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

After buying and returning a similar spec Panasonic, I did a bit of research looking for players with the specs I wanted; digital tuner, upscaling, multi-region capability, fair size HDD, and found only four or five that met my requirements.
Reviews on Amazon and elsewhere led me to this one, and I'm not at all disappointed. Some reviews said it was not that intuitive to use, but I've found it to be a piece of cake, both following on screen instructions and reading the manual, which to be fair, is rather large (even though I normally let my wife learn new stuff first and then teach me).
Picture quality from DVDs and tuner is really good, pause live T.V function is a doddle and editing out ads and unwanted bits is really easy.
Price wise from Amazon it is £40 quid cheaper than my local Sony dealer, and buying a remote multi-region unlocker from Ebay made that part simple and cheaper again than my Sony dealer doing it for me. The codes to unlock it are available online and are cheaper still.
All in all an excellent buy from Amazon.

We bought this Sony HDD recorder because we were sick of having video recorder, DVD player and Freeview box stacked underneath our TV. This machine replaces them all (well, my wife still insists on keeping the video recorder so she can watch her old VHS tapes, but...).

The best feature is one that users of Tivo or Sky+ are well used to: recording a programme (or a whole series) onto hard drive just by clicking the programme's title in the onscreen TV guide. The convenience of this cannot be overstated. No more hunting around for tapes or wondering if you've taped over your wife's precious copy of last week's Trinny & Susannah. Click the Title List button and all the programmes you've taped are displayed for immediate viewing, along with animated thumbnails of scenes from the programmes, like on a DVD menu. Recording onto DVD is another bonus if you want to keep your programmes, or lend them to others.

I haven't tried the "pause live TV" feature and one reviewer below suggests it's not all that brilliant. I also don't know about playing AVI files from the computer and I suspect this is a feature most of us won't use.

One caveat I have discovered is that you can't tape one channel and watch another. This is a significant problem, meaning that effectively the recorder is only good for taping if you're out or not watching TV. Otherwise we've been restricted to using the analogue tuner on our TV to watch one of the terrestrial channels. If you wanted to watch one digital channel and tape another, you'd be sunk. I suppose the only way around this would be if you had a digital tuner built into your TV, but as we're using an analogue TV and watching all our digital through the AV channel, then we'll have to wait, and hope they don't turn off the analogue signal in our area for a few years.

Read reviews and came to conclusion had to either get the Panasonic or the Sony product. There are a lot of reviews which list technical design ideosyncracies of the Panasonic recorder so opted for the Sony. This machine seems to do everything that anyone would want from it plus answers all those niggles from the Panasonic users.
I found it incredibly easy to set up. Just plugged it in and it did the rest for me. Pausing live broadcasts is brilliant. one button push and it's done.
Viewing what you've recorded is easy peasy it gives you a little thumbnail of what each programme is.
Don't understand the gripes about the manual - I've had more complicated manuals for watches. You can read the whole thing through in half an hour.

I've only this a couple of weeks having eventually got my money back for a 'similar' Philips product that was so bad as to be unfit for purpose. Anyway, very pleased with the Sony. SOOOO much better than the Philips in every way imaginable. It looks good, it works, it's quick and responsive. Good manual. The lengthy EPG updates are a bit annoying as I always record from a connected Sky box so will never use it - can't switch it off according to another reviewer below. Minor gripe though.

Two and a half years ago I bought a Sony HX510, a similar machine with hard drive/DVD recording. It has been brilliant, but it lacks freeview, so I thought the HXD870 would be the ideal replacement; apart from the freeview it has a larger hard drive, upscaling, a black finish to boot, and all for £100 less than the previous machine!

The HXD870 is very similar, although a minor gripe was that it has one fewer input/output. However, I suppose it does everything it claims recording-wise, but I never got past the freeview reception. Other reviewers have noted that the tuner appears very weak and I can confirm this. Despite the signal strength of the HXD870 showing 84% and `good', I got picture breakup on BBC1, something I've never experienced before. Naturally weaker channels gave more problems and retuning twice did not help.

I live on a hill not 15 miles from the transmitter, have a dedicated (`digital') aerial and since the days of OnDigital have never had reception problems at least from lack of signal. Over the years this has included a variety of set-top boxes/PVRs including Tesco and Argos cheapies, so I never expected problems like this. I was so disappointed that I have reboxed it and it is now awaiting return.

I am a huge fan of Sony equipment and I've never had any problems before, and I'm frankly puzzled by this. Not all other reviewers have complained about the reception so maybe I need my setup checked or perhaps I just have high expectations (after the investment I've made maybe I am entitled to?) I can't knock off more than one star because I presume all the dubbing and editing features work as well as my old machine, but it did make replacing it pointless for me.

If you have dodgy reception at present, or are worried about it in any way, it might be worth confirming you can return the machine before buying. If it works for you, and you are aware of what it claims (I'm surprised by the number of people who thought it was a twin recorder) I'm sure you'll be very happy with it, but if Freeview is a major consideration you should be aware of my (and other reviewers') experience.