By Padusi

phillips hdmi dvd recorder

What’s great about the Philips HDMI 1080i DVD Recorder is that, first of all, it has an HDMI output. And when many brands switched to the cheaper LED outside display, the Philips HDMI 1080i DVD Recorder uses a vacuum fluorescent display.

With the Philips HDMI 1080i DVD Recorder, you can switch between analog or digital with a button unlike others where changing channels involves going through both analog and digital together.

There are two types of captioning with this model, the internal one and one that gets displayed via the TV. It won’t capture the digital captions but will the analog. In other words, you will see two sets of captions if you set both the recorder and TV on captions. Be sure to turn one of them off. The recorder won’t record internal captions via digital recording. However, if you set the TV on cc, you can still see the “normal” closed captioning after making a digital TV recording.

As opposed to other cheaper brands, the Philips HDMI 1080i DVD Recorder plays any homemade recordings without hiccups.

What’s not so great is that it doesn’t record widescreen. If you set the settings to widescreen, it records with the sides mashed together in 4×3. If you set it to 4×3, you will record with the black bands top and bottom. If you record pan&scan, it will record pan&scan and you will lose the right and left sides.

Toshiba DR560 1080p Up-Converting DVD Recorder with Built-In Tuner

toshiba hdmi dvd recorder

The Toshiba’s DR560 is the answer to those looking for an affordable and dependable DVD up-converter and recorder. It’s a quality machine as well as affordable. With only an HDMI cable hook-up, the unit will automatically select the correct mode, saving you any trouble trying to decipher the manual or find the proper buttons on the remote. The problem is, these simple cables can be quite expensive at most national electronics stores. So, your best choice should be in the discount retailers.

The downside of this unit is that the remote doesn’t have the ability to control the TV nor does it come with backlit buttons, which is a nice feature when you’re watching a movie with all the lights out. The setup is quite simple and, as stated earlier, if you use the HDMI input, which is recommended, it is automatic.

The quality and ability of the Toshiba DR560 to up-convert DVDs is fair. For instance, to render a 1080p image from 720p or lower images, though if you expect 1080p quality from these older formats, you’ll be a bit disappointed. Technically, these up-converters take the recorded image and make calculations in order to fill gaps in the image on your screen. (1080p TVs have more pixels to fill, thus the calculations and conversions). But for the money, the Toshiba DR560 does an excellent job.

Now that many TV stations begin to switch off their analog signals, the Toshiba DR560 can be used as a high definition tuner for older TVs. This unit’s best feature, though, is the ability to take analog home video and transfer it to digital, high-quality images on DVD with no editing. The Toshiba DR560 will serve your up-converting and recording needs as well as any DVD recorder on the market.