Philips DVDR3305

After a few months seemed to be unresponsive to handset very little available on recorder

Eventually a LOADING message appeared on the front and locked up

Very poor value for money . Will be staying away from Philips in the future

Given up with it, its too unreliable. I'm looking for one that works properly. Often fails to recognise discs. Fails occasionally to record on timer. Has failed completely to recognise new Philips own brand DVV+RW x8.

Bought this machine in September 2006, the rating I have given is the mean - reason, it's the first one I've owned so I can't make a comparison - Isn't that the meaning of ratings? The DVDR3305 has always recorded perfectly with the correct disc. Replays anything recorded on the machine itself or on my PC. Plays commercially recorded discs. Erases, re-writes, no problem. Just love it. It's as easy to use as a VCR and much more versatile. Viewable fast-forward or reverse at 16X, frame-by-frame pause, brilliant. Has all the bells and whistles. And it was inexpensive. Not cheap, inexpensive.

I find the Philips DVDR3305 unreliable - you never know if it will record or not; often states that a disc is faulty or unknown when it has already recorded 6 programmes on the same disc.

I Won't buy philips again. There are too many bad points on this Philips DVDR3305 DVD recorder to mention, and no good points!

Apart from some of the discs erroring which means I have to re-record the program again, I think the machine is worth the money. I have read a lot of bad reviews about this machine and think most of the bad points to be irrelevant, after all It isn't exactly an expensive machine.

I have had 4 replacements from Philips for this DVDR now... they keep on telling me that either there is nothing wrong with it or that my discs are already broken. Seeing as they come straight from the cellophane i can't believe this is the root of the problem.

The recorder is set to record and then doesn't or does record but then says faulty disc when I power back on. If I record and then overwrite it exacerbates the problem. Utterly un-reliable. You would have thought Philips would have done better for over £100.

Also the clock NEVER auto sets and the video plus function rarely works even though my signal is perfect and the power on takes about 30 seconds. I'm at the end of my tether and would NOT recommend this product.

Buy a Sony.

Bought the Philips DVD3305R from Sainsburys. After spending 3 days trying to get it to work, gave up and called in the local TV Engineer, the supplied scart lead was no good! After heated discussions, Sainsburys agreed to refund the cost of a replacement scart lead. It then worked.

If you set manual recordings, it freezes after 20 minutes or so of recording. The machine will not work again unless you unplug it from the mains and reset it!

Using "PLUS" is normally OK but if the program times change, the backup system does not always follow and you miss part of the program.

It also takes ages to warm up and you some times can wait up to 5 minutes before the disc tray will open. After three months, I admit defeat and I'm going out to replace this thing tomorrow!

I have just taken my Philips DVDR3305 back to Comet and replaced it with a Panasonic DMR-E55-EBS.

Where do I start?

Firstly, it often displayed the message 'Unknown disc type', even when I took a brand new DVD out of its cellophane and put it straight into the machine! This message came up frequently and for no apparent reason. It didn't seem to matter if the disc was new, old, scratched, dirty, whatever. Cleaning a dirty disc made no difference and, as I say, even brand new discs got the same message.

It is frustratingly slow to 'get going'. After switching on it takes at least 30 seconds for it to sort itself out before you can do anything. The same for switching off. If you want to record something instantly, make sure you have at least a minute in hand.

The remote control is so poorly designed, my dog could have done better. The menu buttons double up as the fast forward and reverse buttons, so you can't do both at the same time. The play button is right underneath the scroll down button and we often hit the wrong button. The buttons you need, such as the one to remove subtitles, are tiny whilst the ones you hardly ever use are big. None of the buttons has clear writing on it to tell you what it is and in a dimly lit room you would need a torch to know which button to press. There is no button for opening and closing the disc drawer.

Recording quality is good - when it finally records something. But the other night we recorded a programme and the menu would not display, so we couldn't play it back!

Essentially, this is a poorly designed item that, in our case, has many faulty operational problems and my advice is don't touch it with a barge pole.

The Philips DVDR3305 DVD Recorder is difficult to use in comparison to other DVD recorders that I have used. The remote control is very poorly designed as the buttons are too small and tightly packed together. I'm always pressing the wrong buttons. It doesn't even have proper fast forward and rewind buttons, you have to use the left-right cursor buttons for this function. But if you have a menu up, or if you're in editing mode, then the only way that you can fast forward or rewind is to hold down the tiny prev/next buttons for more than 2 seconds for each time you want to increase FF speed. The remote doesn't have buttons for many of the other DVD playback functions either, such as repeat, slow motion, zoom, and bookmark etc. If you want to use these features you have to delve into a load of sub menus, which requires a 20 button press combo.

The brightness or contrast has been set too high, so when you record from a composite source (ie VHS or Freeview) the image quality looks all washed out in comparison to other DVD recorders. Detail in bright or pale colours burns out and is lost, so a pale blue sky for example will appear as just plain white. It doesn't have a 3 hour recording mode either, so the Philips DVDR3305 isn't a very good choice if you want to archive your VHS tapes, and the 4 hour mode is simply too blocky on movement, and also wastes an hours disc space. The only time you get good image quality is if you record digital TV on the 1 or 2 hour mode via an RGB scart input.

The auto clock set doesn't work properly. Devices with auto clock set should automatically set the clock within seconds of being plugged in. but the clock on the Philips 3305 doesn't even set itself after hours. The Philips support site says to check your Ceefax reception on BBC1. My Ceefax signal is perfect, so the problem is with the recorder. I think that Philips already knew that the auto clock set doesn't work properly, as in the set-up instructions it tells you to set the clock manually! My cheap old Alba VHS recorder can set the clock itself within seconds after being plugged in, but a brand new expensive Philips DVD recorder can't. I'm not amused.

The on-screen graphics and user interface is diabolical. They have used pale blue text on a blue background in many places, and really small text on the timer schedule, hence, the text is difficult to read. Using this recorder can be a very frustrating and unpleasant experience. It won't respond to the eject button when in standby, so you have to stand like a lemon for nearly 15 seconds while it boots up, before you can press the eject button. The DVD disc drive is quite noisy during playback, or when watching TV via its internal tuner or Scarts. It sometimes goes quiet during recording, but after about 15 minutes it starts to make a strange noise like the inside of a fridge. This noise often continues for a while, even after you eject the disc, so it can't be the DVD disc drive.

The audio CD playback has been poorly implemented, and there is a gap of silence between all tracks, which really disrupts CD's that have been mixed or cross-faded. The only way to fast forward is to hold down the tiny 'next' button for more than 2 seconds, or delve through a load of sub menus and select the fast forward 'trick mode'.

Either they have gone out of their way to make this thing as difficult to use as possible, or they just haven't given user-friendliness much thought at all. It has corrupted two of my DVD+RW discs after doing an "overwrite disc mode" recording and refused to play them, despite all other DVD players I have tried being able to at least recognise the discs. In the end I had to erase those discs on a PC and start again, with my recordings lost forever. It won't play mini-DVD's or ISO-mpg discs either - despite it being a brand new 2005 model.

I could have got a better specification model from a cheaper brand, but I decided to go for the more expensive one from Philips, assuming that one from the Philips brand would be better quality. In the end, I found out that the quality of the Philips is no better, and maybe even worse than the cheaper brands with regard to the shoddy remote control, defective auto clock, washed out image quality when recording from analogue tuner or Composite input, and poorly thought-out user interface.