Philips HDRW720 (80 GB) DVD Recorder

All and all not a bad little unit. Functions well and installed fine. My husband and I may have a user experience advantage here as we already have another hard drive recorder (different brand) which has very similar functionality and installed in the same manner.
The unit we bought has definitely seen some use BUT it was not abused and we knew that the unit was a reconditioned unit and not brand new.

easy to ease and has more function than I needed. easy to ease and has more function than I neededeasy to ease and has more function than I neededeasy to ease and has more function than I neededeasy to ease and has more function than I needed

Easy to use, works great with all components even the cable box. Love the ability to record shows like TIVO does but without the monthly fees. I can also then record them on DVDs. Great Product!

well I like to watch my favorite shows at the best time for me without any advertising and without paying anything for the service like tivo

Item is very user friendly. We love it and use it everyday. Be sure to read manual.I was lost trying to guess, but manual spells it out very good!! Now if I could only figure out my GPS

The Philips HDRW720 with a 120GB hard disk and a DVD player/recorder is an excellent piece of equipment despite the issues it has. When they work, they work well, but they will still encounter software crashes (this is almost a guarantee). This can be frustrating.

The a G-Link interface can control a cable or digital converter box automatically. It uses a Guide Plus TV Guide On Screen interface that shows all the channels, times, and descriptions for 7 days. The TV Guide is very easy to use (like TIVO with no subscription fees). The TV Guide information is collected via a PBS channel which contains information on the broadcast signal. This is all changing with the move from analog to digital television.

It employs an excellent edit feature where to can edit recordings, like removing commercials or splitting up a program. You can then use the archive function to burn a DVD+R disc.

The software crashes from time to time and you may have to relearn the channels. Generally, this process can take 1-2 days and the unit must be turned off for the TV Guide data to be loaded. The download generally takes place at odd hours so this is not a real problem.

The TV Guide is so easy to select a program to record once, daily, or regularly to the hard drive. You can search the guide by genre or alphabetical order.

Setting up the unit to be compatible with the Motorola DCT 2444 Cable box or a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2100 cable box is easy.

The remote control of the cable box through the recorder is slow. You have to wait a few seconds after you enter the channel on the Philips remote before it sends the command to the cable box to change channels. If I want to surf the channels any faster pick up the remote for the cable box.

Some channels are missing from the Guide. Some cannot be manually added either, so this is a negative issue with the TV Guide interface. There are a handful of channels that were associated with the wrong channel due to the cable provider having a dual channel format. It is easy to modify the channel numbers.

To find what channels were missing I sorted the channel guide in the setup mode to put the channel numbers in sequence. It was an easy process but painfully slow and tedious. After the first hour of sorting the channels by moving them up and down in the list I gave up and went back to it later.

The hard disk buffer allows you to rewind several hours of programming to replay or pause live TV.

There is a 30 second forward (programmable) button on the remote to help skip commercials when viewing recordings or moving through the live buffer.

I would give this box a high score despite the fact that it has software issues as there are many nice features that offset the problems. The digital television transition impacts these units that have been out since the 2004 time frame. The TV Guide may not work in all areas of the country and the digital transition can completely stop the TV Guide function. You can still program the DVR, but it is not as easy. Setting the clock manually when the TV Guide does not work is not very easy, because you have to search through the menus to find how to do it manually.

There is hope. Dish has introduced the DTVPal Plus digital converter box that supports TV Guide/Guide+ operation. Mine finds the host digital channel, but I have yet to see it download TV Guide data. I am waiting patiently knowing that Macrovision may one day resolve the issues.