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SONY RDR-HXD710 (160GB HDD) REVIEW
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Use this Sony RDR-HXD710 (160Gb HDD) review to help you.
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Reviewed by UK Guest, 29th Jul 2006. |
| Review Summary: Good, but could be great |
Overall Score: 5/5
 
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Review: I got hold of the Sony RDR-HXD710 about a month ago to replace a basic DVD-Recorder, and so far it's been a huge improvement.
Firstly, timer recording to the hard disk is much more reliable than my experiences with recording to DVD recorders, as I used to be plagued with media compatibility issues. Also the capacity of the hard disk compared with the DVD disc allows for much more flexibility.
The issues that I've found with the Sony so far are as follows:
1) there is a bug in the EPG that sometimes shows a programme has been set to be recorded, when it hasn't. Luckily it doesn't actually attempt to record these 'phantom' timer settings, so no timer conflicts appear to occur.
2) it claims to be able to dub widescreen format programme broadcasts to DVD-R media, however, I've not been able to do this, and all recordings end up as 4:3 letterboxed. There appears to be a undocumented issue with the aspect ratio setting for viewing and the aspect ratio setting for recording. I've been in contact with Sony about this but they weren't able to give me an answer. I have the situation whereby the recorder is attached to a 4:3 system for programming/dubbing, but my is viewed on a standalone DVD player attached to a 16:9 system.
3) as there is no PDC on the EPG, and broadcasts often don't run exactly to schedule, if you use the EPG method of timer recording, then you can lose the start and end of recorded programmes. Unfortunately there is no setting to automatically add a couple of mins before and after the programme selected. If you select a manual recording, then the programme title will end up with that from the previous programme, and although there is a title editor, it's a bit slow and tedious to do for every programme.
4) in the EPG if two programmes occur one after the other, and you select both to be recorded, the timer isn't intelligent enough to record it as one, and then divide and title them correctly. Instead you end up with a gap between the two programmes. Once again, if you go for manual record and set it record it to all in one session, then when you come to divide it, you will end up with the wrong titles and have to manually edit them.
[ I am mainly interested in documentaries, so am often recording lots of sequences of 30min programmes and ideally I'd like to keep the titles for ease of playback at a later date, and often acknowledgement information in end credits is usefull to record as well. ]
5) I've had one timer recording so far which resulted in 2hours of a black screen. I had seen the first 10mins or so at the start, so the tuner was working OK. It may have been a Macrovision copy guard signal issue, but I wasn't aware of any programmes broadcast in such a manner. The manual states that it will record a grey screen in such instances and not a black one.
6) the menu pages of the RDR-HXD710 activate some Macrovision detection circuits in some AV equipment (such as the Canopus ADVC-100 DV video bridge which I use to connect such equipment to a computer to allow PIP viewing whilst I'm working).
Lacking features:
- there is no way to dump the raw captured MPEG-2 files onto DVD, so you end up with the Video DVD format every time.
- there is no DV output to transfer them over 1394/firewire to a computer, which would allow for much quicker trimming and titling.
- the hard drive hasn't been designed to be easily swapable.
- there is no way to access the timer record through the front panel display. It would have been very convenient to be able to simply be able to hit a timer button, select a channel, then have the EPG scroll across a one/two line display on the front panel. As it is, you need to always have a video display switched on to be able to program it.
However, the recorder in all other respects is a pretty nice piece of kit, and gives a lot better results than the DVD recorder I had before it. To date I've not had a single media compatibility problem with it, whereas with the old recoder I was generating a DVD 'coaster' in around every four recordings.
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Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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5 |
| Review Score: |
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5 |
| Recommended? | |
Yes |
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DVD, TV & Video
