- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 11 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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6 out of 6 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"It does Everything I need very well"
Pros: Dubbing, Importing and outputting Video for editing
Cons: HD resolution, remote, No DL burner
Summary: OK, I've had this system for 3 months now. I have set it up with HD signals coming in directly, looping through the TV, and from the cable box. As the article confirms, the Phillips tuner does not do full resolution HD. Other than having letterbox, there is no advantage having HD coming into the Phillips directly, because the output to the HDTV will be terrible. I have a splitter at the wall jack, one going to DTV in for pure HD (fantastic picture) and the other goes into the comcast box, which then goes to the Phillips, and then to the HDMI out to HDMI in on the HDTV.
Anyways, that's my setup, so now I can explain what I can do with this box that saves me hundreds of hours...
Other than recording tv shows, I can record old VHS, Mini-DV, Quicktime, On Demand movies onto the hard drive and export them to my Canon HD videocamera, and then edit them in Final Cut Pro or IMovie8. Phillips has inputs in the front panel for USB, and Video camera imports...Anything can be recorded to the Hard Drive, dubbed to the DVD burner, or exported back to a Video Camera for editing. Phillips also allows you to do minimal editing to videos on the 160 GB hard drive. I import/save/record everything in HQ mode, burn it off on DVD or Mini-DV, then erase the hard drive...then repeat the process.
When dubbing VHS, the quality is exactly the same, no loss of resolution. TV programming looks exactly like the orignial broadcast. Mini-DV tapes imported can be a little "soft", but still very nice visually.
The remote sucks for the most part, but the fast forward "commercial skip" is great. Also, when you fast forward, no matter the speed, you can see all the images, and when you hit "play", it stops immediately (no delay) and starts playing at that exact spot.
I can import FOUR-6 hour VHS tapes in HQ mode onto the hard drive, and edit them, export them, or burn them on the DVD. Later in Imovie I can edit out the footage not needed and save them in IDVD.
Does this do High Definition? NO, not gonna happen...
Does it help you upgrade your "old tapes" and record movies, programs, etc? OH YES.
