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 enlarge | Brand: RCA
Category: CE
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries: 2
Batteries Included: Yes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 8
Dimensions (in): 11.2 x 13.6 x 20.1
MPN: DRC8312N
Model: DRC8312N
UPC: 443195002570
EAN: 0443195002570
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| Customer Reviews:
 Terrible! December 10, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I see four reviews on this product. All good, which is why I bought one of these. I hate to be the one to break the bad news, but this unit is JUNK!!!
Oh, yeah, it's impressive WHEN it works! The trick is GETTING it to work! When I plugged it and and hooked it up at first I was very impressed with it. The DVD copys I tried of VHS tapes were flawless an exact! Then I tried to play some MP3 music disks in it. It's really cool how the titles float around in a screensaver kind of mode while the music is playing. Then I put in another music disk.......
THEN the SOB froze up! I tried what the manual suggested about unplugging it and holding the DVD Stop and STANDBY/ON button for three seconds. No dice. It won't work and worse, I can't get my disk out! All I can say is that it is fortunate that it wasn't one of my hard-to-find discs or tapes that got stuck. I would've taken a hammer to the thing and still demanded my money back! I also, since saw bad reviews on epinions. Do yourself a favor and avoid this unit like the plague!
John
 I have a feeling this won't be our last DVD recorder March 28, 2006
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
First, I've not used this to play store-bought DVD's as we have another player for that, so I cannot comment on other reviewer's problems with that. I will say none of the players seem to stand up to heavy use, though. We have all but eschewed modern television and watch our DVD box sets of classic TV shows exclusively, and have long since learned that our player, no matter what brand it is, will pretty much have to be replaced about once a year and with little or no notice. They start sticking and jamming one day, and perhaps the next day or the next week they won't work at all. But that's a subject for another review.
Our objective with this machine was to transfer a MASSIVE video library of classic movies we have collected off of cable TV to discs, primarily for the purpose of saving space. This is the first DVD recording machine that we bought because it was very reasonably priced at Target and we have had good luck with RCA equipment in the past.
Problems? You bet! We've had it less than a month and it's already "bang your head against the wall and scream" time. For starters, of the 6 record speeds available, only 3 are worth your trouble. Once you get to speed 4 (which will put slightly over 4 hours on a disc) you can see pixilation that was not present on the original source, and by speed 6 (about 8.5 hours on a disc) you will transfer a product that is infinitely inferior to the tape you copied and virtually un-watchable. It took us a while to figure this out so we had to start our transfer project over and will not be saving as much space as we anticipated, but at least the DVD is a superior way to preserve the movies, right?
Next comes this machine's extremely finicky qualities. Good Lord! Once we started recording on speed 3 (very good picture quality, particularly when copying video tape, which is of course less than perfect to begin with) we started having "jamming" problems. Often when you start recording a second program on the disc, it "freezes", so you start again, and it freezes again, over and over and over. The only way to unfreeze it is to unplug the damn thing. Sometimes you can get past this freezing issue by recording the second feature at a different speed, or, and this is really bizarre, starting from a different spot on the tape.
And sometimes it will just decide to ruin the disc at any given point for no apparent reason. This is mind-numbingly aggravating when you have spent an entire evening transferring, say, episodes of a TV program, onto the disc one hour at a time, and then when you are finished and you are finalizing the disc, it just ruins it and all your time has been wasted. Last night this happened, when we finished the last hour, it asked "Do you want to stop recording?" and we pushed "Yes" and it just froze there. It sat there for ten minutes. It finally had to be unplugged to unfreeze it, and then forever after that was a "bad disc".
For the price, I think we will put up with this a while longer, but I well imagine that in a few more months this machine will go sailing over the balcony and be replaced by a hopefully better product. I recommend you pick something else.
FOLLOW UP NOTE: This machine lasted about 14 months and then bit the dust. It produced about 800 discs before expiring.
 It works December 8, 2005
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have copied all my old VHS and they work-perhaps a hundred or more. Walla! Amazing.
Complete Piece of Garbage January 9, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Like most of the users of this machine, I am not happy. For us, the recording has worked well, but play back of store bought DVDs sucks. I keep the unit cool and I clean the DVDs religiously, and it will constantly lock up. The best we can hope for is that it will only stutter once or twice during a movie. The majority of my discs are unplayable on the machine. Garbage.
 Does what it should...sort of. January 29, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I bought this recorder in early December when my old VCR bit the dust. I needed a replacement, and it made sense to consider a combo unit with dual recorders. At the time, almost all of the online reviews for this unit were very positive, so I took the chance on it. Over all, I'm happy... I guess. It's kind of hard to say.
The unit does work, but it's just not quite perfect. For example, it won't turn off. Well, I mean you can hit the power button, and it powers down. But within 5 minutes it will turn itself back on. And it does lock up. I'm lucky that I've got it plugged into a convenient outlet, because the only way you can reset it is to unplug it for a few seconds.
Others have reported that the lockups happen with store-bought DVDs. I haven't had that problem, but then again, I don't watch purchased DVDs on it. That's what the regular player is for. But it has locked up when doing normal tasks like finalizing a disc or trying to navigate the menus.
It does have personality like someone else said. The menus are for the most part logical, but it does taking some getting used to. Some of the features aren't readily apparent, but a good read-through of the excellent manual points out what you need to know. Once you get used to it, though, it's not hard to operate.
As far as I'm concerned, the single most important feature of the unit is the ability to record onto DVD from various sources. From that aspect, it works as advertised. I've used it to back up old VHS tapes easily, and I've used it to record television programs using the timer. It "forgot" one timer setting that I made once, and I missed the show. So I've never quite trusted it since then. But when it's a non-essential program, it's worked ever since.
I've also used it to back up old laserdiscs. The nice thing is that at top quality, the DVD recorder puts one hour onto a blank DVD. Conveniently, that's also the maximum that one side of a laserdisc will hold. Once the side is recorded onto one DVD, I use free software on my PC to dump the digital video onto the computer and edit out the blank space and other non-essential stuff. I then compress the video down to fit onto one blank DVD-R and create menus including chapter stops. I then author a menu system and burn a final disc onto a DVD-R. Since I use DVD-RWs for the original transfer, I can blank them and reuse them. The process works well, and I've been happy with the results.
I have some specific likes about this unit. First, the one-touch VCR transfer is very handy. And I like the fact that even though I have this hooked up to a DirecTV receiver through an S-video connection, the name of the program being recorded shows up on the DVD recorder. So when I go to watch the recording, it tells me what shows are recorded and the time and date. I could never do this with a VCR! The picture quality is acceptable at either the 1-hour or 2-hour modes (the 3+ hour modes definitely show some artifacts), but I hear there are better ones out there.
I also have some dislikes. For example, the interface takes some getting used to. And, the fact that it won't turn off kind of bugs me.
Bottom line is that I'm not overly sorry I bought the unit. It just seems like it wasn't quite ready to be released, though. When I'm in the market for my next recorder, I don't think I'll buy another one of these.
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