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Sony RDRGX380B DVD Recorder with HDMI Connection
Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Immediate replacement
(3 out of 5) by M. Barrett on Jun 21, 2009 (UK)Item arrived from Amazon fine. Worked for a few days but failed after first recording. My daughter's dvd got stuck in the tray which would not open. Disappointing from a SONY. Amazon were great - immediate replacement sent and it has been fine. Matches up to all reviews and seems to be value for money... If you are looking for a recorder this one does what it says on the tin. A few minor irritations - HD upscaling seems to be a waste of time (even with latest Sony HD tv) and need to wait to get dvds cued up for start up process to complete. I use it to record SKY plus programmes to DVD R+ and has been fine.
25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
A waste of time trying to get this to do what a DVD recorder should do
(2 out of 5) by S. Dinsdale on May 15, 2009 (Leeds, UK)This is fine if you want to use this as a Video Recorder, but with Sky+ and the likes this must surely be a rapidly declining market. It will record from your Sky box if you want to keep stuff (although Sky seem to be copy protecting more of their broadcasts...this is why they gave you a new viewing card methinks. Sly Sky...). Recorded picture quality is fine.
OK, so it's budget priced, so I shouldn't expect too much in the way of frills, but this is a really horrible machine that I wasted precious time on, before giving up and returning it as unfit for purpose.
The instructions are full of hopeless and pointless things that no-one in their right mind would bother to attempt (pages of track division functions etc).
What the instructions don't tell you is what it can't do. You can't happily connect another DVD machine and copy discs onto this recorder. I am not talking about commercial discs only, I am talking about DVD-R's too. This is what I bought it for. You can't even feed a second machine through it.
(This is typical of previous experiences with Sony. They are more interested in preventing you doing things, that it's obvious you would WANT to do, like copy discs ! I am reminded of their awful MiniDisc recorders of the early 2000's which made it nigh on impossible to manually set a recording level in the field ! I ended up smashing mine to smithereens when it failed to finalise a precious recording I'd just made of my little girl and wouldn't even give the disc back...)
This machine has a flimsy load-in tray which is just asking to be broken, the digital display is third rate, the buttons are clunky and slow, and you can't even use the Stop button to halt a recording...you have to use a tiny button on the remote !...and upon making a recording to disc you cannot then choose your own thumbnail picture. It defaults to the first frame, which is inevitably going to be a channel ID, or Black, or something equally useless.
This is a tossed-off shoddy product. In the end I went and bought a secondhand Panasonic which actually does what any reasonable person would require out of a DVD recorder. My original Panasonic gave up the ghost after about 5 years of extremely heavy use (an entire VHS collection transferred to DVD-R) I can't see this horrible machine lasting 6 months.
I've had a Sony TV for twenty years, and was predisposed to thinking favourably of Sony, but their modern day standards don't hold a candle to their old ones.
OK, so it's budget priced, so I shouldn't expect too much in the way of frills, but this is a really horrible machine that I wasted precious time on, before giving up and returning it as unfit for purpose.
The instructions are full of hopeless and pointless things that no-one in their right mind would bother to attempt (pages of track division functions etc).
What the instructions don't tell you is what it can't do. You can't happily connect another DVD machine and copy discs onto this recorder. I am not talking about commercial discs only, I am talking about DVD-R's too. This is what I bought it for. You can't even feed a second machine through it.
(This is typical of previous experiences with Sony. They are more interested in preventing you doing things, that it's obvious you would WANT to do, like copy discs ! I am reminded of their awful MiniDisc recorders of the early 2000's which made it nigh on impossible to manually set a recording level in the field ! I ended up smashing mine to smithereens when it failed to finalise a precious recording I'd just made of my little girl and wouldn't even give the disc back...)
This machine has a flimsy load-in tray which is just asking to be broken, the digital display is third rate, the buttons are clunky and slow, and you can't even use the Stop button to halt a recording...you have to use a tiny button on the remote !...and upon making a recording to disc you cannot then choose your own thumbnail picture. It defaults to the first frame, which is inevitably going to be a channel ID, or Black, or something equally useless.
This is a tossed-off shoddy product. In the end I went and bought a secondhand Panasonic which actually does what any reasonable person would require out of a DVD recorder. My original Panasonic gave up the ghost after about 5 years of extremely heavy use (an entire VHS collection transferred to DVD-R) I can't see this horrible machine lasting 6 months.
I've had a Sony TV for twenty years, and was predisposed to thinking favourably of Sony, but their modern day standards don't hold a candle to their old ones.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Sony RDRGX380B DVD recorder
(5 out of 5) by Mr. Simon Boulding on Jun 22, 2009 (kent, UK)This is a great product if you want a basis dvd recorder. It is reasonably easy to install, though one page of instructions are slightly complicated. The picture quality output is very good and it gives you various options for output (1080i, 1080p etc).
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
First Impressions
(4 out of 5) by P. Mcgrath on May 8, 2009 (Yorkshire, UK)Usual efficient delivery.
No problems with menu etc. but when put into ''standby'' will not display picture as a ''loop through'' on TV (using Sony recommended Sky STB connections that is).
Handbook claims it will but this not so i'm afraid.
Picture quality is great up to EP but massive jump from ''EP'' to ''ULP'' (360 mins to 840 mins on standard DVD) and the picture quality suffers enormously. Needs an intermediate setting.
Hoped it would have a ''fit to disc'' setting like the computer burning tools, but no such luck.
Not checked its playback/upscaling capabilities because only want it for recording from Scart output on my Sky HD STB.
Also not checked it using the onboard freeview tuner.
No problems with menu etc. but when put into ''standby'' will not display picture as a ''loop through'' on TV (using Sony recommended Sky STB connections that is).
Handbook claims it will but this not so i'm afraid.
Picture quality is great up to EP but massive jump from ''EP'' to ''ULP'' (360 mins to 840 mins on standard DVD) and the picture quality suffers enormously. Needs an intermediate setting.
Hoped it would have a ''fit to disc'' setting like the computer burning tools, but no such luck.
Not checked its playback/upscaling capabilities because only want it for recording from Scart output on my Sky HD STB.
Also not checked it using the onboard freeview tuner.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
simple
(5 out of 5) by Mr. Geoffrey Carter on Aug 4, 2009 (east sussex)this a very easy to use product it is an auto set up so just plug it in and wait it has 4 recording speeds and has a good quality picture playback well worth the money G Carter