Philips DVDR3355

Reviewed by: smarkham604

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Plays nearly any thing: Divx, Xvid, avi, jpeg, mp3, DVD-R, DVD+RW, CD-R, CD-RW, the list goes on

Weaknesses: Slow boot-up time. Tiny remote buttons, not very intuitive. Menu's seem clunky.

Overall Evaluation: I purchased this unit to replace my dying VCR. It seems to be the recording sibling of the Philips 642, the de-facto machine on the market to play anything you choose to pop in the tray. This is not the unit for you if you are into a great deal of time-shifting. However, it's great for the occasional recording of TV OTA broadcasts. The picture quality of HD broadcasts looks slightly less than the progressive output of a commercial DVD. If you can set-up your VCR to time record, this unit is a breeze. I had to exchange this unit, thinking it was defective. However, I now believe it was a feedback/cross-talk issue using the cheesy connection cables that come with the unit, making colors shift and the video to jump. Even with better shielded cables, the recorded image sent back to the TV is slightly shifted to the right. It's more apparent if the TV station broadcasts grey or other colored sidebars with 4:3 content. The biggest gripe I have with this unit (easily fixable by Philips with a firmware update) is choosing the video source to record. Part of the initial set-up is choosing a default input to record. Seems like an oxymoron to be required punch several buttons on the remote when you choose the input yet again with "One Touch Recording"? What's the point of choosing a default input in the first place? To add insult to injury, if you are not monitoring the input you are planning to record, you must rely on the front panel display to determine what input it will record. You cannot directly choose the input, you must scroll through each of the three front inputs (S-Video, Composite, and DV) and each of the two rear inputs (S-video, and Composite). You must blindly press the input button, and have the sequence memorized since all the panel displays is "Front" or "Rear". It shouldn't be too terribly difficult to program the display to scroll through with something like "Front-S" Front-C" and "Front-D" and so on since there are enough characters in the display: It pulses "Philips" during boot-up. All in all, it's an easy machine to operate, looks good, and plays nearly everything. UPDATE 2/12/06-So, I now have the fourth unit, thanks to the generous return policy of the retailer. After several calls to Philips, I can now confirm the first three units were indeed defective. The worst problem being the color shifting during recording and playback. Under optimum viewing conditions, the best I can describe, seemed as if someone off camera was erraticallly switching an overhead light bulb on and off. It was most apparent during darker scenes. I had eliminated all possible causes except this recorder: better cables, different media, different input/outputs, I even bought a new LCD TV! The playback would improve slightly after the unit was on for more than 24 hours. This thermal issue I believe is due to a cold solder-joint on some decoder chip, whatever...A manufacturing date is embedded in the serial number: NW000527000xxxxx The "05" being the year, and "27" being the week of the year. As it turned out, all the units with the problems were 0527 models (the first one was earlier, but I did not take note of the serial number). A sales clerk was nice enough over the phone at another location of the retailer to tell me their serial numbers on the units they did have in stock, before I drove to the next town to exchange it. I wound up with a 0544 unit (October 2005), and all the color shifting problems are gone. This unit has different hardware and software that the level one tech at Philips was not aware of. I noticed the printed circuit board visible through the bottom holes looked different, and my biggest complaint (above regarding the vague information of the front display)has been addressed, abeit cryptically at best. Rather than blindly scrolling through "front, front, front, rear, rear" to determine the recording source, the newer version says "cam1, cam2, dv, r vcbs, r-y/c". Better, not by much.The best way to determine which unit has the newer hardware and software is to set the output to progressive scan. The very small words "pro scan" show up in the front display. This was not on the earlier units. I just noticed my rating "would purchase again" hehehe...yea like four times....