Philips DVD-R880

Won't record constantly going wrong - even bought a second one in hope that could not be as bad - IT WAS.

Philips promised on FIVE ocassions to sent new software CD - again never arrived - will never buy another Philips.

I don't think the Philips DVD-R880 was worth the £400 my wife paid for my xmas present.

Philips have developed a reputation for supplying DVD recorders that fail after only minimal use. My own recorder was used only a dozen times in 3 years before displaying countless error messages and finally giving up the ghost. Philips wanted a minimum payment of £120 just to look at the machine. I decided to throw the machine away and buy a good quality recorder (i.e. not a Philips brand).

Don't waste your money on buying products that are not fit for purpose. Buy anything but don't buy Philips.

When I bought the Philips DVD-R880 DVD recorder, I thought because it was made by Philips it would be reliable. I have many Philips products, all with no problems except this heap of rubbish. Yes the notorious Philips DVD-R880. My friend and I both bought one, his started to freeze and stopped recording after about 3 Months, mine lasted a little longer, just out of the year guarantee. During that time it would not play anything off the computer, and still used to give the occasional disc error during recording from the TV. So I bought a cheap Medion player which played any thing I put in it, even a disc I recorded on the Philips which it would not play. I tried many different makes of disc including Philips, but it made no difference - still rubbish.

After it was 15 months old I gave up trying to use it. I was told it was a bad model which was not worth getting repaired. I tried to contact Philips via their web site, and it said it was not possible to e-mail at the time and gave a phone number to call at 15p per min. NO WAY!! I'm not paying to complain!! I have already wasted £350.00, and I am not wasting any more of my money on anything Philips. Tomorrow I go out and buy a Panasonic DMRES 10 DVD recorder.

Philips must have known this recorder had many problems, and should have offered people a cheap upgrade. They may regret it because bad publicity will do them much financial harm. I have already talked a friend out of buying a Philips TV.

I have been a long time admirer and buyer of Philips goods,30yrs or more but after my experience with DVD 880,and may I add, I am not over enthusiastic with the VCR 830 which isn't powerful enough to pull many tapes through and I need to buy only the most expensive tapes to allow it to function,no more Philips for me.

The Philips DVD-R880 is the worst piece of audiovisual eqipment I have ever bought. It hangs while recording and does not play back commercial DVDs. I bought about two years ago. Like other reviewers here I blamed dodgy discs during the guarantee year and failed to demand my money back in time. This product was not ready for market. I am not buying Phillips again.

To start

DONT EVER BUY ONE OF THESE UNITS

I'll leave it up to you if you want to buy Philips after reading this.

I was given a working unit and it remained that way for a couple of months. After that, it refused to record anything and continually aborted with "DISC ERROR" or "DISK WARNING". Philips know about this and have, in my experience, given people two fingers. They told me that without the exact date of purcahse and proof of purchase, that they would do NOTHING about it, regardless of their admitted manufacturer problems.

In my personal opinion, this unit, combined with Philips "non-service" should be avoided at ALL costs.

The Philips DVD-R880 machine's worst and most recent fault: when in record mode, it not only fails but wipes everything else already on the disc. It has been a pain to use from new and now, at two years old, it will only playback discs it has previously recorded. Other discs either stick or are not recognised.

Like many on this forum, I have had a Philips 880 DVD recorder for about 18 months, and it does seem to have a built in obsolescence (but then all digital technology has to keep people updating it!). I frequently get 'No Disc' or 'Unknown data contained on this disc', and jumping sections of chapters with discs that work perfectly well in other machines. Sure, the picture quality and sound quality are fine, but if the disc wont play then what good is that? I also find the remote painfully slow and I can access scenes quicker on my ten year old bottom range Matsui VHS player. Why does previous technology last longer?

My main bug bear with it at the moment is it no longer allows me to record from my DV camcorder, freezing after a few seconds, shutting off and showing the error message D7FC58422. What does this mean? Any suggestions? I bought it from Currys in the Xmas sale 2003 - it was £200, reduced from £280 as it was the display model, though when I got it home I discovered it had actually been returned from a previous dissatisfied customer and it didn't work, so I returned it to Currys then four weeks later was given a new one.

My Philips DVD-880 developed a fault, not reading disks, skipping chapters etc just weeks after the two year mark.

To be honest it always struggled to read some disks but I foolishly blamed the disks.

After many fruitless conversations with Philips, they flatly refused to look at it despite me showing them scores of reviews of the same problem.

Finally after speaking to trading standards, Comet agreed to look at the recorder and we agreed that they would replace the Laser and not charge for the labour. This cost me £42 which I reluctantly agreed to pay.

This DVD clearly has an inherent fault, despite me paying over £400 for the unit, it was rendered useless after just 2 years.

Philips own repair centre quoted me £120 to fix it, and to say they were uhelpful is an understatement.

My advice to anyone buying any Philips product is "Don't Bother", they have nothing but contempt for customers. I personally will never buy a Philips product again as they have shown that they are prepared to sell faulty products with no recourse for the customer when things go wrong.