Sony RDR-GX7 DVD Recorder

I bought my GX7 a few days ago from a local discount store in the UK for #400... here are my thoughts to date;

The machine has excellent build quality and looks good with its' Aluminium front panel. It is a very deep unit (check your available space!) and quite weighty too. Setup is simple for the basics, asking you all the relevant questions and pulling in all analogue stations. It records DVD-R, -RW & RW, though has limitations for the latter in editing and cannot record in 16:9. Initially I was disappointed with DVD playback, my thoughts harking back to another epinions reviewers' words of quality being that of a cheap player. This was remedied by looking in "tool" menu and video settings, then setting all the noise reduction features to "off" - this recovered the picture quality from average to excellent - easily bettering my Panasonic DVD player.

The remote is quite large, but manageable once you get used to it. All controls for operation of DVD player and TV (you can enter the appropriate code to operate most major brands of TV) fall easily to hand, the exception being the rocker control for scanning forward/backwards. On this feature, I disagree with another epinions words that scanning is too slow, I found on speed 3 in either direction, scanning is as fast as you would want to go and still see what is going on.

Recording controls are hidden behind a sliding cover on the lower half of the remote, oddly there are rec, rec pause & rec stop controls. Given the it takes a few seconds to start recording, I have found using "rec pause" then pressing "rec" at the precise moment you require recording to start.

I have done recordings in all of the 6 speeds available from built in Analogue tuner, digibox & archived from video camera. Comments as follows;

HQ - gives 1 hour per disc, copies indistinguishable from original material. Excellent for cherished camcorder recordings.
HSP - gives 1.5 hours per disc, very slightly reduced quality from original but you need to compare directly to see it! Good for general camcorder archiving or live digital footage.
SP - gives 2 hours per disc, minor but noticeable reduction in quality being slightly softer than source, bot no digital artefacts visible. Still good enough to archive camcorder footage or old VCR tapes. Matches VHS SP quality.
LP - gives 3 hours per disc, noticeable quality reduction being obviously softer and losing detail, however still no digital artefacts. Fine for movies needing 3 hours as you don't notice softening after a few minutes. Somewhere between SP and LP on VHS.
EP - gives 4 hours per disc, further reduction on quality with very soft picture and some artefacts present. Somewhere between EP and LP on VHS.
SLP - gives 6 hours per disc, quality sub VCR LP - forget it unless you are desperate for recording space, poor results and sub VHS even on EP.

On disc loading, i agree with others' words that it takes a good while to load commercial DVD's but an age to load up home made discs - don't switch on 10 seconds before you need to record! Also takes a long time to write data to disc when you press record stop during which time you cannot perform any other operations, even switch back to TV!The machine also has video plus which works fine when I have used it.

Having tried the various formats for recording (VR & video)I have found video mode on R/W discs to be frustratingly limited. You delete a recording but it does not free up space for recording! you have to re-format for that! VR format does free up space, but you cannot play the discs n other mainstream DVD players! The disc/title naming tool is acceptable and allows reasonably fast titling. For the original asking price of some 850 UKP it was overpriced, ad for the 400 UKP I paid I now think it is maybe still a little basic. That said, it can produce excellent recordings in HQ and HSP modes, and very good in SP, if you can live with the basic editing and slow responses.

BOTTOM LINE

WHAT IT IS - An excellent machine for strait archiving of camcorder footage & a good DVD player. Passable as an occoasional TV recorder.

WHAT IT IS NOT - A VCR replacement. SLP mode is very poor, sub VHS LP and hard to watch, anything less than LP is sub my Panasonic VHS recorder.

Wait for the technology to improve some, until then either stick with VHS or find a good S-VHS deck. I returned my GX7 and got a refund.