Philips DVDR3505/37 1080i Upscaling DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner
- Built in digital SDTV tuner to receive HD boradcasts
- Dual Media play and record in DVD-R-RW and DVD+R+RW
- 1080i upscaling for HD picture performance
- i-Link for easy connection to camcorder for play and recording
- Plays MP3/WMA, CD-R-RW, Video CD’s
Product Description
DVD Recorder, Dual Media-records and plays in DVDR-R-RW and DVD+R+RW, Built ATSC digital SDTV tuner to receive digital HD TV broadcasts, HDMI 1080i upscaling to deliver true HD picture performance, DivX to play downloaded PC movies and video DVD’s, Progressive Scan, i-Link for easy connection to play and record your camcorder recording,Plays MP3/WMA, CD’s, CD-R-RW, Video CD’s… More >>
Philips DVDR3505/37 1080i Upscaling DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner
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.
Rating: 3 / 5
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
Rating: 4 / 5
Pros: If you will be playing Divx files with it, the zoom feature offers better options than most. Like that it can record in 2.5 hours. Major plus.
Cons: VERY slow accessing and finalizing discs. Black level for images not very good. Only has Svideo in. HDMI works well, although newer ones use 1080P upscaling.
Rating: 3 / 5
I purchased the Philips DVR3505/37 refurbished (the new ones being either too expensive or unavailable) from J&R store through Amazon so I feel obliged to write a review about it because there were a handful of questions I would have wanted answered before I made the decision to purchase it. I was thinking I would, more than likely, have to return it, and lose some money mailing the damn thing back. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to return it after all.
Keep in mind that I paired the device with a 42 inch plasma TV and connected the audio out through the coaxial output to my home theater receiver as well. I’m giving you this information because I think it is relevant for people with a home theater system with a free coaxial input or a free optical audio input (you can get powered coaxial to optical audio converters on Amazon if your receiver doesn’t have a free coaxial-in but has an optical-in instead. That is what I did and the home theater receiver even displays the DTS or Dolby Digital logos when DVD sound from the DVR3505 is played on the home theater receiver and DTS or DD is selected through the DVD menu. In this case, the sound becomes 5.1 surround sound when watching movies with DD or DTS tracks. TV can also play the sound when watching DVD or TV since it is connected to the TV via an HDMI cable and HDMI cable is able to send both HD picture and sound. Without having the receiver turned on, you get a decent stereo sound on your TV and some TVs have better sound than others. Mine has decent DD stereo and SRS Surround that can produce an OK virtual surround sound but connect the unit to your home theater receiver to get great sound during prime time TV shows which are broadcast most of the time with 5.1 surround sound, or to watch DVDs with 5.1 surround sound tracks.
Others questions in Q/A format.
Is Philips DVR3505/37 an HDTV tuner?
Yes. Using the HDMI connection, it outputs 1080i (720p and 1080i are two different HD resolutions that most HD programs are broadcast today) signal, so that makes it an external HDTV tuner. It will also up-convert 480i and 720p broadcast and send them out as 1080i signal if it is connected to your TV via an HDMI cable.
If it is an HDTV tuner, why does the product description say it is an SDTV tuner?
Unfortunately, most people who make these products don’t actually use them themselves. At one point, it might have been more marketable to call it an SDTV tuner since more people had standard televisions and let’s face it, most TV stations were broadcasting in SD/Analog formats. And yes, it is an SDTV tuner if you happened to own an SDTV today. Let’s say it is an external TV tuner with both SD and HD output capabilities.
I have an HDTV with an unused HDMI input, will this until connect to my TV via an HDMI cable?
Yes, it has an HDMI out. That will connect to your TV’s unused HDMI-in.
My TV is a standard analog TV, will this thing work?
Yes. It has AV-out (Yellow video cable and the red and white audio cable a.k.a RCA cable). It will be sending out analog signal directly to your TV. You need not use a government coupon type converter box.
Will I need to make separate connections for DVD and TV?
No. Connect with whatever suits your TV and that connection is used to both watching TV and playing DVDs. Just one connection out from the unit to your TV for everything the unit does.
Will it display analog stations?
Yes. There is a DTV/TV button on the remote control to switch between analog and digital stations.
I have a 16:9 HDTV, how will my picture look like?
Great. Go to the unit’s setup menu and set your TV type to 16:9. With your TV’s remote control, set your aspect ratio to normal (or natural) and HD programs should now appear wide screen, at least during prime time. ***Important*** Most users have complained that the unit didn’t record on 16:9 mode, or rather, it recorded 16:9 programs on 4:3 mode. This is not true in my case. Once you have set your TV type to 16:9, wide screen programs will be recorded the way they were broadcast. Programs broadcast with black bars on the sides of the screen will also be recorded with black bars. You might stretch your screen in case of annoying local stations that are in love with side black bars that ultimately could cause plasma screen burn in if you own a plasma TV.
If it can record shows on wide screen, why does the user’s manual say the unit can only record on 4:3 mode?
Again, the user’s manual is wrong. Probably written by some underpaid college intern. If your TV is 16:9, and you have set your TV type to 16:9 on the DVR’s setup menu, then wide screen programs will be recorded in wide screen and 4:3 will be recorded panned and scanned, unless the station broadcast them with black bars such as letter-boxing and postage-stamping. In this case, it will record the shows with the black bars included.
Will my clock reset itself and record wrong programs overnight?
Yes. But go to the clock setting, set the time, and turn off auto clock setting and turn off daylight saving options. It will stop doing that until you lose power next time.
How much material will it fit on a DVD when recording TV programs?
High Quality (HQ): 1 hour; and Standard Play (SP): 2 hours. I am not going to bother with other lower settings that are supposed to give me up to 6 hours of recording time on a single disc. You might play around with it. Use a Rewritable disc so that you can reuse it again and again.
Will this unit connect with an external device such as a VCR?
Yes. There is one A/V line-in in the back and there is another on the front panel. The front panel also have a DV-in slot for your video camera.
Does the unit have component-out?
Yes, it has the Y/Pb/Pr out and audio stereo out for it. Component and HDMI cables are not included in the box.
Does it play DivX?
Yes.
Does it play DivX through a USB slot on the Front panel?
No. This until does not have USB slot like my two other Philips DVD/DivX players do. You can play DivX files after transferring them to a DVD.
Will it play DivX files that are burned on a DVD Rewritable disc so that I can delete them and reuse the disc later?
Yes! Burn your DivX files onto a rewritable DVD. Burn with 4x speed. I have no problem. I use a free program called IMG Burn and it formatted the rewritable DVD right before it burned them the first time the DVD was inserted into the computer. You might want to try that program. That burning software is amazing.
Will it give me 5.1 surround when I watch shows like 24 or when I watch DVDs?
Yes, if you have home theater receiver with a digital coaxial in. The unit has a digital coaxial out. This option will send 5.1 channels from this unit to your home theater receiver with a use of a digital coaxial audio cable. If your home theater receiver just has an optical-in, use a digital coaxial to optical converter. It works great for me as I mentioned earlier. I vouch for it.
I have a plasma screen. Will this unit give me ghost outlines in place of black colors?
Yes. It is a common problem with plasma TVs. I had crazy ghost images in the beginning when watching channels through this unit, especially when actors were wearing black color clothes. Go to the unit’s setup menu and go to HDMI setting and change your color output from RGB to Y/cb/cr. It truly took care of that problem for me and I am very happy with it. If you have plasma screen instead of an LCD screen, and if you can live with it, reduce your brightness and contrast to 50 or less in order to avoid burn-ins or ghosting. Programs with black bars on the sides or top and bottoms also could cause ghosting in your plasma screen. If your TV allows you to change picture size (this is not an issue when watching HD 16:9 broadcast) use it to increase it until black bars disappear. Don’t pause movies for longer than 20 minutes if you have your DVD screen saver disabled. If your plasma TV has picture shift option, turn it on. It is meant to shift the picture when it becomes static, preventing phosphor burn-in.
Will this unit record shows on a DVD?
Yes, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW. It will not record on CDs.
Does this unit have a hard drive on it to record shows?
No. You can only record shows on recording media mentioned above.
What does the record timer look like?
It allows me to pre-program 8 shows, that’s it. There’s no option for recording the same show daily, weekly, or anything. There are these 8 blank lines that show up when I press “timer” on the remote control, and I just have to punch in the date, time, channel, sub-channel, record begin time, record end time, and recording mode. You have to do this five times if your program is aired 5 nights a week. There is no option for programming something and then choosing “daily” option. The user’s manual says something about repeating the program by pressing the side arrow key, but I realize that the user’s manual shows the menu different from what I saw on my unit’s setup menu. So there must be a couple of different models floating around under the same model number. You might get the matching one with the user’s manual. I also got a different (probably worse) remote control from what was shown on the user’s manual.
Does changing channels really take a long time?
Yes. It could take up to 7 seconds to change from one DTV station to the other. On my unit, it takes about 4 seconds. You might want to press the channel numbers on the remote control to jump channels. There is no previous channel option on the remote control, at least not on mine.
Does it really take forever to read DVDs?
No, I thought not. It takes longer than a regular DVD player, but it isn’t as long as some of the reviewers are complaining about on Amazon.
Do I have to finalize the disc in order to play it on a different DVD player?
No. I put the disc without finalizing into a different DVD player and it played just like it would play any other discs. Some DVD players are pickier than others so try it without finalizing and see what your DVD player has to say. I tried playing the recorded show un-finalized using two different DVD players. Both played without a frown. Yeah!
Can you tell me other things?
Yes. The fan is quite noisy. You can actually hear it during audio-less moments when you watch TV or watch movies. Sort of like a laptop fan. I don’t know if you are bothered by that kind of things. It is definitely worth mentioning. DVD pictures from HDMI look great on my plasma screen. Empty out your disc before going to bed so that your show is sure to be recorded on the empty disc at night. Don’t rely on the unit to overwrite your existing recording.
Would you recommend it?
Yes. It has some flaws but it is great for what I needed to do, record programs that are aired too late at night for me to watch them. I am only recording one or two programs a day so I am not a heavy user so I am perfectly happy with this until. If you are thinking about recording crazy amount of programs, you might want to consider the one with a hard drive.
Are you happy with this unit?
Yes. I needed an external tuner for my older HD ready tuner-less plasma TV. The fact that it does that plus record shows on DVD RWs and plays DVDs makes this product perfect for me. This unit also gives people with analog TVs a DVR in addition to allowing them to watch DTVs without having to use a converter box.
Explain your 3-star rating. You said you are happy with it, right, so why not a 5-star rating?
It has a few, but significant flaws: a very-very user-unfriendly remote control that is absolutely difficult to see even for someone with a 20/20 vision; very out of place play/skip/ff/stop/pause buttons on the version of the remote that came with my unit; and a noisier than normal cooling fan. I give the product a generous 3-star.
Thank you for reading. Leaving a comment on the review if you have a specific question. I will reply, promise.
Update: As you can see below, someone pointed out that I omitted the fact that it does not have a built-in QAM tuner. Product says it has Built-in ATSC tuner and never claimed it has QAM tuner. It doesn’t make coffee and clip your nails either. Should I have mentioned those facts in my review too?
Having said that, the reason I had no reason to mention the QAM part was that I do not have a cable running at my home. However, on the unit’s menu, when you first do your channel scan, you have choices of cable, digital cable, or air to scan from. I don’t know if that qualifies it as QAM. Not all of you might have this option since there are a couple of different firmware versions floating around under the same model. Even if the unit tunes cable channels, and your service provider uses two or three digits subchannel numbers, the unit won’t be able to handle anything more that one digit subchannel number. For example, if you service provider has channel numbers such as 18.233, it won’t display. Whereas it will display 18.2, 18.3, and so on. This was mentioned by another reviewer. I have not the opportunity to test it myself.
Please refrain from writing rude comments. I am not getting paid a penny to write this review.
Rating: 3 / 5
I have had this DVD-R for about a year. We started having problems a couple of months ago when the DVD we were watching would get hung up and we had to take it out and clean it (several times). Soon after, every DVD we loaded would elicit a “unknown disc” response. I took it to an electronics repair shop who told me that the laser is bad and would cost too much to fix.
Rating: 1 / 5