Customer Reviews
Good Recorder 
2008-01-05
Accepts almost all media types, has lots of features, DIVX, HDMI with good upscaling picture quality, and the SD channels come in clear.
This recorder does have an integrated QAM tuner that allows free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by your cable provider. The instruction manual does not state this fact and neither does most websites.
The only down side is that in my area Comcast provides cable service and ABC, CBS, and NBC are on channels 86-431, 85-433, and 86-432.
This recorder's tuner only accepts two digits of the sub channel number. Therefore if you have three digits like in my area you have no chance of watching or recording any of those stations.
The digital channels I am able to get do come in clearly and picture quality is an A+ on recordings. If you don't have this problem in your neighbourhood then this is a great recorder for the price.
I did end up returning this unit for the Panasonic DMREZ27K because of the problem with the two digit sub-channel.
DVD recorder - and player 2008-01-02
Philips DVDR3505/37 1080i Upscaling DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner - Best price - fairly easy to use - although it does take some trial and error. Price was excellent
Difficult to use 
2007-12-05
Two problems:
1. The buttons of remote are very small. The feeling of contact is poor. Not easy to control and select the function you want.
2. The digital channels seem not complete.
In my living area (Comcast), the Sci-Fi is 75-223; FOX News is 76-330.
This DVDR only accepts two digits of sub channel number. Therefore, no chance to watch my favorite channels.
Magnavox has a similar model in Wal-Mart. A DVD Recorder has digital tuner built-in. It also has 80GB HDD embedded. The price is around $180.
Unfortunately, same issue. This unit only accepts two digit sub channel.
Probably both of them are from same supplier.
Not bad and a very good price! 2007-11-22
Received in good condition and delivery was very quick. The unit was easy to set up and easy to use. The picture quality was good and the price was right.
Excellent tuner and recorder 2007-11-22
I needed a new dvd player and decided to upgrade with a tuner to be ready for digital broadcasts next year. The tuner is excellent and I can't tell you enough how nice it is to actually see the ball in a baseball game. The picture was so good that I upgraded to a larger tv. I also like being able to "tape" in a clear, crisp format. The recorder is quite easy to use so I'm not sure where others have been having problems. I should note that I bought this at Wal-Mart. They originally sold me an open-box item, that was not sold as so. (The previous owner had left a DVD in the player-clue#1). The antenna hook-up on the first dvd-r was loose, and the channel changing was quite slow, 5-10sec. I returned it, and the new one has a 3-4 sec. channel change speed and the antenna input works fine. There are still many features that I haven't tried yet but timed recordings and viewing/playback have worked well.
Pros: Excellent tuner for OTA signals, great digital recordings, easy to use, also plays CD's well, great picture, allows OTA users to easily switch between analog or digital signals.
Cons: Does not equilize the volume so ads are way too loud, no universal remote, does not remember play-back times on DVD's or CD's and every viewing must begin from the beginning.
still works great after one year 
2008-06-14
No complaints. It plays well, records well, and is easy to use (for me). The tuner works fine. I would buy it again.
Great feature set, poor execution 
2008-05-11
I bought this at Wallie World for $167 and was disappointed immediately. It's VERY slow to operate commands or read a disc. When you first load a disc it takes several minutes to format. When you record a program, it takes a minute or so to complete writing before you can access anything. Even entering the menu to select a recorded show to play takes too long. I've never seen a DVD player so slow to read data.
Worst of all was the time record function. It worked fine for the first couple of weeks and the quality was pretty good - though it certainly was not comparable to the original signal as some have stated. But soon we started getting a "Disc Full" error, even with a new disc in. Or a disc would work a couple times, and then suddenly say the disc was full even though we had one 30-minute recording on it in SLP mode.
I tried calling Philips customer service and was answered by a poorly-qualified customer rep. After about 30 minutes of her trying to give me different advice (much of which contradicted the manual and didn't work), we were either disconnected or she hung up on me (I honestly believe it was the latter). So I returned the device and got a basic DVD player for $47 that responds much, much faster than the Philips recorder/player. Then we picked up a digital recorder from our cable company that records 50 hours of video in HD quality to a hard drive and does SO MUCH MORE than the DVR and so much better. Finally, TV viewing is fun again!
You Can Do Much Better 2008-02-12
I bought this DVD recorder several months ago, but returned it because it had bugs. It is an okay product, essentially the same as a VCR of 20 years ago except with better picture quality and a digital tuner. The bad news: 1) it can not use the best recordable DVD format for time-shifting (DVD-RAM); 2) while the tuner is digital, the tuner will not output a high-definition signal for use with an HD-ready HDTV (Like my 3 year old model. Also, no DVD can record or play back a high-definition picture.); 3) it has no electronic program guide to identify or record upcoming programs.
My advice: Do what I did. After returning this and a highly-rated Samsung DVD recorder, I signed up with Dish Network and got their newest high-definition (hard disk) DVR, the 722-something. The cost was reasonable and the DVR is 20 years more advanced than any DVD recorder I am aware of. Very easy to use and can record a hugh amount of TV. Truly a great product. Direct TV and TIVO make similar products, but I think that Dish Network's is the best and best value.
Super Performance 2008-01-20
After many different DVD recorders on the low end of the scale and one dissapointment after another I purchased this Philips. I got the firmware update from Philips and everything works great. The tuner is good quality and it is fairly easy to program. If you are looking for a decent priced reliable unit this is the one!
Very Impressed 2008-01-18
I have a 32 inch HDTV, and I do all my TV viewing OTA (no cable or satellite). We enjoy watching PBS, and other broadcast stations. But the VCR could not record any of the digital channels. So I started looking for a DVR. My HDTV does not have a video out port, so I could not use a tunerless DVR.
So I bought this DVR mainly because it has a digital tuner, thinking that the quality would not be so good because it does not record in HD like a Tivo. But I was wrong. The quality of recording is so clear, I can't tell a difference between the original HD broadcast and DVD playback.
You can record at different quality settings. The higher the quality of recording, the less stuff you can fit on the DVD, because the higher quality recording takes up more space. At the highest quality setting, you can fit one hour of shows. At the next highest quality setting, you can fit 2 hours. At the next quality setting, you can fit 2.5 hours. And so on and so on all the way to a 6 hour disc capacity.
I recorded snippets of HD broadcast shows such as "CSI" and "Without a Trace" just to test out the DVR, and I must admit, I was impressed. At first, the screen was too dark, but I just had to go into my HDTV's options and adjust the brightness. With my Sony HDTV you can adjust the brightness of each input channel independently of the others (which, by the way, is a very useful feature).
So after I got the brightness up to normal, the quality of the recordings I made was really good. In fact, I couldn't tell any difference between the original show and the playback. Also, I couldn't tell any difference between the highest (1-hour) and second-highest (2-hour) quality settings. They both looked great to me. So I am really impressed with this DVR.
It is pretty slow executing commands and stuff, but that doesn't bother me. I just really like the fact that I can record shows now with such good picture quality.
I think I am going to get a cheaper upconverting DVD player for daily playback, and just use the Philips for recording only. You can get an upconverting DVD player for only a few dollars now (even a region-free one). My HDTV has 2 HDMI inputs, so I can just have each DVD come in on its own HDMI channel. So that seems like a good way to go.
