Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony RDRHXD560S 80GB HDD DVD Recorder with Freeview

This is an excellent piece of kit for the price but be warned it isn't without it's little idiosyncracies. When you first get it and your all excited by the prospect of setting it up and using it for the first time it kind of lets you down to the point where you think it must be faulty. First of all the dvd drawer will not open until you have unlocked it by holding down the square button for 30 secs. The next dissapointment is the EPG doesn't immediately load all the programme info. In fact it took mine overnight to do it.

After saying all that the picture / sound quality is typically sony and the ease of use means it has been well thought out. The remote is intuative and positive. Its everything you need in a machine of this type...eventually.

Have now had this for 2 weeks, and find it a great piece of kit. Probably changed how we watch television, in very short time frame.

Easy to use, reasonabley intuitive, and if not the manual explains how to proceed. Also very easy to set up, took 10 minutes from opening the box to getting a picture.

This was my third HDD DVD recorder purchase in 12 months. The 2 previous models I purchased,(a Yamada and a Goodmans) were more at the 'budget' end of the market but I was still impressed with their capability and value for money. The Yamada (250gb) was recently returned with a hard disk failure so with a full refund I was able to find a Sony RDRHXD560S on Amazon for the same great price. I have had the unit just a few days but I am blown away by the difference in the whole experience and user friendliness of this unit and it's software. Having freeview within the unit also makes a big difference. It is very quiet compared to the 2 previous units I owned. My only regret is that I did not invest an extra £83 to get the 160GB hard disk and I am going to have to be a little more disciplined about deleting or dubbing items - sadly I struggled to convince the wife on the extra cost and I don't have a HDTV. One learning from my experience with HDD recorders is to make sure that anthing precious such as family home movies etc is backed up onto a DVD which is finalised - if the hard drive fails you're unlikely to recover it.
Finally - well done Amazon I ordered this at 12.30 pm and it was delivered at 8am the following morning. I was up and running before breakfast!

I spent ages looking for a decent DVD/HDD machine looking at Which? reports, etc. You basically have two choices for this level of specification Sony or Panansonic. I went for Sony because 80GB is enough for me, it was cheaper than the similar Panasonic model and I have a SONY TV. Amazon price and delivery was the best I could find. The machine is very quiet - which seems to be an issue with some other SONY models - mainly at the cheaper end of the range.

My thanks to previous reviewers, your comments helped me to choose this model. The quality is great and it is very simple to use. I bought it from Amazon about 5 weeks ago and it is well worth the price. It has replaced my Sony Video, Sony DVD player and one of my two Freeview boxes (you still need one to record and watch different freeview channels at the same time).It also means I don't have to keep scribbled notes of what I have recorded - just wish I could record the review to go with the other details it automatically saves.The chase recordings feature is really useful, allowing you to watch a programme when you are ready,time slipping by watching from it the beginning as the trusty little machine is still recording it to the end.It doesnt have optical sound output (despite some specifications I read on some sites) but the coaxial is excellent with my 5.1 surround when playing movie DVD's