Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Black

The EPG lets down what is otherwise a very good machine. It does not continue to show the current channel in a window (with audio) when you channel surf using the EPG, nor does it give the program detail when the program is selected- you have to press the info button. ALL these features were on my 4 year old Grundig set top box, which I still prefer to use.
On a more positive note, getting it to record is a straightforward affair. The Sony does not require you switch to a standby mode to record, unlike the Panasonic DVD recorder which it replaced. This beligerently prevented you from operating basic features (like putting in a DVD to play) whenever it was programed to record anything.
Whilst the noise of the SONY is not audible when watching TV you will not want to leave it on standby when reading a book in the same room.
Despite these adverse comments it's still probably the best DVD/PVR you can get at the moment.

This is an incredible machine for the money. It's best trick is the DVD upscaling to 1080p through HDMI which has stopped me bothering about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray until the format war is over. On my 1080p capable Sony TV the picture quality is simply staggering - worth the asking price alone. Normal TV upscaling with less data to work with is less impressive but perfectly acceptable. Recording quality depends on your signal quality and compression - use HQ if you have the disc space.
Flexibility to edit TV recordings before transfer to TV (removing unwanted sections) is easy and the transfer quality is very good depending on the settings you use. When dubbing to DVD the HXD870 appears to be incapable of recording something else to HD (unlike when watching a recording or DVD at the same time which is fine).
It you look ahead a few days in the digital TV listings there can be a substantial delay in completing the full schedule - for some reason this data isn't immediately available on the hard drive which seems an odd decision by Sony. This can be annoying when trying to schedule recordings, a procedure that is otherwise very simple.
I was disappointed that despite indications to the contrary your recorded TV and DVDs cannot be played back through the aerial. This is a simple pass through connection only - there is no channel to tune into like a VCR. It does feed a picture to HDMI and Scart outputs at the same time so you can use a separate modulator if a feed to a remote TV is wanted. Digital audio output is coax only.
If you ask a question through the Sony website, be prepared to wait. They get to it eventually but this service does not appear to have a high priority.
The limitations of the HXD870 only affect you when doing unusual things. As soon as you play a DVD at HD resolution you forgive it everything!

As far as I can make out there is only 4 different players like this that have Freeview and only two of these that play Divx Movies (internet downloads). The other is the Samsung which is £100 cheaper but does not seem to get many good reviews. I have bought this Sony HDD Recorder and love it. It does everything very easily and plays my Movie downloads so its a No brainer for me. The player has two EPG's! a digital one (which is actual the basic one) and an analogue Guide+ with its' large thumbnail screen in the corner so you can still see the picture when going through the TV Guide. Just hit the Red record Button for the program chosen- Job done- Brilliant! The 2 niggles I have is 1. Forget the User Manual except to connect it up - it's too long and overly complicated. Just have a go yourself as it's mostly common sense & good fun. Niggle 2. Like all the other HDD PVR's with Freeview they all only have 1 built in Tuner - so Sony have missed a trick here. This means you can watch a terrestrial (analogue) channel and record a Freeview channel, but not record and watch two separate Freeview channels unless connected up to your obselete Freeview box or better still an unused Skybox. This can provide other freeview channels and ones not included with the Sony's Freeview, its free but remember to keep the Skycard IN. So dig out your old Skybox and connect it up to your Sony!! Hope this is useful

Having played with this gadget for a few weeks now we really can't fault it. Programming from either the Analogue or Digital EPG is incredibly easy. Likewise instant recording and finding what you've recorded to playback is a piece of cake. I've used the editing facilities extensively to copy our old collection of VCR tapes - it's very intuitive and performs all basic functions well. I've only needed to refer to the manual for a couple of things and even that is easy to understand.
It certainly does everything we want it to, so if you've only ever used a VCR and a separate Freeview box you're in for a very pleasant surprise.

Had this for less than a week, but just to add to the other comments, I am very happy with this recorder. I did a lot of research, and this one had all the functions I wanted, whilst others didn't quite do it all.

I have tested the DivX function and have successfully played home movies in .avi format. Picture was great. MP3 and JPegs works well. The pause TV is also a great function.

Also, it is very quiet, which makes a change as my old DVD player was annoyingly loud.

Shame the USB doesn't allow .avi movies to be viewed, as this could have saved on a few discs, but that is the only negative so far.