From worse to worse (Philips DVDR 5500)

Member Name: grahamt

Product:	Philips DVDR 5500
Date:	13/12/08 (680 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: HDMI and DiVX support

Disadvantages: Unreliable and not particularly user-friendly

It should be relatively simple. All I want to be able to do is to copy some of my old camcorder recordings to DVD. All I should need is a video player and a DVD recorder. If they could be combined into a single unit, so much the better. Of course, being me, I would have some additional requirements as well wouldn't I? I have a flat screen HD TV so an HDMI connection was also essential. I would also like to be able to play DVDs containing DiVX video. Not too much to ask is it?

But, trying to find a unit with all of these features seems to be a struggle. You may have read my review of the Daewoo DRVT-40 Combi VCR/DVD Recorder that I posted on Dooyoo earlier this year. Despite VCR technology being more or less dead now, like many people, we still have boxes and boxes of video tapes that hold memories of our past, holidays, children growing up, family now no longer with us.

Sadly, the Daewoo turned out to be something of a lemon. Despite trying two of them, they both demonstrated the same basic fault that made its purchase a waste of money. However, I still needed a machine to transfer some old video tapes. Fortunately my daughter had an old video recorder she no longer used or needed so I now no longer needed to buy a combi unit. All I needed was a straight DVD Recorder.

I went and did the rounds of the local electronics stores such as Currys and Comet and eventually the one device that seemed to have everything I wanted emerged as the Philips DVDR5500/05 DVD Recorder. It was a bit more expensive than I was expecting, at just under £180 from Comet, but with little else that I could identify it seemed I had little choice. Anyway, as far as I was aware, Philips is generally considered a reputable and reliable brand. Little did I know...!

The Philips is a low profile device, standing little more than a couple of centimetres high on the shelf. However, what it lacks in height it makes up for in width and depth. It really is much wider and deeper than I would have thought necessary, but then I don't know what goes on inside it its true.

The front panel contains the DVD disk tray on the left with a Standby button on one side of it and the Open/Close button on the other. In the middle is the LCD panel that tells you what's going on and to the right of that the DVD control buttons. Finally, on the far right, behind a flap is a set of sockets through which to connect external devices such as camcorders and USB flash drives.

The back panel provides the various sockets for the connections to the "fixed" devices, such as TVs, video recorders and cable set top boxes. I addition to two SCART sockets there is, of course, since that's why I bought it, the HDMI socket for connection to our HD TV. Component video is also provided. The Philips has built-in analogue and digital Freeview tuners and so there are also aerial sockets for the feed from the aerial and for the loop-through to take the signal on to other devices.

Most activities will be controlled by the supplied remote control, for which batteries ARE provided. You also get a spare aerial lead, a SCART lead and, surprisingly, an HDMI cable. Most manufacturers seem to feel it unnecessary to supply one of these, even where the device has HDMI capability.

Plugging in the device and powering up was quite straight-forward I chose only to use one SCART as the output was to the TV via HDMI and, initially at least, I didn't want to complicate things by connecting up the video player as well. I wanted to check that recording stuff off of the Virgin Media V+ boxes's hard drive worked first of all. So, just a SCART lead between it and the DVD recorder was initially connected.

The V+ box has a very neat feature whereby you can select a recorded programme or a series of programmes and record them in the background to an external device. The V+ box has two SCART sockets (recording via HDMI is not possible) and when background recording is carried out, the programmes being replayed to the recorder only get sent to one of the two SCART sockets. The other SCART and the HDMI output continue to play the normal programmes.

One thing I discovered when setting up the recorder was that, whilst it does offer the ability to record different lengths of recording on a DVD, like most DVD recorders do, sacrificing quality for recording length, the length of recording on the Philips machine is set as an option rather than easily variable at the time that the recording is planned. Resetting the recording length is a real ordeal and so you tend to leave it at a suitable default. Not use-friendly!

I set the recorder to record a couple of programmes and I confess I forgot all about it for a day or so. When I came back to check the records I found that the Philips wouldn't respond to the remote or even to the buttons on the front of the device itself. It was well and truly frozen. The only solution was to unplug it from the mains and then allow it to reinitialise itself. It did and then I checked the recordings and all seemed to be in order.

I didn't use the DVD recorder again for a couple of days but when I next came back to it I found that it was once again frozen. Reinitialising was again the only way to bring it back into operation. This happened a few more times but never could I identify when and why it was happening. I checked the Philips website but the only thing I could identify was that the firmware level on the box was out-of-date. I downloaded the latest level and tried to apply it. The box refused to accept the DVD on which the firmware upgrade was written.

This began the first of many calls to Philips' Customer Support. I explained the problem and what I was trying to do to resolve it and they agreed to send me a disk with the code already written to it. This arrived a week or so later and I applied the upgrade. It made no difference.

Over the next month or two the problem reoccurred several times. On my next call to Philips they revealed that there was yet another firmware level available and they would like me to try this one first, please. Once again they sent me a disk with it on. Once again it made no difference.

Finally they agreed to take the recorder back for repair. Philips deals directly with its customers where repairs to its products are required. You don't take it back to the dealer from which you bought it. They arrange to have it shipped to them at no cost to you and return it to you once they have fixed it. I got the recorder back without an note so I assumed that it was now working.

The reality was that, not only was the original problem not fixed but now the recorder wouldn't even record properly. You could set it to record a programme. It would say it was going to record the programme but when you checked the DVD you found that no programme had been recorded.

By now it was clear that there was no way that this device was ever going to be fit for purpose. I took it back to Comet and they refunded the money. I had had it for about six months in total. I think you will agree that I gave Philips every chance. I perhaps could have taken a replacement and tried that but by this time I had lost all confidence in this product.

The best I can say about it is that when it did succeed in producing a recording, the recording it made was as good as you could want. I did try playing some DiVX encoded video on it and that worked fine as well. However, it just wasn't working often enough to be able to say anything more than that.

I have to say that I had absolutely no problem at all with Philips' Customer Support. The agents at the other end of the phone were always courteous and helpful but all the help in the world is of no use if the product is a lemon. If you have one of these machines and it works then maybe you've been lucky.

I clearly wasn't.

Summary: A very average DVD recorder at a not particularly competitive price.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Features: