Philips DVD-R80 Review

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Philips DVD-R80
2.4 stars
Average rating for this product is: 2.4 out of 5

From 0 ratings and 14 reviews

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dougrice's Review of Philips DVD-R80 DVD Recorder

9th Jun 2004

Overall Rating

2 stars
  • Value for money
    2.5 stars
  • Image Quality
    5 stars
  • Features
    2 stars
  • Time DVD Recorder Owned
    1 - 6 Months
  • Sound Quality
    5 stars
  • Ease of Use
    3.5 stars
Good Points

Guideplus, mp3 playback, DVD +RW, Composite output. Looks great.


Bad Points

Manual confusing. Hard to get "good" technical
support from Philips helpline.


General Comments

I bought this Philips DVD R80 DVD Recorder after rave reviews and because it play mp3s and records to +RW disks (so I can play them on other DVD players and then write over them when finished viewing) but most importantly for Guideplus.

First impressions were good. Nice looking player especially when it is recording as the disk tray lights up red...very cool!

The installation manual isn't the best for those not in the technical DVD know!

Playback of mp3s is extremely impressive leaving my CD player in the cold!

It has 8 DVD quality recording settings. The top 3 settings will produce recordings as good as the original program! Digital sound (ie 5.1) is rich and warm.

My biggest gripe with this player is the Guideplus system. I specifically bought this player for the ease that Guideplus offers. It takes at least 24 hours for the initial 7 days of program data to be loaded into the DVD player. I then found that the automatic update of the Guideplus was not occuring and I had to reset the machine to get it to load the next 7 days of program data. Rubbish eh? I phone Philips who offered advice like "Leave it switched on rather than on standby", "Only put in the first part of your postcode". The recorder even went back to a Philips repair centre which reported they had fixed it, yet it still wouldn't update the Guideplus program schedule. So, eventually, I got a replacement and this worked for the first 10 days and now again the Guideplus system does not seem to update....looks like I'm gonna give up and get my money back. Shame as apart from the Guideplus it is a great product.

I hope no-one else has the problems I am having with the Guideplus system or if anyone has a solution to this problem leave it in your review for others to see.

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Members' Comments ondougrice's Review

  • hilbrink on 29th Jul 2005

    My comment ... device is great but Guide Plus is awfull, I live in an area where there is no host channel (French part of switzerland) this means the systems is completly unusable, neither Phillip nor Gemstar are doing anything about (I feel like a ping pong ball: "please contact Philips, please contact Gemstar ...)