- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 17 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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24 out of 26 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"important feature missing!"
Pros: easy to use, good recordings
Cons: you cannot pause during recording!!
Summary: I keep reading all these glowing reviews for this DVD Recorder, but there is a vital feature that is totally lacking & I'm in shock on one seems to have noticed it. One of the most basic ******** of any recorder, be it DVD or VCR, is to be able to dub & edit your recordings. Well, this machine is unable to PAUSE in the RECORD mode. In other words, try recording a TV show & editing out commercials, or try dubbing over your favorite home movies from VHS & only keeping certain parts. You can't. When in RECORD mode, if you hit PAUSE on ANY OTHER machine in the world, it temporarily stops the recording until you hit PAUSE again. Critical for proper editing, cutting out commercials, etc. On this Sony RDR GX-330, you get a message saying "operation prohibited while recording". You have to finish recording the whole thing & then hit REC STOP. You get commercials & all. And you can't just hit REC STOP at each commercial & then hit REC when your show starts again, because whenever you hit STOP you make a new title, like on any DVD recorder.
I cannot imagine how no one else has noticed this major flaw...the guys at Best Buy and Curcuit City were totally stunned & are going to warn everyone who buys one that it cannot be used to edit, only to do straight, uninterrupted recording. Why Sony thought it was a good idea to design this machine like this beyond me. I've had over 20 DVD recorders in my time & this is the only one I've ever seen that will not allow you to PAUSE in the REC mode. Heck, any $30 VCR can do that!
A fatal flaw as far as I'm concerned.
- 9 replies to this review
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There is a very easy fix to the missing feature of pausing while recording. If you have a Harmony remote program a button to do the record pause function. If you don't have a Harmony remote, buy one because it is very easy to do and having it makes this DVD recorder almost perfect.
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Japfief stated that Best Buy would warn buyers of this flaw. They did not warn me. I almost bought one today but backed out becuase the fact that they had 5 of them on the shelf that were discounted as "open box" (returned items. I even asked a Best Buy techie an unrelated question about the unit and he made no mention at all of the flaw that you cannot pause during recording...and this should surprise me!
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Japfeif indicated that Best Buy would warn customers of this horrible flaw. They are NOT. I almost bought one today but got scared because there were four or five of them on the shelf discounted as "open box"...meaning these units had been bought and then returned for a refund.I even asked one of Best Buy's tech guys a question about the unit and he made no mention of not being able to pause when recording....and this should surprise me?
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japfeif's comments about the "no pause function" saved me a hundred bucks. I was about to buy the 330, but not being able to pause while recording is a deal-breaker.
Plus, I really wouldn't enjoy buying from a company that would be dumb enough to produce a product without including such a vital, and common, function.
Why would I call them "dumb"? Because any fool knows that if I'm hitting "pause" while recording, I'm obviously WATCHING the commercial the first time around. Forcing me to leave it on the recorded version is ridiculous. -
You are stars in my book for slamming Sony. I have the PREVIOUS MODEL 315, which by the way, DOES HAVE THE PAUSE FEATURE, which means that the other comments were correct in that Sony decided to take out the Pause feature. That truly does suck on their part, that they chose commercial over utilitarian thinking in design. It (and your model 330s) are also missing ANOTHER FEATURE TOO. Neither model has RANDOM PLAYBACK of mp3s. Thus, if you have a DVD filled with 100s of songs, you must listen to them in the same order every single time and scroll through 100s to get to another song. (I had to take out artist names just to have some semblance of randomness.) The sad thing is that before they released your model 330, I complained and complained up the hierarchy within Sony, my point being, how could this even make it on the market, it's only a function of the mp3 software within the firmware, something that Sony already has for their other devices, and thus, must have been a conscious choice. They merely thanked me for my comments, refused to refund, and also advised me that they would not make the firmware upgrade in the next (330) model. It's !!unbelievable!! to me, and I wished that I listened to my sales advisor at the store who told me that Sony is only a name that the average consumer is drawn to, and to not buy Sony if I want quality. Another thing, within the 2nd use, the tray started squeaking when opening and closing. I decided to just live with it, as I have heard and read all the horror stories about shipping your products back to Sony for repair (e.g., it takes forever, they don?t always get it right the first time, etc.). People ? DO NOT BUY SONY PRODUCTS IF YOU WANT TRUE QUALITY. I have friends who were thankful for my experience as they also did not buy Sony anymore. Their only good product on the market is the Playstation. Force Sony to listen to CONSUMER concerns, or else Sony will continue making money the way they do (i.e., mass corporation who does not truly care about the consumers they serve) in our market based economy. Consumers, like voters, need to stand up and force change through the word (and dollar) that they have.
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Like most of the other big electronics manufacturers, Sony is in bed with the music/movie/television industry; not to mention they have studios of their own. They dont want you skipping comercials because they can make more money asuring their advertisers that you will be watching their commercials. Not to mention they won't be sued by the RIAA or MPAA. Another example of how companies today put business interests before their customers' interests--freakin disgusting!! I would never buy this product & I suggest you don't either.
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Use the remote for the RDR GX300 (RMT205A) the record pause button works on the RDRGX330.
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Wow. I bought the RDR-GX330 last night and tried to pause while recording--a "no-brainer" feature if ever there was one. Not on this model, I guess. Back to Best Buy.
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First of all, you are right - it is incomprehensible that Sony "forgot" the REC PAUSE button. On the other hand, I'm not really missing it that much, at least not for TV recordings. Usually, I wouldn't sit next to the recorder when recording from TV, and certainly would miss to stop and restart the recording at the correct points for omitting those commercials. Rather than that, I'm recording straight and use the A-B erase later to cut out any commercials or show previews. This works exactly by the frame, thus much more precisely than one could do it during the recording itself. The drawback of this approach is obviously that you have to account for 3-4 hours of recording time even if only 2-3 hours of movie are left after the editing. The advantage is that the Sony can also record and edit on DVD-R media in VR mode, thus also for those movies that are supposed to go into the archive (unless you need DVD-Video compatibility).
