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(More customer reviews)I used to record shows off the WinTV card in my PC. But every so often, something stop working properly (sound out of sync, filter graph doesn't initialize, screen saver messing up the recording, etc). My wife would be particularly upset if this meant she missed an episode of her favorite series on community cable. So, I figured a dedicated "appliance" would be more stable.
I have an Archos AV420 which can record from TV, but it can only schedule programs in a one-off fashion, which got annoying after a while.
The "Ships in Original Packaging" in the description made me think that it would arrive without an outer Amazon box. But it arrived quickly and the manufacturer's box was inside an Amazon box. However, when I unpacked the product, the clear plastic over the LED display was scratched. This, in spite of the inner box being taped closed with "Coby" tape and a Coby "Quality Assurance" seal. So it doesn't look super-spiffy in my living room.
The remote is not illuminated, so it's hard to make out the tiny labels for the grid of similarly-shaped buttons in low light. Comes with one DVD+RW in the box.
The UI is horribly modal. The "title" button shows the DVD title menu in DVD mode, but the list of saved programs in HDD mode. But if you don't have any programs recorded yet, nothing seems to happen when you press "title". It would have been friendlier to go to the program list screen, even if it were empty.
Similarly, if the unit's in DVD mode, but there's no recordable media in the tray, it'll flash a "No" icon (circle with slash) when you press the record button. It should display a message saying something about putting in recordable media or switching to HDD mode...
If you've had a TiVo or ReplyTV, the primitiveness of the DVD-R1280 will confuse you for a bit. Like a VCR, it can only do scheduled recordings when the unit powered off. If the unit is on when a scheduled recording is coming due, it will display a message so you can turn it "off". But if you just turn off your TV and forget to power off the unit, your programs won't get recorded. That also means that you can neither watch a different show nor the currently recording show from a different time point while recording--something that TiVo and ReplayTV do quite nicely.
Recordings are scheduled like a VCR where you enter the days/times for your shows. No fancy program guide. But no fees either. No support for VCR+.
The unit can write chapter markers at 5, 10, and 15 minute intervals for recorded DVDs. But the chapter skip button doesn't seem to do anything for programs on the HDD.
Although the unit isn't offensively noisy, it does make noise. Not much louder than the ReplayTV. When powered "off" the unit is silent. So this is an advantage in some ways.
Since these kinds of devices will be obsolete in 2009 when Digital TV is forced upon everyone, I'm reluctant to buy a high-end unit. My scheduling needs are simple, so I don't want to pay monthly fees for a program guide to run a TiVo or ReplayTV.
There's a bit of signal noise on some of the community channels which causes distracting artifacts to show up on anything lower than HQ mode. So the 80GB unit is only good for 20 hours of programming for me. If your signal is cleaner, you might be able to use a lower bit rate. There's a format HDD option in the setup screen. So you could easily increase the capacity if you're handy with a screwdriver. (Much less work than upgrading a ReplayTV or TiVo, since that requires copying the Operating System off the old drive onto the new one by hooking the drives to your PC and Linux-based tools off the Internet.)
So the unit works. I don't love it. I don't hate it. If you can spend more, then I'd recommend looking elsewhere. If you just want to spend the minimum, I guess the DVD-R1280 is ok. If the AV420 had better scheduling capability, maybe I wouldn't have bothered with the DVD-R1280 at all.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Coby DVD-R1280 5.1 Channel DVD Recorder with 80 GB HDD & Progressive Scan
5.1 Channel Digital DVD Recorder/Player
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