Sony RDRDC505B 500GB Digital HDD Recorder with Integrated Digital Tuner

D. Tigue

at 7:30 pm

I think its important to say that I have been a big fan of sony products for many years now, in fact almost all my electronics from TV’s to cameras, hdd camcorders and even mobile phones are all made by sony. I absolutely swear by Sony products but this recorder has simply left me swearing.

Firstly, most HDD recorders on the market have twin tuners built in; that way you can record 2 channels at once and still watch another channel on the TV. In their infinate wisdom though Sony have opted for just the one!!

Secondly, this machine is so unresponsive; you press a button on the remote control and then wait and wait and wait for the recorder to respond. I’m not talking about TV guide screens uploading or anything like that either, simply scrolling through the guide from one channel to another takes a second or two. In fact, what you often end up doing is doubting whether you pressed the button at all and end up pressing it again and again and again. Then when the recorder finally catches up, you’ve gone right passed the channel/option you selected. Frustrating to say the very least!

Thirdly, when you playback programmes recorded on the HDD, every so often it jumps forward a second or two. When I first noticed this I rewound the recording just to see if it was a playback glitch. Nope it was a glitch in the recording and kept jumping forward at the same point again and again and again. I then presumed that maybe there was some interference in TV reception whilst the programme was recording, so tested it by recording a programme, whilst simulteaniously watching it. There was absolutely no interference on the live broadcast, but when played back from the HDD there were glitches all over the place. This was extremely anoying.

Lastly, and this one really takes the biscuit, when you series link a programme it does exactly as its supposed to and scans forward to find repeat occurences in the schedule. It then automatically selects them to record. Even better still, if you series link say Shameless on channel 4 it will ingore the same episode on channel 4+1hr as its exactly the same. Pretty clever stuff in comparison to some of the lower end HDD recorders on the market. However, unless you manually access your recordings and lock them prior to the next episode in the series showing, the next episode in the series will be recorded straight over the top of the previous one, whether it has been watched or not. Imagine going away on holiday for a week, you may think you could simply catch up with your precious weeks supply of Eastenders by series linking it, but no, no, no! Upon your return, the only episode you’d find on the HDD recorder would be the last episode shown. How dumb is that Sony??

In summary this machine is absolutely awful! Even if like me, you’re a massive fan of sony products, you should still steer well clear of this and all of the other capacity sony recorders in the range. Sony you should be ashamed of yourselves!!!
Rating: 1 / 5