I'm looking at buying this Philips recorder because it seems like a great alternative to most of the High Def. players out there. It 'up-converts' to 1080. You can set it to record to the 160gig hard drive or a DVD. If you record to the HD and like the program you simply edit and burn it to a DVD. All of the reviews I've read are positive about the quality of the re-play and the ease of set-up and use. I have read some of the posts here regarding the PlayStation 3 and it's picture quality, but I also want be able to burn and am not sure that this one loses much in the way of picture quality. And I'm not a gamer type. I have a ton of movies (over 2000) and they should look close to High Def. on my HDTV with this unit. My questions: Are there other alternatives that I've missed and that might be a better way to go? Am I expecting more than this will deliver? If anyone has used this player/recorder, I'd be very interested on your feedback. I'm tired of the awful picture I get using my standard DVD player with my HDTV and am open to any suggestions or feedback on this subject. Regards Len
Looks like a fairly decent player. But for that price you could nearly buy you a Blu-ray player that will give you a much better picture. Also, how well that player will upconvert depends on the chip it is using to do the processing, some upconverters are better then others due to this. With the Blu-ray player you wont be able to record what your watching. Onkyo makes good upconverters, but the real good ones will run you nearly the price of a Blu-ray player. Looks like you will just need to weigh the pros and cons of each and go from there. What type of HDTV do you have?
First, thanks for the reply. I have a 52" Sharp Aquos which gives me a great HD picture. When I try to play a SDVD on my standard DVD player it looks really muddy and I've got close to 2000 flicks. I have heard nice things about the Philips unit and would like the option to record shows/sports to the hard drive or a DVD for future viewing. There is little doubt that a Blu-ray unit would out-shine this, but I think the Philips will give me a very nice picture with more bells and whistles. Here is a link to a ton of info. on the Philips. This guy has really done his homework: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12244086&postcount=1 Let me know what you think. Regards Len
Sounds like you have already done your homework. Go ahead and get that Phillips, you don't need me to persuade you.
