVD player we had? Worked just fine. Then I tried playing some of the previous discs I had dubbed using the separate DVD / VHS units and those discs played perfectly - across platforms - didn't matter if they were standard DVD players or Blu-ray. I don't know who is at fault here, but this incompatibility with Blu-ray on the Sony recorder is unacceptable in my opinion and I suspect may mirror some of the complaints I read here about this unit. I'm investigating exchange options I have with the seller. (Not Amazon.)

So buyer beware. When your grandchildren in the future attempt to playback your "old school" DVD family movies on their $10 Blu-Ray players they got at Cosmic Mart - they may be out of luck.

UPDATE: On a hunch - I tried copying a VHS to DVD with a DVD+R blank rather than DVD-R. The VHS tape copied without a hitch and more importantly played on our Blu-Ray players! Problem apparently solved!

This DVD VHS recorder has worked perfectly for me. I use DVD+R disc to record all of my old VHS home movies etc, onto. The auto finalize feature worked great but one must turn on this feature or do the finalizing manually. It has done everything I wanted it to do and is very easy to "dub" copies from VHS to DVD. Couldn't be easier.
I am very happy with this unit, love it ! I was also real happy to learn that I was able to take segments from various VHS tapes and dub them all onto one DVD disc. The DVD+R all play on my standard DVD player after they are finalized. I would recommend this unit to anyone looking for a easy to use dubbing machine.

While I've only owned the RDR-VX535 a short while, I haven't experienced the problems reported by other reviewers. It has copied every VHS tape I've asked it too so far, which includes both home videos and material taped off the air. The complaints about burned discs not playing in other machines can probably be traced back to a failure to finalize the discs. The unit is extremely easy to use, and does what it claims. I can't comment on durability, but so far, in my experience, it's a winner.