Does everything it's designed to do.
Written: Oct 14 '04 (Updated Oct 20 '04)
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Pros: Works reliably within its design specs, no bugs encountered.
Cons: Consumer-type DVD recorders have their limitations, and those for the US market even more.
The Bottom Line: In contrast to a certain other DVD recorder I tried and had to return (with financial loss), the Sony works flawlessly and is mostly a pleasure to use.
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| wiebach's Full Review: Sony RDR-GX300 DVD Recorder |
The recorder does everything reliably that it is designed to do (although I haven't tried the special features of the DVD-RW/VR disks yet); and it should be noted that it has many more capabilities than are generally enumerated in spec lists on the internet. My criticisms concern features that should have been built in but are not. At the top of the list: no component video input. It can be no accident that no recorder built for the US market has component inputs; I suspect it is rather Hollywood's heavy hand which dictates that American consumers must not be permitted to record anything ever with the best quality. We are permitted to watch things this way, hence the players have component outputs, and the TV sets have component inputs. But God forbid that we should record anything with three separate video signals.
Owners of video cameras will probably also miss an input port for digital video, firewire or whatever it is called - again no means for high-quality transfer.
It may be in the nature of DVD recording that features are missing which were taken for granted with the VCRs. You cannot go to the end of a recording (a "title" in DVD-speak) and add new material seamlessly - it will show up as a new title. As a matter of fact, you cannot easily go the end of a title and play it backwards, for example to check if the end has been properly recorded; you can only start playing at the beginning of a title or the start of a chapter [see below]. (However, you can go to a point in time, if you know the timeline of the recording).
The recorder has the ability to add "chapter breaks" at regular intervals (6 or 15 minutes) while recording a title, and one can jump forward or reverse to these break points. Yet there is no way to create a menu with thumbnails from these chapters as found on commercial DVDs.
The name of the recorded DVD and the name of each recorded title can be entered and changed with the remote control, unfortunately in a very pedestrian fashion.
As the specs state, the machine records on both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW; the latter mode is probably the result of a patent squabble - its capabilities are inferior to the former and one can forget it. Among others, DVD-Rs play on all DVD players, even those that are more than a year old, while DVD+Rs may not.
Further discussion may be found at reviewer's website www.wiebach.us/Musings/DVD-Rcdr.htm
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399.99
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Epinions.com ID:
wiebach
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 2 members
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