Sony RDR-GXD455

Got as an extended warranty replacement for my old gx300, which a flawless performer 'til it died after two years. "Service Net", Crutchfield's warranty provider, sent this to me. My major gripe about the unit besides the amazing cheapness of construction, was that you can't "pause-record" to cue up a recording. It starts to record "a few seconds" after pushing record button. It stops recording "a few seconds" after hitting stop. This makes it completely useless for editing. You don't know exactly when it will start and stop when dubbing. Terrible. Has any recorder of the last 30 years (audio cassette, vhs, or dvd) NOT had this feature? This one doesn't. I called Crutchfield, who said to call Service Net, who said to call Sony. I told them about the imprecise controls, and they said "that's how it's supposed to work". I told them that aside from that fatal flaw, the one recording I made onto a +RW disc would then not play in my one-year-old Sony dvd player that plays anything. I finally had to erase it. The next recording did not work, either. They said they couldn't do anything for me. "Sorry!" So Crutchfield sold the junk, didn't back it up (despite the phone line recording talking about their stellar service), got snotty, handed me off to Service Net, who said their only responsibility was replacing the first recorder, and then the kiss-off from Sony. After 25 years of buying Sony products. Bottom line: this two-day old piece of junk is in my trash can in the garage! Thanks Crutchfield/Service Net/Sony!

The only programs I want to record for multiple viewing are occasional sporting events and movies.

If you are interested in recording movies, don't buy this Sony RDR-GXD455 unit. Every time I tried to record a movie, I would get an error message indicating that copy-protected movies cannot be recorded, which seems to be all of them.

I replaced this unit with a comparable Toshiba DVD recorder, which records everything. Other than that major issue, this unit performs well.