Just picked up the Philips DVDR3597H/05 from Laskys for 185 quid and thought I'd post up a quick review of it for people contemplating it.

Good points:

* Quiet hard drive (only a minor hum when in operation). 250GB is a decent sized drive too.

* Plays back DivX directly from USB. Can also delete files on the USB device and even upgrade the firmware via USB too.

* HDMI connector (only 8 quid more than the non-HDMI version at Laskys, so you'd be mad to buy the non-HDMI version) in addition to SCART OUT.

* Can record from SCART IN. This one feature alone is a huge tick in the plus column (I think it's appalling that no twin tuner "digital PVR" deems it worthy to record from the "disgusting" analogue SCART IN socket that they all seem have!).

* Can play, if you really must, MP3, WMA, WAV and show JPEGs.

* Built-in DVD recorder (not even tried it yet!).

* Unlike some other HDD recorders or even PVRs, you can record one prog and do other ops at the same time (e.g. playback from USB, playback an HDD TV recording, play a DVD or chase playback the current recording).

* Seriously excellent picture search on HDD recording playback. 4x, 16x and an impressive 64x speed on picture search. Skip backwards and forwards buttons do single press time jumps that can be programmed down to exact minutes/seconds in their duration - superb for ad skipping or just general skimming.

Bad points:

* Single analogue tuner, ho hum. No digital tuners at all. "Why?!" is all I can say - may as well have no tuners at all if you can't put digital tuners in.

* 6-hour timeslip buffer cannot be disabled, so in "on" mode, the hard drive spins forever, which is ludicrous. Mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can mark any section of the buffer to be saved as a normal recording, but not being able to disable this is simply poor and will annoy in 2 major ways (hard disk always spinning and reduced lifespan of hard disk).

* Even in standby mode, the hard drive spins up periodically to check for (now defunct apparently!) Guide Plus data with no way of telling it not to.

* DivX avi's have to have valid index marks in them - most stuff you, ahem, download doesn't, so I used Linux's "mencoder -idx" to convert them before putting them on a USB stick. Without the index marks, you can't picture search FF/REW DivX avi's, which is a seriously major loss of functionality. Even with index marks in the file, you still get no total playing time or current time position info (which you do get with TV recordings being played back), which is poor.

* Mad partitioning scheme - 35GB fixed partition for music/photos and the rest (210GB or whatever) for TV recordings/DivX files. Why?! You can't seem to repartition it at all either (and I didn't easily spot a "format hard disk" option either).

* You can't write to USB devices, despite being able to delete files from them. This would have elevated the USB connection to majorly impressive if you could have saved TV recordings to USB. As it is, it's just "good".

* Single region DVD playback by default. Found a multi-region remote hack someone claimed would work, but had trouble getting it to work myself.

* You can zoom in and out of a DivX video, but bizarrely can't do the same with TV recordings. I guess the DivX licensing included zoom code in their SDK whereas for their own playback code of TV recordings, Philips couldn't be bothered replicating it

* Pointless "Eco Mode" that "saves power in standby" but also bumps the reasonable 8 seconds to come out of standby to a completely hopeless 32 seconds! Luckily, you can leave "Eco Mode" turned off permanently.

* Won't re-encode HDD recordings when dumping to DVD (a common issue this - my Liteon 5045's never did either). Makes the HQ mode (highest quality, but only 1 hour on a single layer DVD) pointless to HDD record in, because you won't be able to ever save anything over an hour to DVD (e.g. any movie or any sporting event).

Conclusion:
If you *must* have a built-in digital tuner/EPG/Freeview, then this is a total no-go for you. I record from SCART IN (standard Sky Digital box) and play DivX stuff via USB and if those are your two primary ways you watch video, then this recorder is a good purchase - arguably the best sub-200 quid device for those two uses. It's nice to see Philips releasing firmware updates regularly - it should mean that some of the above bad points could be fixed (e.g. ways to turn off Guide Plus EPG downloads and the time slip buffer would improve hard disk activity when doing "nothing" no end).

Thanks for that, a very interesting summary. I was thinking about asking if anyone had one of these new Philips models, but you've saved me a job.


The problem with the freeview pvrs is that they do not have the necessary hardware to encode an external input - they dump the digital transport stream directly onto the HDD as received. The Philips, and other HDD/DVD recorders, have the necessary MPEG encoder to enable them to encode an external input.


Not sure where you've heard that, Guideplus data is still broadcast on ITV analogue and sat British Eurosport, and works fine on my Philips HDRW720.

I bought a 3597 at the weekend. I also use it with SKY+.
However there's a few points I'd like to add (and they're all minus):
1/. Can't program the remote to control your TV???
2/. If you watch a film till half way, through then play something else (for the kids lets say). When you come back to the film, it's forgotten where you are??? Only remembers where you were for one thing. Tried play to resume, does not work.
3/. Can't set genre's (almost as useful as directories) on divx uploads. e.g. kids/adults.
4/. I get 2 different audios mixed together when the DVDR is on. This is due to my Sony TV outputting it's tuner audio down the scart to the DVDR. The DVDR then mixes this in with whathever it's doing (play, scart loop through etc) and hey presto 2 different audios. Fixed with a one way wired scart lead.
5/. Child lock. On Sky+ you lock a few things you don't want the kids to watch. On Philips, you turn child lock functionality on and EVERYTHING is locked (needs pin). Every recording, every DVD you insert.
6/. When you're copying from DVD to hard drive it takes AGES (10+ mins). During that time you cannot watch live TV either from it's tuner or via scart (SKY+).

I'm seriously thinking of taking it back to comet for the no quibble money back guarantee.

I've heard this complaint of all the later Philips machines, will Philips ever learn? My old HDRW720 resumes if you press 'PLAY', and starts from the beginning if you press 'OK'. Where did it all go wrong?


It's faster than my HDRW720, that takes 25-30mins for a full disc! You can watch live TV though during the process...

Update on DVDR3597:


Have to half apologize to Philips. It will resume on RECORDED content if you press play instead of OK(on multiple titles). Will not work with uploaded DivX content. Always plays from the start. Aghh!

7/. As RKL stated: Takes 30 odd seconds to start up in ECO mode (during which time you can't even use the scart loop through, you have to watch the Philips logo in composite video). With ECO mode off, start up is no problem, but how many watts is it using all night and is the HDD constantly spinning???

8/. Manual doesn't say anything about format for data DVDs. In fact you can use ISO (no one file bigger than 2G) or UDF (3G+ files OK).

9/. Fast forward on DivX is way too fast. x4 gets through a 4 minute movie in 3 seconds (x64). Or maybe only x64 is supported?? I'm guessing there's no index marks as rkl says, but I'm using virtualdub to make the files, they're not illegal downloads.

Haven't tried USB yet.

OK, had the recorder for a few weeks now and have some more points about it:

* DivX picture search FF and REW, as another poster noted, is definitely not 2X, 4X and 8X like the screen claims - it's more like 8X, 64X and 256X !!

* HDMI negotiation between the recorder and my Samsung 19" LCD seems to be "broken" in various places in the UI. It seems that jumping between live video and the recorder UI (e.g. simply stopping playing a recording) often blanks the screen for 5-10 seconds (note that SCART connection never did this) and even returns to the UI with half a second of green-coloured UI before flicking back to full colour! Whether it's a bad HDMI cable or a recorder hardwire/firrmware fault, I don't know.

* I miss a "select all" option (e.g. one of the colour buttons on the remote would have been useful) for quick copying or deleting of a large number of files between media (e.g. USB to HDD). I have to "SELECT" each one at a time painfully and then do the operation.

* A 250GB FAT32-formatted USB external drive is only recognised as something like 100GB (roughly) in the "USB Info" screen. No idea what would happen if I filled it with, say, 200GB of files...

* Unless you go into standby mode or choose "Reset TSB" (Time Slip Buffer), you can't delete a recording until 6 hours after the recording ends. Frustrating if you watch it earlier than that and want to delete it so you don't accidentally play it again.

* There is no indication of total playing time for an individual DivX file when browsing the list of files from USB/HDD. The total size of the file is displayed, but the lack of total playing time indication is a major omission.

* When playing back a DivX file, there appears to be no way to display the current playback position (HH:MM:SS) on the TV screen (e.g. pressing Info on the remote should really show it, but it doesn't). Strangely, the playback position *is* shown on the LED display on the front of the recorder, but not onscreen (the latter would generally easier to read for most people).

I think the most annoying problem to date is that HDMI screen blanking - has anyone else seen that? BTW, there are actually Philips DVD recorder-only models with Freeview tuners in them such as the DVDR5500/05 although their Website claims "enjoy Freeview in 1080i HD quality", which sounds naughty to me (is Freeview doing any HD broadcasts yet and when they do, will that Freeview tuner work with them anyway?).

Predictably, Laskys have dropped the price of this Philips recorder from 185 to 165 quid (see link in my original posting), which may tip the decision for some readers. I suspect my HDMI blanking issues are to do with the Philips recorder rather than the Samsung set (because the HDMI picture is fine when watching TV/recordings and fine when fully in the UI, but jumping between the two [or mixing the two via the thumbnail video preview in the UI] causes HDMI blanking). I suspect some firmware issue with HDMI negotiation myself.

What still bewilders me is that no-one out there wants to produce a sub-200 pounds DVD/HDD recorder that can record both analogue input (SCART IN) and digital input (built-in Freeview). I know people go on about needing MPEG encoding/decoding hardware, but there are several such single-chip solutions out there than can only add a few pounds at most to the manufacturing cost. Actually, I'd like to see something that can also record HDMI IN - after all, in a few year's time, HD Freeview will be with us and to be able to attach an external HD Freeview box that has HDMI OUT would be great...

Can any DVDR3797H owners confirm for certain whether their model actually has Guideplus? There was talk earlier in the thread of this model spinning up the HDD when looking for Guideplus data.

All of the pictures of the model, including those on the Philips website, clearly show the Guideplus logo on the front panels. Also, according to the Gemstar Guidplus website, the models do have Guideplus...

http://www.europe.guideplus.com/En/o...ce/models.html

However, I know someone who has just purchased one from Laskys and he says his does not have Guideplus... I also notice that most of the descriptions around the 'net now say Videoplus.

I'm confused...

Having just checked the Philips website, I see that they have recently changed these pictures. The new pictures no longer have the Guideplus logo, so it's not looking good.

I understand they are looking at some way of transmitting the data via DTT, they already transmit the data via Eurosport on Astra 2 for digital sat.

I can't say Guideplus gives me any problems, but I can appreciate that the setting up required is not ideal situation for some.

I bought a Philips DVDR3597H/05 as a companion to my Philips 32" LCD TV (which I am very impressed with). Everything worked fine from the HDD and DVD with a very sharp picture from the DVD.

However when taking a feed via the tuner refused it to detect channel 5 and BBC 1 from my NTL box (which the TV managed to do with no problem) and worse still the analogue TV picture was noticeably far grainier than from using the feed straight from the NTL Box.

Having paid £179 I felt I ought to at least to get a half decent picture via this device so I decided to return the box Comet for a refund. They certainly didn't seem to a have no quibble guarantee as mentioned by Dave28i - they told me that I couldn't have a refund and would have to go back to Philips (despite having bought the device only the day before) until I pointed out that under UK consumer law my contract was with Comet and not Philips. I'll certainly think twice about using Comet again