Sony RDR-HX910 Review

Overall Rating

Thoroughly easy unit to use. Outstanding image quality. Great menu system, easy to follow.

High speed dubbing from HDD to DvD can let a few supposedly edited image sneak through, therefore normal view speed dubbing is the only way to stop this.

Sony products are usually highly respected throughout the A/V world simply because they are probably the greatest A/V company on this planet. They have the perfect balance between quality and price in a world where you only get what you pay for. And so it is for the RDR-HX910. You pay a bit more for this one but you get a unit which is made to please, easy to use and does an awesome job of producing top quality home video on a disc. It has a mountain of different input/output connectors - Scart, S-Video, RCA, RGB, coaxial multi channel and the RF for the TV tuner so you can simply go for gold with them.

We all like to get our favourite TV programs on disc and we all want to kill the ads - don't we!! Well the HX910 has a system called "A-B Erase" which does it for you and with consumate ease. Simply select the program, go to edit mode and press OK to place the A (begin edit) and B (end of edit) markers and then either preview it (and change the markers if necesary) or accept and erase the unwanted parts. The erasure does cause a slight pause in the program at the beginning of the edit points but once burned to DvD, this pause disappears. It is because the edited part is still there but the unit knows not to show them, instead, jumping to the next marker and across the edited portion. Now, here comes the only bad point in this recorder.. High speed dubbing to DvD disc can let some of these edited frames slip through, which can be a little bit annoying especially after you spent quite a bit of time editing them out of existance - or so you thought. The only way to get 100% rid of them is to dub at "view speed" which means that if you have, say, 5 hours of viewable footage to burn, it's going to take 5 hours to actually burn to DvD, but, it "does" get rid of the ads and other edits - completely. While I am at it - editing out frames can only be done at about 3 or 4 actual frames at a time and forward or back framing on the remote, to get the exact edit point, can cut out a little bit much as the 3 or more actual frames rush by. Single actual frames cannot be achieved by this unit but that is a minor disadvantage as what you get is still exceptionally good editing and when played back, you cannot see the difference.

The HX910 is in the upper echelons of the home DvD recorder market and does cost a llittle more than some, but considering what you get, it can be seen as a great unit packed with many good features. The HX910 was made to do a job and it does it well. I didn't even have to open the manual until I wanted to know about some deeply imbedded special features. It's very easy to use indeed..

I can now see why so many people have rated it as the top unit around at present.