First DVD Recorder with ATSC tuner
Written: Mar 17 '07 (Updated Apr 13 '07)
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Pros: Records over-the-air digital and analog TV, excellent video and sound quality.
Cons: Overpriced, questionable reliability, and has a design flaw with the way it stores subchannels.
The Bottom Line: Overpriced and a transitional product, but meets my needs and has excellent picture and audio on DVD playback.
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| comparator's Full Review: LG DR787T DVD Recorder |
Starting March 2007, the FCC is requiring manufacturers to include an ATSC tuner (this is the new digital broadcast standard for TV) with any device with a TV tuner. The DR787T is the first DVD recorder that I am aware of with this capability, which lets you record digital television received over-the-air for free with an antenna. I purchased mine for $229.99 at Best Buy within a few days of the rollout of this model. The first unit I bought worked fine for a day and then quit on me - I think the problem was a bad "antenna in" jack because the unit acted as though it wasn't getting enough signal. I took it back and swapped it for a new unit that works fine. But I'm left with doubts about the build quality and long term reliability of this unit.
I was an early adopter of over-the-air digital television, i.e. not cable, not satellite, but free broadcast digital TV received with an antenna. I ditched my cable subscription years ago and get a picture that is noticeably better than analog cable, even on a standard definition TV set. My Motorola HDT100 digital tuner, purchased in 2004 for a whopping $320.99 died recently, so I needed a new digital tuner. I also wasn't happy with the performance of my $39.99 Magnavox VCR purchased in 2003 (really bad audio quality and very marginal video quality) so when I saw the DR787T which has both a digital tuner and the ability to record to DVD, I snapped one right up, even though the unit is overpriced and not altogether what I really wanted. What I really want is a stand alone unit with an ATSC tuner that will record to a hard drive, sort of like a TIVO but without the subscription fee, but nobody seems to be making one yet, certainly not for the $300-400 I might be willing to pay for such a unit. AutumnWave makes a tuner called the Creator for about $230 which will record digital TV (in high definition) to a PC's hard drive, and I've read good things about the Creator and its supporting software on avsforum, but my computer is not in the same room with my TV and I didn't want to buy another computer just to record TV.
If you have a HDTV (which I don't), the DR787T will upconvert DVD's to 720p or 1080i via a HDMI cable, which is not supplied. The unit supports all popular DVD formats. I connected the DR787T to my standard definition television with a Y Pb Pr cable (also not supplied). I connected my rooftop UHF antenna to the unit's antenna in connection. (Note that for digital over-the-air reception you need a decent antenna which unless you are very close to the broadcasting towers means an outdoor antenna.) When the unit is turned on, it lights up with HELLO in big green letters and then takes a good 20-25 seconds to initialize and start functioning, noticeably longer than the TV takes to warm up, and noticeably longer than my old HDT100 tuner took. Initial scanning for channels was quick - less than five minutes for all NTSC (analog) and ATSC (digital) channels, versus fifteen minutes that my HDT100 took to scan just the digital channels. The DR787T can also decode QAM, which means that if you have cable you can connect directly to the unit without having to route through a cable box. Depending on your cable provider, this capability may also allow you to downgrade your cable subscription to just basic cable and still get HDTV plus a bunch of channels you aren't supposed to get with basic cable as long as the cable provider sends them out in clear QAM, i.e. not scrambled. Your mileage may vary. Some people on avsforum have reported that scanning all the cable channels takes about half an hour. Surfing through the channels with the remote cycles you through all of the analog and digital channels, but there is also the option of designating certain channels as favorites and there are buttons on the remote for navigating just the favorites.
For those with HDTV's, this unit cannot be used as a HD receiver. It downconverts to 480, then upconverts to HD via the HDMI port, both when playing a DVD and also when just using the tuner. For me this wasn't a deal killer because when I get around to buying a HDTV it will have a built-in tuner. On my SDTV, the picture is excellent.
I really like the channel list menu screen, except for one glaring design flaw. In the upper left corner is a small picture that let's you see the channel that the cursor is on, a very useful feature when you are editing the channel list. Below that is a yellow bar signal strength meter. There is a column of all the NTSC channels, which you can add or delete from. The NTSC channels are followed by "-0". To the right are two columns for the ATSC channels, the first giving the broadcast channel and the second showing the virtual channel and subchannel. For example, WNJS, the PBS station in Camden NJ broadcasts on channel 22 and has virtual channels 23-1, 23-3, 23-4, and 23-5. Here's where the glaring design flaw comes in. 23-3 broadcasts during the day and goes off the air at 8 pm. 23-5 broadcasts from 8 pm to midnight. When the unit scans the channels, it includes only the active subchannels on the list. So if you do the scan before 8 pm it won't list 23-5. Do the scan after 8 pm and it won't list 23-3. You can delete the channel and add it back to get the subchannel you want, but this is awfully clumsy. And if you wanted to set the timer to record 23-3 from 7 to 7:30 pm and then record 23-5 from 8-9pm, it wouldn't be able to do that. Curiously though, if you do the scan before 8 pm and the channel list doesn't include 23-5, and you wait until after 8 pm and use the remote to surf through the channels, it will land on 23-5, even though 23-5 won't be listed on the channel list menu.
I'm mostly pleased with the remote. The upper right corner contains several buttons for controlling the TV, which is handy because it lets you turn on both the TV and the recorder with one remote. The manual gave a code to enter for my Sony TV and now I can turn the TV on and control the volume with the DR787T remote. There is also a TV channel change button for controlling the TV's tuner which isn't terribly useful because on my SDTV it takes me to an analog channel, but if you had a HDTV it would be nice to have. Using the DR787T's tuner, you can enter a channel using the number keys, which includes a key for the dash, which is a really nice feature that allows you to tune directly to a subchannel, e.g. 17-2. If you type in just 17 it defaults to 17-1, the first digital subchannel. If you want analog 17, you type in 17-0. Unfortunately there is no button to take you back to the channel you were previously on.
The section of buttons for DVD playback is really nice. The menu button brings up a screen showing the first frame of each section of the disk, together with the length of the track and date it was recorded. You can surf through these and select a track to play. The I Skip button takes you forward thirty seconds to skip commercials. It would have been nice to also have a 15 second skip button. The scan buttons fast forward or fast rewind - hitting the button multiple times increases the speed of the scan. There are buttons to skip forward or backward to the next track. Both video and audio quality on playback are excellent - indistinguishable from watching live TV and a big improvement over a VCR.
There is a section of buttons at the bottom of the remote for editing the recordings. I would rather that these have been handled via menus to make room for a 15 second skip button and a channel return (last channel viewed) button.
Recording is very easy. To record something while the unit is on, just hit the record button. There is a menu screen for entering timer programs (the unit will accept up to 16 programs up to one month in advance). When a timer program is entered, a little red light comes on when the unit is powered off. The timer program will operate only when the unit is off - if you want to record something when the unit is on, hit the record button. The unit has only one tuner, so you can't watch one digital channel while recording another unless you have another digital tuner, for example if the unit is hooked up to a HDTV. Recordings are downconverted to standard definition.
The box itself is black, measuring 16.9" wide X 2.2" high X 10.8 " deep. There are physical buttons for on/off and channel changing, and a touch panel for opening and closing the drawer, play/pause, stop, and record. With the touch panel, you touch it once to get the buttons to light up, then touch the button you want to activate it. Besides the connections already mentioned, it also has a USB 2.0 interface for photos and music and a FireWire 1394 port for digital camcorders.
When I say the unit is overpriced, I'm expressing my frustration that adding a ATSC tuner adds something like $70-100 over comparable DVD recorders with just a NTSC tuner, when the chips to do that probably cost LG less than $10. On the other hand, the unit is almost $100 less than I paid for my old HDT100 which was just a tuner with no recording capability. Let's face it, HDTV is a technology in transition and although the DR787T is a transitional product, it meets my needs for the moment and I'm planning to keep it until something better comes along.
Update 4/11/07 I returned the unit. The tuner was no longer operating properly, refusing to tune in most subchannels of one local station. Also on playback there would be occassional dropouts and freezes - sometimes I'd have to stop and restart the disc to get it to play. Build quality of this unit is extremely poor - the first unit I bought failed within one day, the second after a few weeks. The antenna in jack on both units was very loose - the whole jack would turn when I tried to screw the coax into it. Stay away from this product.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 229.99
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