Goodmans GPDR40 Reviews

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Good Points: Lots of functionality.
Works as a portable video player quite well.
Fortunately it's cheap or I wouldn't bother.

Bad Points: All a bit clunky, clumsy and slow.
Somethings just don't work too well at all.

General comments: Goodmans GPDR40
40Gb hard drive unit with screen attached, speaker mono, and microphone. Built in Lithium ion battery - 2.5 hours life, hours to recharge.

It's an example of a portable PVR, personal video recorder.

25th July 2007 - Got the Goodmans unit last week, so I've had a little time to try it out. Bought it for a decent price I think, sixty pounds.

Excuse me for rambling and not covering everything or even the important points but I'm just writing off the top of my head.

Well, when looking at all the reviews on the net it seems that this unit is rubbish (it's the same as the Mustek unit), but I couldn't stop myself as it was a shiny gadget and I went ahead and bought it anyway.

First off, it's about the size of an old style walkman, and heavy too. Feels good, made of plastic with the screen covering most of the front fascia. You've probably seen a picture of it somewhere.

The first and major problem described by net reviewers is the lip sync or lack of it after 5 minutes of video play. Well, it's audio does lose synchronisation with the picture on occasions and it is noticeable, but you can make it go a way for a short while by pausing then pressing play, not a good method for watching a film. Alternatively you can do that, then slide the "button lock" to on, that stops it going out of sync again - you need to do that anyway as you'd be pressing buttons by accident as you change hand position every once and a while (more about the key lock function later).

The unit gets hot, but mine only got as hot as I would expect a hard drive to be anyway - might be okay in winter as a hand warmer.

The goodmans truncates file names to the 8.3 format so you might have problems with identifying your sound or video files if you put a lot of similarly named files on this unit (the original file name is unchanged so you can still see them with your pc).

The supplied software to convert video files to ASF, which is the only native video format this machine plays is suppose to be diabolically slow - I haven't tried it myself as I don't have anything to convert, I haven't even installed the software onto my pc even though it says to do so a few times in the manual.

I just plug my video, dvd or telly straight into the unit and let it convert the signal on the fly.

The results have been perfectly acceptable.

Downside - I think the video playback is sometimes a bit jerky, but I'm not too sure, it's a bit hard to tell really.

Also there is a blue "unit is operating / on" LED above the screen which shines right into my eyes when the ambient light level is low, a bit irritating.

While I remember, this unit is quite heavy, it's a hard drive with a screen attached after all, and I think that it would not survive a drop to the ground. I think you would end up with a hard drive, a screen and a million bits of plastic.

I use it mainly as a video player as you can probably guess and I think it's just fine. I just plug it into a source and record overnight or whenever. It records purchased DVDs and Videos without taking any notice of the copy protection measures at all - suits me fine. I'll then be able to watch bits of tv or whatever whenever I have some down time.

I've put about 20 video items onto it, including direct tv record using the built in timer, what a palaver, but I know what to do now so it should be easier next time. Also put on DVD.