Good on paper

Well this was the third ATSC capable DVD recorder I tried and it looked like the most promising one by the specifications, but as usual Samsung delivered only half way.

The other two recorders I tried (with ATSC tuners that is) were the LG DR787T and the Philips DVDR3505. As I go I will be making some references and comparisons with those.

Lately I've been a sucker for Samsung designs so I was very excited when this model came out at Walmart. It was a little more expensive than the other two, but also had a few extra bells that made it worth it on paper. I have to say that I was imediately disapointed by the design this time, I prefer the two town black with silver look of the previous generation models. This one also looks oddly disproportionate to me and the really bright blue light around the power button did bother me. To cap the initial disapointment, the first unit I bought was completely broken, not just not functioning, but physically the front end with the slot and all the buttons was pulled away from the main body. I had to go back to exchange to the only Walmart in my area that had them in stock, naturally the one that was farthest away from me.

The second one was physically fine, so it was time to check it out. Initial set up was typical - auto clock worked great and quick, channel scan was fast on analog chanels and extremely slow on digital, especially with digital cable channels. I do like the software of the Samsung models, it is my favorite of all brands I've ever tried.

Here is what this recorder offers more than the Philips and the LG:

1. Most importantly true Dolby Digital 5.1 sound from the digital stations. This feature alone was enough for me to justify the higher price. Sound was indeed excellent, as long as you don't expect to be able to record the 5.1 soundtrack on a DVD - it will NOT record it, instead it down-mixes it to DD 2.0 just as any other recorder.

2. Electronic Program Guide - neither of the other brands I tried had that, both the Philips and the LG would only show the name of the current program - the LG would only show the name, the Philips showed also a brief description. The Samsung had a real program guide with a neat little table that shows all available channels and upcoming schedules as long as the stations transmits the inofrmation of course. There is also an option to easily schedule a recording from the EPG by selecting it from the table.

This all sounds awesome, BUT! The EPG was a huge disapointment. The limitations were so sever that they made the EPG practically useless. First of all it only works with over the air digital stations, absolutely no cable info of any kind. Seond, possibly worst, you have to first tune into the station before it will receive the schedules, that means that to see a complete listing you have to first tune into each and every one of the available stations. Third - the information was only available for about 6 hours ahead. And fourth - I could not get the timer schedule from the EPG to work - it would always give me some error between the time of the program with the clock of the unit.

As I said - the EPG on this Samsung is useless.

The other features that I thought were an advantage are harder to explain and less likely to matter to many people. It was rather the combination of different things that sounded good. For instance the Philips recorder stayed very cool, but took 5 to 7 seconds to change digital channels, the LG changed channels instantly, but lacked a fan and got much hotter. The Samsung also seemed to have a separate selection for the the type of antenna - Cable or OTA, which is very important to me because I change the two a lot, but it turned out that it loses the line up from one or the other once you change the input type so you always end up having to re-scan.

Oddly, this model would only support the -R/WR formats and RAM, but without the advanced features of RAM discs like chase play or time shift.

There were two more huge problems that pretty much sealed the return. Something I had never seen happen - when the recorder loses signal on a digital channel it will not tune the channel even after the signal comes back, it only received the sound, but the picture showed "weak or scrambled signal", the way to fix that was to change to another channel and change back. This would be impossible to do on a timer recording and you could end up with hours of recordings with just sound.

The other thing is the pan and scan handling - it does not work. 4:3 programs appears with black bars on all sides on 4:3 TVs without a way to zoom on the image. This gets real old real quick.

A few other minor notes - the unit is much larger and heavier than previous Samsung models - in my book that was one of their biggest advantages, which is now lost. The remote control is the same as before, not the best, not the worst that is, but at least it had a good range and didn't need to be pointed directly. The front display shows the clock in tuner or stand by mode, during disc playback it shows the elapsed time, but the on screen display shows the clock, the date, as well as the elapsed and the total time of the title - again very nice menu system.

Recording modes maxed out at 8 - you have to select manually the longest mode either 6 or 8 hours, but both are not available at the same time. There is also a flex time mode. Recordings looked as good as the original in the highest two modes, and still acceptable on the lower. As I already said the sound is only DD 2.0, and 16:9 programs are not recorded with the proper anamorphic flag. Again, timer recording should be possible through the EPG, but it never worked, and the only option remained manually entering all schedule fields.

Almost forgot something very important - as every other ATSC recorder today, this one will not display true HDTV resolution even over its HDMI out. It first down converts everything to 480 and then if selected up-converts over HDMI, which results in loss of quality.

The inputs/outputs were fairly good, with all outs - from coax to HDMI, but there was only one S-video in on the back, none on the front, and of course no component video in. There are no USB or memory card slots either.

At the end the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound from digital channels was not enough for me to counter all the crazy problems with this recorder and I ended up returning it and finally settling on the LG. I'd advise anyone else to skip the DVD-AR650 too.