Philips DVDR5570H 250GB Storage, Upscaling DVD Recorder Reviews

+ This box does exactly what it says it will. Have had it operational for a month and has only crashed once (didnt come out of Standby) which simply required a power cycle. The pause of live TV works very well. It plays divx files directly from a USB drive with no problems. The picture quality is very good. Operation of the box is very easy and the remote is easy to navigate.

- You do need to keep the box powered on at all times (in stadby it doesnt use too much electric) Be prepared to wait a full night for the EPG to download over the air.
The single digital tuner means once recording starts you cannot watch another digital channel, but at the time of buying (04/08) i couldnt find another box with this much functionality that had two digital tuners.
You select recordings via the EPG (not by time scheduling), the box decided the time window for the recording which has meant a few times missing the end of programmes which has proven annoying.
Start up time from standby does take around 30-50 seconds, annoying but you get used to it.

+ Lots of features

- Slow to operate
Difficult and fiddly to use
Not able to make more than one recording at a time to a disc

+ Easy to use, large hard disk, great hard disk recorder.

- Slow deletion, limited editing functions
Sold as a DVD recorder, but won't record TV to DVD

+ Digital and Analogue Tuners
Large Hard Drive
EPG
Sattelite Box Control
Key Word Program finder
Automatic Commercial break (advert) removal
Multi Region
Philips software updates

- Slow to power up
System locks up if you press too many buttons quickly
Looses all tuning data if power swtched off for too long
Jog button replaces skip buttons - not as good

+ No need to switch to standby for timer recording the recorder will switch to the right channel itself.

- sometimes freezes and needs to be on standby to receive the tv listings (best done overnight)

+ Ease of moving forwards/backwards through timeline with control-wheel, and intelligent auto-marking on digital reception - (makes skipping adverts / finding start and end of programs very much easier)

- Because it uses GuidePlus, on first powering up, the user must wait for an overnight download of the TV schedule - whereas if it could ALSO understand the transmitted Week's schedule, this could be more immediate, and updateable by broadcasters during the day. No RADIO schedule either, as a result of not using the transmitted info.

+ Easy to use and set up

- Could be a bit faster changing from one activity to another

+ Great interface, much better than Virgin Media or other Freeview/Top-up TV.
Excellent picture quality, upscaling good.

- Disk is a little noisy, and it runs quite warm, but very minor issues

+ Pause live TV

- Slow to start and takes over TV whilst starting.

+ Fairly easy to install and programme. We have only given it 8 for reliability as although nothing at all has gone wrong we have only had it one month and this is not long enough to make a judgement.
Instruction booklet excellent

- None so far!

+ Good video quality and very satisfactory all round use.

- Reviewer left no comment

+ It does what we wanted it to do. Pause live tv. ability to watch and record etc etc. gives a v high quality picture.

- agonisingly slow to warm up every time you turn it on. I think most of the problems with it are due to the fact that i can't be bothered to read the complicated munual. Probably if you plough through all of that it is easy to get it to do exactly what you want!!

+ Great to be able to pause live tv. Picture quality good. Recording good. Have stand alone freeview box so can record any channel and still watch any channel.

- Bit of a hassle setting up !

+ A powerful all in one entertainment experience

- None found as yet.

+ Quality of recording is very good

- A little slow to respond