Philips R+W my two bob
grouchooo
covered so accept my apologies in advance.
purchased a philips 980 last year, the main reason was the price - it
dropped from £900 to £500 so i THOUGHT a bargain was to be had.
apart from the price i like many of you no doubt have a projector and love
all the crappy sci fi that is on sky but a vhs taped copy on a six foot
screen is crap - ergo the philips.
initially it was brilliant ,on hq mode the picture on the projector was
excellent. Everything was fine untill i needed to buy new media. After all
Buffy , Angel , Smallville , Andromeda , Enterprise wouldn't fit on one
Philips R+W so i bought a couple of maxell still no probs.
infinity no probs , memorex depended what day it was if they would work or
not.
then i thought DVD+R - no chance . Ten tea coasters later and an argument
with the guy at bowlers telling him his discs are crap i gave up.
Never mind still good for recording off telly - spoke to soon!!!
My six month old shiny player is shagged. ( shagged = won't play anything )
error messages as soon as the disc hits the player. rang Philips as they
made it they must know what the problem is as they must have encountered it
before , but no mine is the first problem they have heard of on this
player, but i could try resetting the machine this may help.
tried the reset now my player doesn't work at all - panic ring philips back
, sorry gave you wrong info, try this.
Yippee my player works.
Tape friends ( the wife not me i love crappy sci fi ). Tellys crap - no
problem will watch friends. Yeah ok.
" READING DISC " " EMPTY DISC ". i saw it record i saw all the lights flash
and heard the disc spin up.
Ring Philips again - no problem sir please contact our service agent and
someone will come and have a look at the player - here is the number.
Ring service agent - sorry can't fix dvd recorders Philips won't give us
access to all the information we require you will have to take it back to
the retailer.
rang retailer ( Comet - please no laughter ) sorry can't repair dvd
recorders philips won't give us the information we require it will have to
back to Belgium.
My friend bought the same recorder and is having exactly the same problems,
so i rang philips again and asked them if i could expect some sort of
payment for beta testing their product , they apologise but this isn't a
common fault.
Also own a Pioneer A04 for the pc it has never missed a beat and will read
and write to a jam butty , so i know where my money is going next time
Thank you for listening
roland
I thought it was posted on here that the first Philips recorders were
very buggy, so you may have one of those.
IMHO you should take it back to Comet and not accept any of their
excuses, you purchased it from them so its up to them to sort out the
problems, or organise a Philips engineer to look at it.
PC burners are stable because they are just a drive, more electronical
wizardry inside the case means more that can go wrong
Roland
Paul
Since 12th December I have had a Philips DVDR 1000 MkII on order from
Techtronics.com with whom I have had brilliant service in the past. However
matters seem to been delayed and at the time of writing no one at the
Company can give me an eta. Since ordering the number of complaints about
this sort of thing have seemed to me at least to have rocketed. You only
have to take a gander at DVDplusRW.org and look at the number of "Disc
Error" problems posted by forum members. There is a voting system of sorts
regarding whether owners of all models have had problems or not. Without
wishing to get into the arguments of -R/RW and +R/RW, the nature of these
Forums (in that only people with problems tend to use them) or firmware
issues - there has been an issue with the latest version so people have
learnt how to "downgrade" to their previous version - there is an extremely
high and worrying trend starting to emerge. Philips seem to be at sixes and
sevens with this and don't appear to have trained their customer service
staff well with these problems. It is absolutely ridiculous for Philips for
example to say they have had no knowledge of similar problems, indeed this
smacks of a cover up. It is interesting to note that Philips owners tended
to be reletively pleased up to around November last year since when,
coinciding with the release of cheaper models (presumably in time for
Christmas), the quality of Philips DVDR's in terms of reading discs (both
+R's and +RW's), has plumeted. One particular worrying and emerging problem
is the inability of the DVDR's to read manufactured DVD's - in particular
DVD 9's (dual-layer discs). Apparently the type of error noted by new
owners is that their machines give no trouble for around 3/4 months,
following which they freeze regularly and report disc errors after around
15/30 mins use.
These are only my own feelings from what I have read and still reading - I
have no axe to grind about any machines of whatever format, but I am now on
the one hand worried about ordering the top of the range Philips DVDR with
these emerging problems but on the other, maybe, just maybe, Techtronics are
waiting for these problems to be rectified by Philips before aquiring any
more units to on sell to their customers. I will be following this up with
Techtronics next week to ascertain the difficulties with my order, prior to
considering a cancellation.
I would appreciate a response from Jorg here, who runs the above forum
without a biased opinion as anyone with basic maths can see that the
response rate from owners with difficulties, is high - anything from 7% to
20% of voters for the popular models. Interesting though is the omission of
the DVDR 1000 MkII - why is this? only the MkI appears.
Are the Philips DVDR's fit for purpose?
PAUL
"grouchooo" <gro...@zeppo.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b0b8ji$kf1$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
Philip
"Paul" <ro...@eastayton.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b0bjq4$kil$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Hi
>
> Since 12th December I have had a Philips DVDR 1000 MkII on order from
> Techtronics.com with whom I have had brilliant service in the past.
However
> matters seem to been delayed and at the time of writing no one at the
> Company can give me an eta. Since ordering the number of complaints about
> this sort of thing have seemed to me at least to have rocketed. You only
> have to take a gander at DVDplusRW.org and look at the number of "Disc
> Error" problems posted by forum members. There is a voting system of
sorts
> regarding whether owners of all models have had problems or not. Without
> wishing to get into the arguments of -R/RW and +R/RW, the nature of these
> Forums (in that only people with problems tend to use them) or firmware
> issues
Hi
I have made just the same points in the past regarding issues surrounding
the Philips machines. Also I posted a link here to a thread on dvdplusrw
with a poll on how Philips customer support was rated, over 80% of people
rated it poor, the poll got deleted!! In addition we know dvdplusrw.org
lies about the technical capabilities of the format in comparing it with
DVD-RW. The +RW product has been mis-sold from the beginning for which
Philips should take responsibility, in addition what is sold gives many
problems for a higher than expect number of users. Do we really want +RW to
be all we can buy if reliability and feature set are not improved? Jorg was
responsible for the censorship of the mentioned thread so I hardly expect
anything radical from him or anything more than just quoting Philips
marking, verbatim. He would rather curl up and die rather than admit
Philips +RW recorders were having serious problems.
> - there has been an issue with the latest version so people have
> learnt how to "downgrade" to their previous version - there is an
extremely
> high and worrying trend starting to emerge
For a consumer product issuing firmware updates is not a good precedent and
should not be accepted by users. What next, having to wait for a firmware
update disc before my Philips Microwave will cook a jacket potato without a
"Unknown food stuff" error message! :-) We have had a firmware update
for the Pioneer 7000, but this was not a list of bug fixes or a complete
re-work of the software but targeted at a specific issue, which due to the
fix and up-front honesty of the problem by Pioneer 99.999% of owners never
had to suffer. Again Pioneer owned up to this and had clear instructions on
what to and where to get the firmware, and we even got a free DVD-RW disc
out of it, still would have better not to have been needed but no hard done.
Philips on the other hand seem to routinely deny their firmware exists, or
do not know of the version number or send out the wrong one, leaving users
to have to download "unofficial" upgrades. Most new Philips firmware
introduces more problems than they fix. Something is very wrong here.
Philips are a company having very tough financial problems at the moment,
cutting staff and outsourcing left-right and centre, so I doubt
this scenario will improve, and is probably the reason it exists now.
> Philips seem to be at sixes and
> sevens with this and don't appear to have trained their customer service
> staff well with these problems. It is absolutely ridiculous for Philips
for
> example to say they have had no knowledge of similar problems, indeed this
> smacks of a cover up.
Yes it does, however I suspect most of Philips "first-line" support people
are
outsourced and just read standard responses from a script, and have little
involvement with any specific problem to know the trend of issues, so are
probably being honest when they do not know of this list of problems others
have reported. They will most likely deal with tech support calls ranging
from DVD-Recorders to money stuck in parking meters all in the same day,
with an hour off for "regional dialect" training every Tuesday!
> These are only my own feelings from what I have read and still reading - I
> have no axe to grind about any machines of whatever format, but I am now
on
> the one hand worried about ordering the top of the range Philips DVDR with
> these emerging problems but on the other, maybe, just maybe, Techtronics
are
> waiting for these problems to be rectified by Philips before aquiring any
> more units to on sell to their customers.
Maybe Techtronics are waiting. More importantly what would their response
be if you had a problem with it in the first 12 months? Will they give a
refund, exchange or repair, or tell you to deal directly with Philips.
Maybe other people have had dealings with them. I have read both good
things and bad things about that company.
> I would appreciate a response from Jorg here, who runs the above forum
> without a biased opinion as anyone with basic maths can see that the
> response rate from owners with difficulties, is high - anything from 7% to
> 20% of voters for the popular models. Interesting though is the omission
of
> the DVDR 1000 MkII - why is this? only the MkI appears.
I suspect the DVDR1000 MkII has little takers. It is more expensive than
the other models and doesn't offer a lot more, if any, in terms of features.
So I
guess by and large the mass sales are with the lower priced models, hence it
is
easier to see the trend of problems.
> Are the Philips DVDR's fit for purpose?
Not if it goes wrong it isn't but that equally applies to anything. However
it is the probability of a product going wrong and the support you will
receive if it does you need to take into account.
Why not wait it out a few months as their will be more choices and from
other manufacturers.
Regards
Philip
Peter
In your recent message you wrote
>I would appreciate a response from Jorg here, who runs the above forum
>without a biased opinion as anyone with basic maths can see that the
>response rate from owners with difficulties, is high - anything from 7% to
>20% of voters for the popular models. Interesting though is the omission of
>the DVDR 1000 MkII - why is this? only the MkI appears.
>
>Are the Philips DVDR's fit for purpose?
Or the Panasonic version?
I just cannot make my mind up which way to go. I have hundreds of VHS
tapes in the loft collecting dust which I would love to transfer to DVD
(not all of them perhaps).
I have looked at doing it on my PC but apart from having to get some
sort of input card, have been put off by the fact (?) that you have to
save the video to your hard drive before you can burn the DVD which
seems to take an age? No burning on the fly? This accurate or otherwise
beliefs have steered me towards looking at getting a standalone unit.
Have you come across an idiots guide to what is required to burn videos
to DVD by any chance?
Regards,
--
Peter Squires
Chimp
Interesting post, it fits broadly in like with what Philip has been saying
about these machines
Given the problems you may want to read up about Techtonics on google
groups, lots of people have had lots of problems with returning goods and/or
getting a refund>
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=techtronics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en
Philip
"Peter" <public_posts@[127.0.0.1]> wrote in message
news:6ejWxfNP...@worldonline.co.uk...
> Hello Paul,
> Or the Panasonic version?
Hi
The Panasonic machine has very few reports of problems, any seen are down to
the use of cheap discs (sub 50p! each).
The Panasonic will make a better quality disc as you have FR mode, so can
dial in the exact recording time you need, so all the space is used to get
the best possible picture. Set-top recorders are quick and easy. I would
consider the Panasonic or new Pioneer models rather than Philips if you have
a large collection of VHS tape. The Philips machines lack time-base
correctors and digital noise reduction and can stop recording when they get
anything other than a perfect signal.
> I just cannot make my mind up which way to go. I have hundreds of VHS
> tapes in the loft collecting dust which I would love to transfer to DVD
> (not all of them perhaps).
>
> I have looked at doing it on my PC but apart from having to get some
> sort of input card, have been put off by the fact (?) that you have to
> save the video to your hard drive before you can burn the DVD which
> seems to take an age? No burning on the fly? This accurate or otherwise
> beliefs have steered me towards looking at getting a standalone unit.
You can record on the fly on a PC. Software like ULead DVD MovieFactory
will take a DV import and encode in real time to either +RW/+R or
DVD-RW/DVD-R. However doing anything on a PC using write-once media gives
you no changes to correct a problem writing direct to disc. However the
software can still compress in real time, so you can burn it straight away
afterwards. The better qualitiy encoding will take longer on a PC. A
set-top recorder has a specialist encoding chip that is designed to do just
that job, so should make better quality captures in real-time than a general
purpose Intel or AMD chip running software. Although with the power of
Intel/AMD chips this probably doesn't hold true so much now. A typical LSI
DVD encoder chip runs at around 100-200Mhz, whereas a PC chip is 2-3GHz now!
The simplest and probably best quality method of capturing is to purchase a
DV camcorder that supports Analogue In and DV out. You need a Firewire card
for input to the computer, any cheap one will do as by that stage it is all
digital. You can also buy stand-alone encoders. see:
http://www.simplydv.co.uk/advc100.html This will capture in real time using
a format that is better quality than DV. You will then need to use some
authoring software to compress down to DVD and create a disc.
> Have you come across an idiots guide to what is required to burn videos
> to DVD by any chance?
There are many guides out there but all targetting different levels. Try
www.vcdhelp.com, or www.doom9.org or
www.ghorne.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/vidtest/dvdr.htm (you'll need your
brightness turned down for this one!) A search on Google will find many
more.
Regards
Philip
Chimp
"Philip" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:b0bm67$240$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
> For a consumer product issuing firmware updates is not a good precedent
and
> should not be accepted by users. What next, having to wait for a firmware
> update disc before my Philips Microwave will cook a jacket potato without
a
> "Unknown food stuff" error message! :-) We have had a firmware update
> for the Pioneer 7000, but this was not a list of bug fixes or a complete
> re-work of the software but targeted at a specific issue, which due to the
> fix and up-front honesty of the problem by Pioneer 99.999% of owners never
> had to suffer. Again Pioneer owned up to this and had clear instructions
on
> what to and where to get the firmware, and we even got a free DVD-RW disc
> out of it, still would have better not to have been needed but no hard
done.
The other thing is that it very smartly cleared up any issue with 4x discs
too, so killing two birds with one stone
Peter
In your recent message you wrote
<snip lots of useful information>
>> Have you come across an idiots guide to what is required to burn videos
>> to DVD by any chance?
>
>There are many guides out there but all targetting different levels. Try
>www.vcdhelp.com, or www.doom9.org or
>www.ghorne.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/vidtest/dvdr.htm (you'll need your
>brightness turned down for this one!) A search on Google will find many
>more.
Thanks for the useful information and links Philip, will continue my
research.
Regards,
--
Peter Squires
JonnyCabŽ
or DVD drive couldn't read.
Neither has my A05.
I've had rock-solid reliability from both drives, which is what I expect
when I see the DVD logo on the front. :)
Dan P.
"JonnyCabŽ" <shut...@localnetnospam.com> wrote in message
news:v2kdubh...@corp.supernews.com...
Funny, my RCA DVD player, with a DVD logo on the front, had to be repaired 3
times and would only play about 50% of the movies without skipping. Yeah
that DVD logo sure guarantees quality!
No, I'd say, the manufacturer is what gives a machine quality...not the
logo.
Dan
Paul
Good points raised by all here although I would like to say how disappointed
I am that Jorg hasn't responded. I have been in touch with Techtronics this
afternoon and they have indicated that my order has gone to "picking" and
that my DVDR 1000 MkII should be received this week. Philip, thank you so
much for the lengthy and helpful response - I have always found Techtronics
excellent and so far so good it seems.
However I will continue to observe the postings in the DVDplusRW.org.forum
and hope that the recent misgivings some peopl have said they are having
with their machines is not rectfiable in the long run.
I too have never had a problem with my Pioneer A03 - but this is different
machinery and can not be compared - not sure why this thread is still going
in this direction?
Cheers all.
Paul
"grouchooo" <gro...@zeppo.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b0b8ji$kf1$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
Paul
Paul
"Paul" <ro...@eastayton.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b0h6kq$65q$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...
Philip
>
> Good points raised by all here although I would like to say how
disappointed
> I am that Jorg hasn't responded. I have been in touch with Techtronics
this
> afternoon and they have indicated that my order has gone to "picking" and
> that my DVDR 1000 MkII should be received this week. Philip, thank you so
> much for the lengthy and helpful response - I have always found
Techtronics
> excellent and so far so good it seems.
>
> However I will continue to observe the postings in the DVDplusRW.org.forum
> and hope that the recent misgivings some peopl have said they are having
> with their machines is not rectfiable in the long run.
>
Enjoy your machine. Despite the more than expected problems posted I am
sure many more people have zero problems than those that have problems.
Have fun.
Regards
Philip
JonnyCabŽ
format manuafacturers are not allowed to use the DVD logo on their drives.
KDH
KDH
"JonnyCabŽ" <shut...@localnetnospam.com> wrote in message
news:v2os71t...@corp.supernews.com...