What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
03 JAN 2008
Philips DVDR5500
It’s a neat, tidy solution, but the Philips doesn’t perform as well as the best can
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It happened almost stealthily, but the days of DVD recorder dominance are over. Undermined by products with hard-disks, DVD recorders are losing kudos fast.
Philips realises this as well as anyone, so the DVDR5500 is accompanied by a tempting price tag (look online, you can take another 30 percent off the price quoted). It can record to both DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs, is able to upscale DVDs to 1080i resolution, and packs a Freeview TV tuner. It has to be said, the Philips has given itself a chance.
Tuner not as good as it ought to be
A pity, then, that it stumbles quite heavily from the off. Philips has rarely impressed us with the quality of its products’ ergonomics, but the DVDR5500 is particularly convoluted – no matter what adjustment you want to make to the machine, it’s always a very long way around using the remote.
More significantly, the Philips’ tuner is no great shakes: prone to noise, uncertain when tracking motion and short of stability. The news that recording quality is effective enough to make copies indistinguishable from broadcasts is, therefore, something of a double-edged sword.
Your money can be better spent
The Philips fares somewhat better as a DVD player – upscaled images are colourful and motion is handled more confidently, though there’s more picture noise than we’d like.
However, this quality of DVD performance is yours from a dedicated player for well under £100, which leaves enough change for a Freeview tuner with hard disk. There’s no contest, really.
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