Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung DVD-SH855M review: Samsung DVD-SH855M
There's nothing better than kicking back and watching your favourite shows when you have time. As a DVD player, Freeview receiver and recorder, the Samsung DVD-SH855M offers you just this luxury. With excellent price and picture quality, you'll be in TV land in no time
Watching broadcast TV is a pain for many reasons. You have to be there at the right time. Your bladder needs to be suitably empty and you might want refreshments prepared. Crucially, you have to be able to pay at least a smattering of attention. It's basically hard to actually give something quality time, and even if you do, you'll more than likely to be rewarded by advert breaks every four minutes.
Samsung DVD-SH855M
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
We say, ditch broadcast TV and record everything on to a PVR. The problem is that it's hard to know which one to pick, as there are as many recorders on the market as bad tattoos on Amy Winehouse. However, the Samsung DVD-SH855M offers a couple of interesting features that might be tempting.
For around £220, it's both a Freeview receiver, recorder and DVD writer. That means you can easily record your favourite shows, watch them at a time that suits and burn them to DVD if you fancy hanging on to them.
Design
The SH855M is a compact, unobtrusive machine. Finished in black with a green display to the far right, it's not going to win any awards for original design. Still, it's petite enough not to bother the TV stand too much.
To the rear of the machine, the SH855M has connectivity options in spades, with HDMI, Scart, component and even S-video outputs. If you can't find something to connect this machine to your TV, you've got bigger problems than sockets.
With two digital audio outputs -- both optical and coaxial, you won't face a major hassle when hooking the machine up to your home cinema system. This means that not only will you get the best out of DVD soundtracks, you'll also see an improvement in sound from Freeview -- although you'll struggle to find much in the way of digital surround sound on regular TV.
The SH855M wears Samsung's design ethic well -- except in its remote. We're growing weary of these long rectangular affairs, as it's not especially comfortable and seems to clash with the company's style. Its function wins out over form since it works fine, and the controls are well labelled and logical, for the most part.
Features
You'll find the SH855M to be a very supportive DVD player. It's compatible with DivX and by extension, can play many of the MPEG-4-based video files you'll find scattered around online. It can also play -- and record to -- a rather generous set of DVDs. The full list can be found in our specifications section, but rest assured -- you'll be able to play most discs.
There's also a built-in Freeview tuner, but the SH855M can also record from Scart input and from its analogue tuner. These last two features are likely to be popular with people who want to record from their Sky or Virgin boxes without built-in PVRs.
Samsung claims that the 250GB hard drive is enough to record 264 hours of TV. We suggest taking an entire bag's worth of ready salted crisps with that figure. The machine allows you to adjust the settings, and reduce the quality of recorded programmes so you can store more on the machine. Most people won't want to do this -- the quality of Freeview is bad enough already without compressing it more.
Still, no matter what the Samsung can hold on its hard drive, it pales in comparison when you consider that you can move your shows onto DVD. If there's a programme you really like or something you haven't yet found time to watch, you can simply archive it off to DVD and keep it for a rainy day.
Performance
The picture quality on the Samsung was
certainly pleasing to the eye. Having HDMI and component outputs really
helps get the most out of DVD and Freeview pictures. While you can't
magically transform something from nothing, the removal of the analogue
stage is always welcome, as it keeps everything as close to the digital
signal as possible.
Although we appreciated the picture quality, we have a few qualms about how the machine operates. This player seems to go against the usual set Samsung standard and there are places where the English is pretty bad or just ambiguous. It's also sluggish to respond to remote commands, which is a burden when you're scrolling through the EPG.
Indeed, the EPG is another part of this machine that didn't tickle us. We've used a fair few of these devices and generally, they all managed to come up with the goods when it comes to pre-planning what you want to record. Unfortunately, the Samsung stubbornly makes up its mind not to be as responsive in the menu and you have to watch the channel you have selected in the guide. We were flustered by this operation, bothered that we couldn't listen to the news on BBC One while planning what we wanted to record on other channels.
There are a couple of other nits to pick, too. For example,
when you change channels on the TV, as long as the 'now' and 'next'
banner is on-screen, you can't use the numbers on the remote to change
channel. You can only use the + and - buttons to advance through the
channels. It's a small bug, but it's something that's counterintuitive
and irritating.
Conclusion
We were all ready to
sit back, relax and watch a few archived shows with the Samsung
DVD-SH855M. But it has us scratching our heads instead.
It certainly wasn't the £220 price tag for this DVD player, Freeview receiver and recorder that furrowed our brows. It wasn't the ability to burn DVDs either. We're genuine in our appreciation of the picture quality and think the idea of replacing two set-top boxes with one sleek unit is very appealing. But despite the excellent price and exciting specification, the problem is that this machine is just a pain to use.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday