Customer Reviews
Great but not perfect 
2008-06-30
This is a very good product. It works just as advertised. I had an old Accurian DVR that was good and much easier to operate, but is dying...slowly. This Phillips has a larger hard drive, is more feature rich but rather cumbersome to use. Overall, I cannot complain as this is a solid product. I do not yet have HD TV so I cannot comment on that capability but for regular Digital cable, I have had no problems using it to watch programs. The unit is quiet, attractive and has given me no problems. I wish it was Region free capable as I have a lot of old BBC Shakespeare Plays on DVD that are in PAL and this unit will not play them.
Overall this is a good, but not quite great buy.
BIG PROS and BIG CONS-worth the money 2008-06-27
Yes, it's one of those - 5 star machines with 3 star drawbacks-FOR ALL OF MANUFACTURER'S OUT THERE PLEASE MAKE A DVD RECORDER/HARD DRIVE COMBO WITH ALL THE FEATURES THAT RECORDS ON all DISC TYPES AND HAS ALL THE FEATURES!!!!! AND THE FEATURES ACTUALLY WORK AS DESCRIBED- AND DOESN'T BREAK DOWN FROM HEAVY RECORDING!!!!
PROS:
*Beautiful tuner-perfect quality hooked up with R/W/Y of all things-my other high quality hookups are already in use so this is my only option
*Perfect play quality also
*scene delete edits out comercials in a 1 hour show in about 4 minutes once you get the hang of it
*HDD recorded shows dub to disc so quickly it's ridiculous-1/4 time maybe I'm not sure but roughly 15-20 min for a 1 hour show on the high end.
*you can make list of titles to dub before bed and it dubs them all without you having to set it after each title. If you're really lazy :) you don't even have to pick the speed/quality-if you want everything to fit on a disc, hit auto and it picks the highest quality for the space left on the disc
*everything is quick, almost instant-scene delete/divide/erase-there's no 2 minute waiting for it to register. Same for editing +RW disc-very quick, never had anything like it.
*SILENT - ABSOLUTELY SILENT
*every recording mode known to man! Not limited to SP/LP/EP
*One button on remote shows how much space left for every mode on your HDD and your disc
*plays disc that other players won't play, but should play.
*Easy to hook up to a VCR and dub your old tapes - with an upgraded quality (you can go straight to dvd or to the HDD and then edit commercials or record episodes on DVD in a new order in speed dub mode)
*When dubbing a title from HDD to DVD that is less that 20 minutes, you can watch live TV with a bar on the bottom so you know how far along you are. ODDLY, over 20 minutes and you ca't watch live TV because it shows whatever you are dubbing - I think this has to be my fault but I can't figure out how to change it so for now I'll include it in the review.
*Easy buttone on reomte to switch between TV/Digital TV
CONS:
*won't record on 4x disc-annoying but tolerable
*so far it won't dub from DVD unless it was recorded on this machine. That's ridiculous and defeats the purpose entirely. I suspect it is because all other dvd's are recorded from Satellite broadcast(Directv) (THIS MACHINE IS HOOKED UP TO MINIMAL BASIC CABLETV)and in very small print in the manual it says "some satellite recordings are sopyrighted and will not dub to the hardrive. But we're talking basic soap operas, news broadcasts, cartoons - this is not HBO movies or something. I hooked it up to another DVD player and can copy to the HDD from the other DVD but why have a machine that' dubs both ways if it only works with cable television or over the air broadcasts???????
*No TV Guide? Okay, I never understood why this mattered until I got directv and a DVR-now it is very annoying to have to set up like a VCR to record
*You can't title until after it is recorded - and since there's no TV guide, there's no way to know what the name of the episode is-so I look it up on my sat TV Guide and then type it in, like a cell phone into the HDD menu on this unit. That's ridiculous
*Again, titling is annoying, I don't text message because I hate it, and now my titling is done the same way -time consuming, annoying, frustrating
*LP is 3 hours - what idiot designed this???????????????????It's a basic industry standard for goodness sakes!!
*I can't explain why but when I first started dubbing from HDD to disc, it would hang up in the middle of the dub and I would have to unplug and restart - it would restore the disc and being +RW I could divide it /delete the hung up blank screen and then dub only the part I needed but after about 10 days of regular dubbing (hang up a/b 10% of the time) -now it never hangs up at all. It's like it had to practice enough to remember what to do - BIZARRE. But now it's perfect.
IF ANYONE KNOWS WHY I CAN'T DUB A DVD TO HDD THAT WAS RECORDED FROM SATELLITE, PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO FIX IT. IF THE OTHER FEATURES AND PRICE WEREN'T SO ABSOLUTELY OUT OF THIS WORLD FABULOUS, I WOULD HAVE SENT IT BACK FOR THIS REASON ALONE. SINCE I EASILY HOOKED UP ANOTHER DVD PLAYER, I DECIDED TO KEEP IT BUT IF THIS IS A TRUE FLAW - IT SHOULD BE ADVERTISED AS NOT BEING SATEELITE COMPATIBLE.
By the way, others have recommended Panasonic if you can afford it but if you are a +RW person, they claim to be "multidisc" but all the message boards are loaded with complaints that they are not +RW compatible no matter what they say. That's the only reason (and the $$$) that I would stay away from them-it's false advertising and flat out lying - but if you don't care to edit your discs they claim to be the best out there. Personally, once I tried +RW and the editing that goes with it, I wouldn't go back.
LOVE this thing...wish I had it all along! 
2008-06-22
Read my review to find out all the headache I had trying to replace my lemon Samsung DVD-VR357 until I hit upon the idea of getting a DVD recorder with a hard drive rather than a DVD/VCR combo. I ordered this and it was one of the best decisions I ever made!
It's extremely easy to edit titles on a hard drive...much easier than on a rewritable DVD. Plus, you can download the edited product onto a regular old DVD-R. Saves money, plus the discs recorded on here play in any other DVD player or computer I have tried!
The recording quality of the DVDs is quite good...I can even actually use the 4-hour mode for some things (probably not good for things with a lot of action), so I'm not locked into trying to make everything fit in 2 hours like I was with the Samsung DVD-VR357 which had horrid quality on anything above 2 hours. In fairness, this seems to be an ongoing trend across the board as new DVD recorders are released...more time options with better quality.
To be fair, I do not use this as a replacement DVR because it is not an option for me. I would love to live somewhere where it is, but between Chicago (where I'm from) and NYC (where I live now), I haven't had the option of not having a cable box since the 90s...both cable companies are savvy and scramble, to some extent, most cable channels (not just the premium ones to which you don't subscribe) so you need a box to view them. So I just use this for recording programs I want to save, and transferring both VHS tapes and DVDs I recorded on my old machine. That said, I am able to set my cable DVR box and this to record a daily program so I don't have to manually record it onto the hard drive later.
That said, I also strictly record everything to the hard drive in HQ, because I am not looking to save titles on there for any great length of time; that's what my regular DVR is for. I just use it to record and edit titles I want to burn to DVD, and then delete them when I am done.
Another plus...it is not a waste of time to rename titles, either on the hard drive or on the DVD. They actually stay with the burned disc on all other players and computers.
The only two minor quibbles I have so far are that sometimes there seems to be little rhyme or reason as to when/why high speed dubbing from the hard drive to disc is possible, and also once in awhile the unit seems to have a mind of its own when selecting the recording speed to the hard drive when I directly make a recording. (For timer recordings, it always is the specified mode.) But I can easily check that within the first second or two and start over if need be.
Overall, this can't be beat for the convenience and the flexibility, and had I gone with this or another hard drive model to start with instead of the Samsung DVD-VR357, I wouldn't be in the process of rerecording nearly 100 DVD-RWs right now! Can't recommend this enough.
Excellent recorder 2008-06-12
This machine works well and is the most convinent recorder for TV time shifting. It's essentially a TIVO without monthly fees and can record analog or digital broadcast TV from an antenna. It's hard to imagine why it's not more popular.
my best dvd 2008-06-01
increible es el mejor dvd que e comprado compralo pronto antes de que se venda no te arrepentiras yo lo compre es pecialmente para grabar en el dvr con mi nueva camara swann bulldog, increible puedo grabar por horas y horas en este philips dvr3575h/37 todo lo que pasa afuera de mi caza, very happy whith this ithem buy it. your alma-de-angel
Nice Unit 2008-07-19
I've done extensive research on DVR's with a HD, this one is outstanding. I was not really a Philips fan, but this unit I really like, many nice features, you won't go wrong.
query 
2008-07-15
I own a previous dvd player manufactured by Phillips. Just like that one, this recorder seems to be high quality. However,it is not particularly intuitive to use. I stll have not been able to figure out the editing procedures.
Everything I wanted plus more 2008-07-09
This unit is amazing. I wanted a way record tv shows without having to use a dvd or vhs tape. This unit records to a hard drive, which I can then watch later and then delete without wasting a dvd. It also allows me to record a show I want to watch later and play a dvd for my kids at the same time. That was a wonderful bonus. The pausing live tv mode is nice but I haven't really needed it yet. But football season is coming up and I'm planning on using that more often. I couldn't be more happy with this unit.
Philips DVDR 2008-07-04
Purchased my first Philips DVDR with HDMI and a Hard Drive. Liked it so much I bought this my second one. Fantastic !@
a DVR without pay any monthly fees 2008-06-30
A good product to record live video programs. Easy to burn video into a disk for personal collection. Built-in Analog turner is good only till Feb 2009. It would have been a good idea to include a built-in Digital turner with this product.
