Why You Can Trust CNET Philips DVDR3575H review: Philips DVDR3575H
Philips DVDR3575H
DVD recorders with hard drives used to be the poor man's TiVo. Sure, they lacked the finesse and eye candy of a true TiVo, but you didn't have to pay a subscription fee and you could burn anything right in the same unit. Fast-forward to today and you'll be hard pressed to find a DVD recorder with a hard drive, and if you go to eBay it might cost you nearly $2,000 to pick up an older model. The Philips DVDR3575H is one of the few DVD recorders with a hard drive that's still on the market, plus it has a built-in ATSC tuner, as now required by federal mandate. With a 160GB hard drive and the ability to upscale DVDs to 1080p, the DVDR3575H looks, at least from the spec sheet, to be a cheap alternative for those who don't want to pay TiVo or a cable/satellite company a monthly fee. That said, we couldn't help but feel letdown by its shortcomings. It lacks both an electronic program guide (EPG) and an IR blaster (i.e. the ability to control a cable or satellite box), which seriously limits its ability to be used as a DVR. There's no flexible recording mode, as found on many competing DVD recorders, and overall its recording quality was just average. And like every other DVD recorder with an ATSC tuner we've seen, it cannot output or record true high-definition resolution TV programming. These nitpicks don't stop it from doing a perfectly acceptable job at its main duty--recording from external devices and from the digital tuner--but anyone hoping for more should be wary. If you're dead set on getting a DVD recorder with a hard drive, the Philips DVDR3575H is one of your only choices--just make sure you realize its limitations before taking the jump.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
DVD recorders with hard drives are boxy by nature, but the DVDR3575H still manages to look somewhat stylish. There's a slim strip of silver along the bottom, with the top having a glossy black look. In the center there's a smallish LED screen that we wish was a bit bigger. Farther to the right are a few playback controls including Play, Stop, and Record, although we would have liked a direction pad on the front for when the remote goes missing.
The remote is a weakness of the DVDR3575H, as some of the most important functions of the remote are relegated to tiny buttons. For example, one of the most important things you do with a DVD recorder is record, yet the record button is tiny and we had to look at the remote each time we want to start recording. Another button we used a lot is the confusingly named Title button, which actually brings up the main interface for browsing recordings off the hard drive. On the upside, regular DVD playback controls are well-placed, with a large Stop button and Fast-Forward/Rewind and Chapter Forward/Backward close by. Still, you'd be better off using a solid universal remote.
User interface
The user interface is utilitarian but for the most part gets the job done. It displays six thumbnail images of the content saved on the HDD or DVD, and the clips start to play if they're selected. Near the top of the screen, a status bar reveals more infotmation about each clip, including when it was recorded and the recording mode used. We would have preferred if it could pull program information from the digital signal, like the Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK does. When you hit OK on a clip, a menu pops up allowing you to resume playback, play from start, edit, delete, delete multiple titles, or dub the program to a recordable DVD.
The editing interface works well. To archive your favorite program commercial free, simply select "scene delete" and click start at the beginning of the commercial and end at the end of the commercial, and then delete. You can even preview how the new clip will look like before permanently deleting it.
Features
The main function of the DVDR3575H is recording TV, whether that be from its built-in digital tuner or an external satellite or cable box. Recordings can be made on a variety of DVD formats (DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW), or on the 160GB internal hard drive. The lack of dual layer DVD support and, to a lesser extent, DVD-RAM support is very disappointing--there's no excuse for those limitations these days. Of course, anything recorded onto the hard drive can later be recorded to DVD (called dubbing), and that transfer occurs faster than real time.
For DVD recording, the unit offers six recording modes that all have trade-offs in recording quality vs. capacity. Only 1 hour of highest quality XP mode video fits onto a DVD; SP is 2 hours; SSP is 2.5 hours; LP is 3 hours; EP is 4 hours; and SLP is 6 hours. Six recording modes should cover the vast majority of scenarios you'll face, but we still wish it would have had a flexible recording speed, which allows you to maximize the quality and completely fill up a disc.
The same recording speeds are available on the hard drive. Assuming you use the same recording mode for everything on the hard drive, the recording mode to recording time ratios are as follows: HQ is 33 hours; SP is 66 hours; SPP is 82.5 hours; LP is 99 hours; EP is 132 hours; and SLP is 198 hours.
As now required by federal law, the DVDR3575H comes equipped with an ATSC tuner, which is capable of picking up digital over-the-air broadcasts, including HD channels. When we first heard about DVD recorders equipped with ATSC tuners back at CES, we were pretty excited about the idea, but we've found ourselves a little disappointed with the 2007 models. For basic use, it worked well; the tuner picked up all our local digital channel (not much of a challenge given CNET Labs' proximity to the Empire State Building's broadcast tower). Additionally, digital stations always looked better than their analog counterparts, at least in our testing area. On the other hand, it was disappointing that the DVDR3575H does not output true high-definition TV. Over-the-air digital signals are fully capable of displaying high-definition TV, but instead the DVDR3575H displays a 480p signal upconverted to 1080i--which is far from true high definition (more on this in the Performance section). As a result, you're getting an image that's more akin to an upconverted DVD than to true high-def.
The DVDR3575H is missing two features that would have added some key functionality: an electronic programming guide (EPG) and an IR blaster. An EPG makes it much easier to schedule recordings off the ATSC tuner. Instead of looking through a TV Guide to find the channel and time of your favorite recordings, you could simply navigate the onscreen display and hit "record" when you see something you like.
An IR blaster would make it much easier to record from other sources, like cable or satellite box. Without an IR blaster, if you want to record a show, you have to make sure your cable or satellite box is set to the right channel before it starts. An IR blaster would allow you to set a timer recorder, and the DVDR3575 would automatically change the channel on your cable or satellite box at the appropriate time. On the other hand, we were happy to see a 30-second skip button for blasting by commercials on recorded programs.
The DVDR3575H's jack pack is pretty good. The main connection is the HDMI output, which is capable of outputting video scaled to 1080p along with multichannel audio. For analog video outputs, there is a component video output--which is capable of 480p output--and an AV output with S-video. On the input side, there's an AV input with S-Video on the rear panel and an additional AV input on the front panel. There's also a FireWire jack on the front panel for connecting a digital camcorder, plus a USB port for MP3 playback or JPEG files. For audio, there's the aforementioned HDMI output, plus both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs. Analog audio is supported by a stereo RCA output.
If you're a Philips fan but you don't need the built-in hard drive, the company also offers the DVDR3545V (DVD/VHS recorder) and DVDR3475 (standalone DVD recorder) in its 2007 lineup, as well.
Digital TV performance
Like every other DVD recorder with a built-in ATSC tuner we've tested, the DVDR3575H is not capable of outputting a true HD signal. This was readily apparent in the softness of program material, and especially easily to pick upon network logos. For example, where the CBS logo should be round and smooth, we could see jaggies on the edges. It's a little confusing using the HDMI output because the signal is up-converted to 1080p--so your HDTV will say it's accepting a 1080p signal--but up-scaled from an image that's far less detailed than the full 1920x1080 lines of resolution.
We were able to confirm our observations using the Sencore VP403C signal generator, which has an RF output capable of sending an ATSC signal. We dialed in a resolution test on the Sencore and it clearly could not pass the resolution of either a 1080i or 720p signal. Even more interestingly, it didn't quite resolve all detail of a 480p signal, either, which the Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK was able to do. While we don't know for sure, we imagine the DVDR3575H down-converts the original high-definition signal to 480p--which loses much of the actual detail--and then it up-converts it back to 1080i.
Despite the fact that it's not true high-definition, in our experience digital TV signals look much better than analog signals and also are able to preserve the wide-screen aspect ratio of high-def shows. So while the DVDR3575H can't output high-def, you'll still enjoy superior image quality than you'd get with a standard analog tuner.
DVD recording performance
Overall, recording performance was average and not quite up to the standards seen on models without a hard drive, such as the Samsung DVD-AR650 and the Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK. To start off, we looked at some resolution test patterns from Avia Pro, using the S-Video input on the DVDR3575H. We started off in HQ mode, and the results were mixed. While it does an excellent job of displaying almost 500 lines of horizontal resolution, vertical resolution was considerably worse, topping out at a little over 400 lines. SP was very similar, looking almost identical with perhaps a slight vertical resolution. SPP mode was a huge jump down in quality. While vertical resolution managed to stay at about 400 lines of resolution, horizontal resolution plummeted to around 300 lines of resolution. The next three recording modes--LP, EP, and SLP--looked essentially identical to SPP mode.
Recording quality on static resolution tests is different than recording actual programs with motion, so we looked at some TV recorded at each of the different quality levels. For the most part, actual program material followed the same pattern as our resolution tests. HQ and SP looked very good, with very little motion artifacts and jaggies. SPP was a significant dropoff in quality, as the image becomes a good deal softer and you start to see more jaggies and blocklike compression artifacts. Unlike with the resolution tests, we saw a steady decline in quality from SPP to SLP mode, with SLP mode having a very soft image, riddled with jaggies and pixilation. Videophiles should look elsewhere, but for everyone else the DVDR3575H will do the job.
DVD playback performance
We started off testing the DVD playback performance using Silicon Optix's HQV test suite. Right off the bat we were pretty disappointed as the DVDR3575H failed the initial resolution test, which means it's unable to pass the full resolution of DVDs. The next jaggies test was also unacceptable, with many more jaggies than we're use to seeing on even inexpensive up-converting players. These jaggies cropped up again on the following test of a waving flag, as each ripple in the flag cause a bundle of unsightly jagged edges. Things didn't get any better as we continued to the 2:3 pull-down test, as moire was visible in the grandstands as a racecar drove by. As a consolation, it did pass the scrolling titles test, although we saw more jaggies than we'd like in the background.
Switching over to program material was a bit better. We were pleasantly surprised with the introduction to Star Trek: Insurrection, as it demonstrated that it does have 2:3 pull-down by correctly rendering the curved edges of the bridge railings and boat hulls. We moved onto the difficult opening sequence of Seabiscuit, and again the DVDR3575H handled it much better than the test patterns on HQV. So while it struggled with the difficult video-based tests of the HQV suite, the DVDR3575H performed better with actual film-based program material.