Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVDR3480 - DVD Player & Recorder

After looking at all the DVD recorders out there at the moment this was the one I'm glad I purchased and will serve until digital DVD recorders come down in price. As it stands, this records from my freeview box no problem.

Play back quality is fantastic.

Has six recording modes from HQ (High Quality) to SLP (Super Long Play) six hours recording at VHS standard.

Another bonus, you can connect a VCR and very easily record all your memories onto DVD, I'm going to do this for my mother as she has a lot of VHS-C tapes of holidays etc

Overall there is nothing to fault this machine and I'd recommend as a best buy to anyone and a big plus is that it can be made region free


With NO disc in your DVDR3480-player you press SETUP on the remote and then press this code: 5 0 1 8 ,now you can pick Region-code with the remote from 0-6

(0=Regionfree)

Press OK then setup

I bought this DVD Recorder/Player from a well known supermarket (*cough* ASDA *cough) for £98 because it was from a well known brand, Philips.

Having owned a Sanyo VCR for years to record (i used the VCR to record and had a normal DVD Player), i expected it to be really hard to set up, as i can remember the Sanyo being very hard to set up and get used to.
However to my surprise it was easy as anything!
You just connect the scart to the sat/cab/stb reciever, then the arial from the dvd recorder to TV and woolah! Done, ready to record and watch DVD's.

There is a USB Port on the front, which i have used to watch some films i downloaded online (LEGALLY! Of Divx VOD)and some other inputs.

All for in all a excellent Player/Recorder from Philips, the co-inventer of the compact disc/dvd ;-)

This latest offering from Philip's is very good it looks nice performs quietly, has lots of features and I am glad at last we see the likes of Philips offering a USB socket as well as a DV in socket on their latest DVD Recorder.

However it seems that all this may come at a cost because on this model where they have given you some extra features over their older DVD Recorders they have not included VideoPlus timer setting on this model - something what Philips have offered on their previous models, strange that and that is why I have given them only 4 stars.

The front LED Display panel has suffered as well. On this model they have included a horrible yucky green 'Digit' type display reminiscent of the 80's VCR's and it makes the otherwise expensive looking sleek front design of the recorder look very cheap and lets it down immensely, also cutting down the information displayed on the front. This must have been a cost cutting exercise for philips.

The remote control is very good (although it looks like it should light up in the dark and it hasn't even green fluorescent type buttons!) the onscreen displays and menus and settings are very good. I haven't tried any Dual Layer disks or DIVx disc's in the recorder yet so I cannot comment on that.

One other neat feature is that I could plug my Digital Camera straight into the USB socket at the front of the DVD Recorder and start viewing my photos instantly on the TV screen - alas though there does not seem a way to record them straight onto a DVD disc which is a shame.

All in all a very good buy and worked out cheaper than my previous Philips DVD Recorder which was a DVDR3380. If I could only find a working multiregion code now it will be even better.

I bought this DVD Writer to replace my Toshiba RD-XS32 which, to be honest, was far too difficult to use.

I got the Philips from Tesco's for £89 and even though you can get the unit a lot cheaper now, even at that price I think it was still a bargain!

I wanted something that was just nice and easy to use so I could timer record and instant record 'stuff' off TV, this fitted the bill perfectly. The fact that you can record to DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW is brilliant as it dosn't matter what media you purchase.

The USB port on the front of the unit is a really good extra, especially as the kit has DivX support. This meant that I can download *legal* video from the Internet, put it onto a USB memory stick, put it into the machine and play it directly. This saves me such a long time as I used to convert the DivX AVI's into DVD movies which could take hours.

As well as the USB playing of AVI's you can also just stick them onto a CD/DVD, put it into the machine and play them without having to convert to DVD - such a time saver!

The only criticism I have is with the remote control. Some reviewers say that it is ugly but to be honest that dosn't bother me as I don't look at the remote for that long! No, the problems I have is that there is no 'MENU' button so it can be a bit hit-and-miss to get to a DVD's menu. Also, the range and angle of the remote seem to be very sensitive, ie, you have to point directly at the unit and not be very far away (<9 feet).

The quality and features along with the price of the drive far outweigh the small couple of problems. Definatly consider this drive.

I don't normally type a review, but thought I would type one for this product as some of the reviews I feel are unfair.

This is possibly the cheapest named brand dvd recorder, so we aren't looking at a top of the range bargain, it's basic but it does exactly what it says on the box.

What I would say is how good you find this product depends on your needs, for me I have sky + so I don't need this product to do live recording I just want it to copy programmes from Sky +, so my requirements were quite basic. Also for me this DVD player is an upgrade for me, as my last dvd player was a £25.00 cheapy from Tescos. If you were looking to do live recording then although this machine would do the job I would suggest getting a DVD Ram capable dvd recorder.

I have bought this machine today, and the set up took 5 minutes, so nice and simple, I have tested all it's functions and I am pleased with the results so far. Picture quality is good, sound is clear and crisp and the machine is straight forward to use without the manual. The machine does have a whirring noise when playing a disc, but not noticeable when you start to watch something.

The remote control is possibly the weakest point of the DVD, but not in the way other reviews have found, the remote control responds quickly and there is no wait, now this could be down to me buying this a few months later than those reviews and philips have made some adjustments, or because my old DVD player was soo slow that this seem quicker. My only complaint (and this is very minor) is that the menu button isn't labeled 'menu' but disc instead, it took me a couple of minutes to suss that out.