Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVDR5500 - DVD Recorder With Freeview

This machine give a great picture through the HDMI, and plays Divx very well. That's about it for the good stuff.....

I've had the dvdr5500 about a month now, and I'm less than impressed. It freezes very easily, doing the simplest things such as turning the machine on or off or going to the Home menu, and the only way out is to cut the power at the plug, which means you lose all your settings (e.g. HDMI output level). That is the biggest problem.
The interface is also VERY slow to respond, taking seconds to respond to even one button push, which frustrates you in to pushing more buttons which - you guessed it - causes it to freeze up!
Apparently the machine keeps the disc spinning when left in the tray, even when turned off, which means the motor burns out quickly. This is just what I've heard, but the `Eco' mode you can turn on presumably stops/reduces this, but means the machine takes a full minute to load up (its not exactly snappy when the Eco mode is off either though).
Recording is sporadic - not a single recording I have made using the TV guide has worked properly, always missing either the beginning or the end of the programme. The aspect ratio is always messed up as well.
A final thing is the standby light, which is so incredibly bright that I have to have it covered when watching TV in a darkened room or else it is very distracting!
In all, this is going back to Richer Sounds. It's the only machine I have found which does everything I want, but unfortunately it is a typical Philips in that it is very poorly made. The remote is so cluttered and ill-though out that you are always pushing the wrong button or thinking you've pushed something when you haven't.
DON'T BUY THIS!!!!

Update: I repeatedly tried to update the firmware on the machine in the hope that it would solve the MANY problems. However, after trying with several disks (including TWO that Philips themselves sent me!) I gave up, as the recorder simply wouldn't accept the update. I sent it to Richer Sounds for a repair, but it was returned 'non-repairable'. So that was that. After a brief stop gap at an equally-shoddy Samsung, I am now awaiting the delivery of a more expensive Sony DVDR & HDD combo unit, the RDR-HXD870. This has had much better reviews and fingers crossed it won't drive me up the wall!

I was pleased with everything about this DVD until I discovered that mine had a couple of faults (not sure if these are common faults). When recording, it often doesnt switch off after the selected program has finished recording and so it records the next program until it uses up all the disk space, then the disk keeps spinning and gets hot, and you can only stop it by switching it off at the mains. Also there is no way of knowing how much room you have available on the disk and it will accept a recording request when there is not enough room on the disk. I'm afraid to say I will be taking it back.

I bought one of these today in spite of reading the reviews, thought I would at least give it a chance however I have to agree with the others here. It's frozen twice needing a plug power reset, first time I pressed TV Guide and it froze, second time after finishing a timed recording it froze in standby and failed to respond to remote or front panel buttons.

The USB port is good and does support hard drives however the current provided isn't enough for my 2.5" SATA one so I had to use an external supply. It will also not play DVD images on the mass storage which is a shame.

The EPG is truly awful - you only see now/next and a handful of channels. There's no auto-pad option and you can't edit the record data before storing it in the program list (once it's there you can manually edit the item to add padding).

I also found a DVD+RW burnt with a DVD image on my PC would not erase at all, it just bitched about the disc being "finalised" so I had to erase on the PC before I would use it. Even my old LiteON would erase anything!

Remote handset is pretty huge and plasticy too. A real shame but it's going back. Two freezes in a couple of hours is unacceptable. Shame on you Philips. I even flashed it up to the latest firmware before all this so it's not that.

I have had two of these supplied by Amazon, and both freezed more times than i can remember, the epg is slow scrolling down, and you have to keep going in and out of the guide so that it shows up all the programmes that will be on the tv, very frustrating, Shame on Phillips for letting a product out on sale to the public, which is so poor......

DO...NOT...BUY...you have been warned..

Do not buy think i've pulled all my hair out in this last week.
it has froze several times a day.
epg is rubbish has missing info.
timer recorder does not always come on due to freze problems.
Also it frezes doing the simplist things e.g stoping record or pressing menu.
DO NOT BUY STAY WELL CLEAR.