Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38329 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: SVR-S500
• Released on: 2006-04-10
• Dimensions: 1.81" h x 9.61" w x 14.06" l, 6.97 pounds

Manufacturer's Description:
The new Sony SVR-S500 Digital Video Recorder (DVR) provides more storage space with it’s 80Gb Hard Disk Drive, and allows up to 106 hours of programming to be recorded. The DVR enables viewers to watch all free digital TV channels through FREEVIEW and allows you to record and store up to 106 hours of your favourite TV programmes directly onto its built-in hard disk drive. This presents another revolutionary lifestyle entertainment product from Sony as it helps manage your TV viewing, allowing you to watch the programmes you love at your convenience, not just when they are broadcast on TV.

A combined digital terrestrial receiver and digital video recorder, the Sony SVR-S500 offers a host of advanced features so recordings can be made quickly and easily, without the need for video tapes or difficult timers. Create a personal collection of favourite programmes with the ability to record and store up to 106 hours of programming directly onto the DVR – the unit allows you to create personalised folders for all your favourite recordings.

Planning weekly viewing has never been easier as the new onscreen 14 day TV listings guide lets you select programmes to record for up to 2 weeks ahead just by pressing a few buttons on the remote. Viewers need never miss an episode of their favourite soap or sitcom again. All recordings are made in digital broadcast quality and unlike VHS tapes; the quality doesn’t deteriorate the more they are played.

You can even pause and rewind live TV as the Sony SVR-S500 DVR automatically records the last 30 minutes of the channel its been tuned to. This means you can stop to take telephone calls or make a drink in the middle of your favourite programme and continue watching without missing a second of the action. The Recording Edit functionality means you can crop a recording to remove unwanted sections for the beginning and the end of the recording – ensuring even more viewing flexibility.

The Retrospective Recording feature allows you to record the channel you have been watching, even if you only decide to record it anything up to 30 minutes into the programme. The unit is also capable of recording subtitles as they are broadcast.

Box Contains:

• Sony SVR-S500 PVR/HDD 80GB
• Remote Control
• Batteries
• RF Cable
• AV Cable
• Instructions
• Warranty Information

Customer Reviews

You will be surprised quite how bad this product it.
I've always bought Sony audio/visual products, I've found their TVs and DVD players to be good quality, and although you pay a bit more I've been inclined to think you get a kind of guarantee of quality and reliability. Well that is not the case with the SVR-S500. I've now had to re-think my brand loyalty.

I owned this product for 3 days before taking it back to the shop (not amazon) as it was pretty much unusable by design (the shop weren't that surprised to see me again, it seems others have returned theirs as well!). As you'll see from other reviews this product is allegedly a re-badged Fusion PVR, and aside from it's sleek Sony-esque chassis, nothing about it resembles the kind of quality that I would expect from a manufacturer like Sony, and at a price-point of £200+.

The fan is noisy, very noisy and the fan is on full-blast even when the unit is in stand-by, so it never stops. Unless you have a good sound-proofed cabinet in which to shut the unit away, I suggest you will find the noise very annoying when the TV is off, and barely tolerable with the TV at a good volume. But that is not the only gripe.

The machine is slow to respond to the remote control, and the Electronic Programme Guide is a joke - it only shows the title of each programme, you cannot access the description that accompanies each programme, unless you schedule that programme to record. Once the programme is in the scheduler you can then view the description. This is just lazy implementation of a very basic feature.

Also beware of the LongPlay and ExtendedPlay modes (which take up less storage space whilst compromising quality), I saw these demonstrated in the shop but all is not as it seems - when they recorded a programme in ExtendedPlay and replayed it for me I was impressed at how extended play seemed to have equally good quality to standard play. I have now found out that this is because the unit ALWAYS records in standard play first, and then batches up the programme to compress it to extended-play format once the machine is in stand-by. So, yep, even more HD noise in stand-by while the unit compresses any programmes - on top of the fan noise.

For anyone that's interested, I have since bought a Humax 9200T, it's too new to make comments on reliability etc, but on first impressions it completely outshines the Sony, with twice the Hard Disk, almost silent running, good EPG, responsive, well implemented, and cheaper than the Sony too. A sober lesson learned about blind brand loyalty.

disappointing
There are two things which really niggle about this machine. One, the appalling noise it makes (so loud that you have to turn the box off at the mains when you'e not using it), and the very poor EPG display. I'm keen on Sony, and bought this because of the design, and also because I expected it would offer the excellence that other Sony products offer. Not so. There is no multi-channel display feature, meaning that programming is laborious and time wasting, and the remote is unstable. One day it works, the next day it doesn't.
Don't buy this machine. Check out the Humax instead. I wish I had!

Stay well away from this product
Have just returned my second of these in 2 months. The product is incredibly noisy with an industrial strenght fan. However, the most serious drawback is that the product seems inherently unstable. My first machine was fine for about 3 weeks then started to seriously play up - freezing while changing channels and while watching recorded programs. When the machine did freeze, the standby button did not function so forcing me to resort to turning off and on electricity at the plug. Eventually after a few solid days of this behaviour, i returned the product which was replaced.

This second product behaved again for a few weeks before having the same problem as the first. I may have been unlucky and received a faulty batch but if my experience is anything to go by, you would be better buying a cheaper product from a less exalted manufacturer. Poor performance Sony