Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: RDRHXD870B.CEK
• Released on: 2007-03-10
• Dimensions: 14.51 pounds

Features

• SONY HARD DISC DRIVE DVD RECORDER
• 1 X HDMI OUTPUT
• 2 X SCART CONNECTIONS
• 160GB HARD DRIVE
• IN BLACK

Manufacturer's Description

All you need to know about the Sony 2007 Hard Disk Drive Recorder range The new Sony range of Hard Disk Drive Recorders give you more time to do the things you want to do. Whether that’s going out with friends, playing your favourite sport or enjoying time with your family. These new features allow you to watch what you want, whenever you want.

Definition High Definition: HD means Higher Definition - up to 4x more detail and clarity. It really is the future of home entertainment. The industry standard for HD is 720 lines, however, Sony are leading the way with 1080 lines - or HD1080. Standard Definition: Standard definition is what we've been watching for years on our TV's, it can still produce superb quality images and if you're going to play back your footage on a SD TV then a SD Hard Disk Drive Recorders will deliver great looking results.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Recording HDD recording is changing the way we experience home entertainment. Record directly to HDD and store a massive amount of content without the need for tapes or discs! RDR-HXD870: 160GB Hard Disk Drive for up to 455 hours of TV recording RDR-HXD970: 250GB Hard Disk Drive for up to 710 hours of TV recording RDR-HXD1070: 500GB Hard Disk Drive for up to 1400 hours of TV recording

Integrated Digital Tuner FREEVIEW Digital broadcasts offer 30+ TV channels as well as 20 radio radio stations including entertainment, children's, news, music and lifestyle. The FREEVIEW service is a simple way of getting a wide choice of digital channels and no contract. What better way to enjoy them than with Sony BRAVIA televisions.

EPG (Electronic Program Guide) The 8 day on-screen guide allows you to select the programme to watch or record at the touch of a button. Simply press ‘Enter’ to store the programme to your built-in Hard Disk Drive Recorder. Select the programme you have recorded from the on-screen menu, then sit back and enjoy.

HDMI (High Definition Media Interface) A HDMI interface allows for the best picture possible from your Sony DVD/HHD/Blu-ray player/recorder to your Sony BRAVIA LCD TV.

BRAVIA Theatre Sync With a single touch of a button, control your entire Sony entertainment system and remove the need for additional remote controls.

Series Recording Never miss you favourite shows again! Just follow the simple steps below; 1. Access EPG 2. Select programme 3. Press ‘Blue’ to access Series Info for episode detail 4. Choose to record one episode only or select ‘Series Timer’ to record all episodes 5. Series Info screen shows programmed episodes 6. Series Recording display in 8 Day EPG for future episodes

Pause Live TV & Simultaneous Record and Playback You can pause your favourite TV shows, movies or live sports and pick up where you left off ! With Simultaneous Record and Playback, you can watch one show and record another, making sure that you never miss you favourite shows when they clash!

Photomovie You can playback your favourite photos, view thumbnails and play a slide show while you listen to music! Just simply place a photo CD/DVD in your HDD Recorder or connect your digital camera via USB and you can easily access your content with the intuitive menu system.

Music Jukebox You can playback your favourite songs/albums, sort by artist, album, track and genre with this great feature. Simply place a music CD/DVD in your HDD Recorder or connect your MP3 player via USB and you can easily access your content with the intuitive menu system.

Automatic Programme Title Labelling Isn't it difficult to find that programme you recorded on the VHS tape you want to watch and cant easily find? Now with Automatic Programme Title Labelling you can easily find your recorded shows, just by looking at the name and the synopsis!

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Nice bit of equipment which knocks the 'spots' off my old VHS recorder
I can't comment on how this compares to other DVD recorders, but I'm very pleased with this one. I didn't find it quite so easy to use the DVD recorder as others reviewers appear to have done, but I am someone who likes to read the instructions first and I did have quite specific requirements. i) I wanted to be able to record from my VHS recorder to the DVD recorder; ii) and I wanted to be able to 'burn' DVDs (known as dubbing in the Sony manual) from either my VHS tapes or from programmes recorded from the tv. I eventually got this sussed, but it's not entirely obvious from the manual.

Copying to DVD can be a little noisey, comparable to copying to VHS, but copying to hard disc is virtually noiseless. It's also such a treat to simply choose the programme you wish to record using the electronic guide and just press a button: you don't have to find a space on the hard disc as this is done automatically for you. There are over thirty-five hours of high quality recording space on the disc, and I think up to something like 255 hours if you opt for the lowest quality(which I haven't tried).

Quality of playback is superb, and I don't use HDMI upscaling. One minor glitch is that it won't play pre-recorded DVDs unless they are Region 2 which is tedious and in this day-and-age rather inconsiderate and completely unnecessary, hence the 4* rating.

Now this was not easy to set up
Quick delivery and a very good price. Well done Amazon.
I bought the HXD870 to replace my worn out Sony VCR.
My bravia HD-ready Sony TV is only 8 months old and so I had hoped for easy compatibility. (Easy being the essential word).
After many hours of frustration trying to set up my new purchase, I can now use the basics on the DVD recorder and the picture quality is brilliant. So much better than a VCR.

But oh dear the manual is an utter disgrace.

If you are expecting to carefully plod through the instructions, you will be sorely disappointed.
I have better things to do with my life than study the meaning of "dubbing" and "title list" and "hook up" and "smartlink" and so on.
To get any joy, I resorted to re-reading the TV manual (how come Sony can produce a decent TV manual and an awful DVD recorder manual ?)and then I began to grasp some of the things I needed to do. I then had to use my initiative to guess at how to carry out these things. OK for you guys with reasonable initiative, but I knew I was in big trouble when I realized I had to use MY initiative.
The manual is complex, it fails to give explanations for the basics AND it fails to give a good technical explanation. Useless, utterly useless.

This DVD recorder might turn out to be wonderful, but thats no use to me if I can not work out how to use the damn thing.

A big thank you goes to the other reviewers of this product and the customers discussions. Without your goodwill and efforts I would still be clueless as to how to even get a simple recording on this machine. Due to other reviewers, at least I was aware that I was likely to have trouble deciphering the manual.

If you are tempted to buy and your knowledge is limited to setting up a VCR then I recommend that you read up a great deal or you resign yourself to getting someone else to set up this recorder. If you have to resort to the latter, then I doubt that you will ever get to grips with the machine.

Some discussion points, with answers, for the less technically minded (like me!):
I would like to transfer my videos to DVD. Can this machine do this ?
Found out the hard way: Yes this machine will burn you a DVD BUT you need a good VCR before you can start to transfer a video(maybe obvious, but was not obvious to me) AND most videos are copy protected so you can not transfer them anyway!! I can accept this situation now that I know the facts. I have purchased a brand new VCR so that I can (a) copy the amateur videos and (b) still watch the commercially produced videos, but not using my HXD870.

By the way, yes you can watch one channel whilst recording another. But this assumes your TV has either a digibox or a built in tuner, which mine does have. And, due to the useless manual, it might take you four weeks to work out how to actually do this.
Now I know how to operate this part of the recorder, the procedure is in fact quick and easy.
Wonder if Sony would pay me vaste sums of money to write an idiots guide to using their HXD ???????

Impossible Instruction Book
I am sure that this is a very good machine if only you can understand the instruction book and the machines own set up program. I have found it next to impossible to tune it into my NTL set top cable box, and have so far only succeded in being able to record the program selected on NTL. I cannot record from the terrestrial service whilst watching NTL.
Disapointing-not recommended unless you have a degree in DVD recording.