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

Sony RDR-HXD870 - DVD Recorder With 160GB Hard Drive - With Freeview - Black I bought one of these in June (from a different store for about £9 more as there's was multi region)and haven't regretted it since. I have a pioneer 42" Plasma TV with built in freeview which the Sony is hooked up to and though the freeview on the TV is prone to breaking up I've found the freeview on the Sony far more stable only occasionally pixellating. I've mentioned this because in most of the reviews I read while researching which DVD/HDD recorder to get, the fact that the inbuilt freeview aerial in the Sony was supposed to be poor quality, compared to the panasonic, came up quite a lot of times. Also during my research there were a lot of queries as to whether you could watch one program and record another, well the simple answer is yes as long as you watch the other program through your TV's tuner or Sky box (obviously if you have Sky) i.e. exactly the same as if you were using a video recorder. I have found that the 160gb HDD is certainly large enough for my needs (holds well over 60 hours of recordings at a good resolution) and even more if you lower the resolution, though why anyone would want to lower the resolution is beyond me. I love the one press record feature which I use on almost a daily basis and when I go to view the programs I've recorded to the HDD, there is a little preview screen next to each recording which automatically starts when you click on the name or date of the program recorded, which is very handy when you have more then one recording on the hard drive waiting to be viewed. The picture through the Sony is also very crisp and clear especially when using its digital freeview aerial and also whilst playing DVD's. I have yet to try all the inbuilt features of this recorder(could take a while, there's that many of them), all in all I'm very pleased I bought the Sony in preference to what seems to be its main rival(the Panasonic) and can't recommend it highly enough.

I can't comment on how this compares to other DVD recorders, but I'm very pleased with this one. I didn't find it quite so easy to use the DVD recorder as others reviewers appear to have done, but I am someone who likes to read the instructions first and I did have quite specific requirements. i) I wanted to be able to record from my VHS recorder to the DVD recorder; ii) and I wanted to be able to 'burn' DVDs (known as dubbing in the Sony manual) from either my VHS tapes or from programmes recorded from the tv. I eventually got this sussed, but it's not entirely obvious from the manual.

Copying to DVD can be a little noisey, comparable to copying to VHS, but copying to hard disc is virtually noiseless. It's also such a treat to simply choose the programme you wish to record using the electronic guide and just press a button: you don't have to find a space on the hard disc as this is done automatically for you. There are over thirty-five hours of high quality recording space on the disc, and I think up to something like 255 hours if you opt for the lowest quality(which I haven't tried).

Quality of playback is superb, and I don't use HDMI upscaling. One minor glitch is that it won't play pre-recorded DVDs unless they are Region 2 which is tedious and in this day-and-age rather inconsiderate and completely unnecessary, hence the 4* rating.

Quick delivery and a very good price. Well done Amazon.
I bought the HXD870 to replace my worn out Sony VCR.
My bravia HD-ready Sony TV is only 8 months old and so I had hoped for easy compatibility. (Easy being the essential word).
After many hours of frustration trying to set up my new purchase, I can now use the basics on the DVD recorder and the picture quality is brilliant. So much better than a VCR.

But oh dear the manual is an utter disgrace.

If you are expecting to carefully plod through the instructions, you will be sorely disappointed.
I have better things to do with my life than study the meaning of "dubbing" and "title list" and "hook up" and "smartlink" and so on.
To get any joy, I resorted to re-reading the TV manual (how come Sony can produce a decent TV manual and an awful DVD recorder manual ?)and then I began to grasp some of the things I needed to do. I then had to use my initiative to guess at how to carry out these things. OK for you guys with reasonable initiative, but I knew I was in big trouble when I realized I had to use MY initiative.
The manual is complex, it fails to give explanations for the basics AND it fails to give a good technical explanation. Useless, utterly useless.

This DVD recorder might turn out to be wonderful, but thats no use to me if I can not work out how to use the damn thing.

A big thank you goes to the other reviewers of this product and the customers discussions. Without your goodwill and efforts I would still be clueless as to how to even get a simple recording on this machine. Due to other reviewers, at least I was aware that I was likely to have trouble deciphering the manual.

If you are tempted to buy and your knowledge is limited to setting up a VCR then I recommend that you read up a great deal or you resign yourself to getting someone else to set up this recorder. If you have to resort to the latter, then I doubt that you will ever get to grips with the machine.

Some discussion points, with answers, for the less technically minded (like me!):
I would like to transfer my videos to DVD. Can this machine do this ?
Found out the hard way: Yes this machine will burn you a DVD BUT you need a good VCR before you can start to transfer a video(maybe obvious, but was not obvious to me) AND most videos are copy protected so you can not transfer them anyway!! I can accept this situation now that I know the facts. I have purchased a brand new VCR so that I can (a) copy the amateur videos and (b) still watch the commercially produced videos, but not using my HXD870.

By the way, yes you can watch one channel whilst recording another. But this assumes your TV has either a digibox or a built in tuner, which mine does have. And, due to the useless manual, it might take you four weeks to work out how to actually do this.
Now I know how to operate this part of the recorder, the procedure is in fact quick and easy.
Wonder if Sony would pay me vaste sums of money to write an idiots guide to using their HXD ???????

I am sure that this is a very good machine if only you can understand the instruction book and the machines own set up program. I have found it next to impossible to tune it into my NTL set top cable box, and have so far only succeded in being able to record the program selected on NTL. I cannot record from the terrestrial service whilst watching NTL.
Disapointing-not recommended unless you have a degree in DVD recording.

I have had this for a few weeks now and i am pleased with it.

Goods points for me are, DIVX XVID this is a good XVID player, the DVD upscaling to 1080p, i can watch another channel when recording (through my free view tuner on my tv), i have no problems with the free view tuner i used to get breaks & blocks on my old one.

It was easy to setup and selecting a program to record is simple.

The only other thing i would have liked is the function to record 2 programs at the same time, hence i'm knocking off a star.