Product Description

DVD player features a digital TV tuner electronic programme guidefunction and a hard disk of 160 GB allowing you to record up to 249hours. If you want to transfer your recordings to DVD you can doit at high speed!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21625 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: RDRHXD860S.CEK
• Released on: 2006-08-22
• Dimensions: 1.46 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Sony's worldwide reputation for creating unique, attractive, high-quality, advanced technology products rests on a long line of innovations embraced by people from all walks of life. With a diverse product lineup serving a variety of lifestyles and industries, Sony continuously strives to introduce new products and technologies to meet changing market needs.PRODUCT FEATURES:Capacity HDD 160 GB;HDMI Output;Digital TV Tuner;Advanced Electronic Program Guide (EPG);DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW Recording (dual RW compatibility).

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

This is all you will need and more!
This is review is really just to answer some previous reviews and to second some of the corrections made by others. You can add time onto a current recording and yes you do have to wait 2 mins to un-pause live tv. But if you are going away from the tv for less than 2 mins just don't pause it, we got by for years not pausing on conventional tv tut! It's only 2 mins!

It will accept just about any dvd you use unlike alot of others i looked at that will only accept dvd-r(w), as opposed to dvd+r(w) and vice versa. There is a slight delay on button response from the remote but you get used to it and you'll only notice when navigating menu screens, not on play, rewind and forward etc.

One review said wait 6 months until the software is sorted out then buy. The trouble with that is that technology moves on so quickly that if you wait for something better you'll never buy anything!

Lastly, this won What Hi-Fi magazine's DVD product of the year with 5 stars out of 5. I did ALOT of looking around and in my admittedly humble opinion, was the best I could find.

Excellent piece of kit
Got mine bundled with a 40w2000 TV and it's a very good replacement for my old Sony freeview box and Philips DVD player (read: it blows them out of the water).

DVDs via the HDMI connection in particular are superb and the easy to use EPG to record freeview programmes (now also with series link on BBC channels) is a simple joy to use.

Also, to correct a previous comment - you *can* set the timer to auto-pad the recordings from the epg (by 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 mins). It's in the setup configuration, I suppose not everyone reads the manuals ;o)

There *is* a delay when pausing live TV, in common with all DVD recorder HDD combos - this is because, unlike PVRs, DVD recorders do not buffer live Digital transport streams. They decode and re-encode and it takes time for this to happen to the HDD. Doesn't bother me as the reason to pause TV is leave the room for a minute and I can always catch up when I return by fast forwarding.

Unlike others I've not found the fan noise bothersome either - I can barely hear it (quiet hum) in my setup even when everything else is off. My central heating makes more noise!

One minus point though is the start up time. When you want to play a DVD and press eject, the player starts to wake up and takes 30secs to minute to get its act together before ejecting the tray. If you get impatient and press eject again it takes that as cancelled action and starts loading the disc. Grrrr.

Outstanding
I had been thinking for some time about replacing my ageing VHS and I am glad I did. Having read countless reviews I settled on the 860S as it has a good sized hard drive, Freeview and DVD drive.

Make no mistake, this product has far more to offer than a VHS and therefore if you want to get the most out of it, it is a bit more complicated (The manual is 120 pages, not to mention all the buttons on the remote!).

Recording from Freeview works very well and is quick too. The series record function is also useful, and with an 8 day EPG guide you can plan the weeks recording in advance and watch at your convenience. If you have a satellite or cable TV box plugged into it, setting a program to record takes a little bit longer, and you have to set the satellite/cable too. Having now got used to this, the results are just as good and I can watch the cable whilst recording from the Freeview.

If you have more than standard TV recording / DVD playing in mind, it is worth speaking to your local Sony centre or going in store to try before you buy, as I did with recording old VHS tapes to DVD. Connecting the VCR to the unit with a scart lead and recording 4hr tapes to the hard drive, and then to DVD worked really well.

Burning to DVD works well and you can adjust the quality and therefore the amount of space needed when you first record to the hard drive, and when you burn to DVD. High speed dubbing to DVD is also a useful function.

Recording quality is absolutely excellent and for this reason I give it the 5th star. In Standard SP mode you can't tell that you are watching a recording, I haven't felt the need to record in HQ.

Overall an outstanding solution to replacing VHS & DVD player alike, and once again very quick delivery from Amazon.