Philips DVDR3545V/37 1080p Upscaling DVDR/VCR Combo with Built-In Tuner

I owned an earlier version of this recorder that I still use and have had minimal problems over a two year period. This item was ordered as a refurbished machine but crashed within 24 hours after I started to use it. Thus, there is little I can say about it. This review is more about the 3rd party vendor that sold it to me. Over the course of three days with some starts and stops in communication the vendor (Outlet based in CA) honored the return and expedited my refund. They also refunded my shipping charge in full so that I lost only my time spent in setting up, breaking down, repackaging and getting it to the UPS store. If I see their name again when ordering something I would not hesitate to do business with them again, because I know that the risk would be diminished by their business practices.

4 stars because it's too complicated to use its full potential (for me). I never tried refurb before but the price discount was too good to pass up. Speedy delivery, well packaged, and no problems to date. I just need a geek to help me use it correctly. I will buy from them again.

I purchased this item through Amazon on 9-29-2009.

It must be a discontinued model because after it failed, I called Philips Support and they said they would replace it with a similar model since they no longer have any more of that model. It failed to Play the VHS tape even though it would record on it. I played it on another machine that proved that. Play back just died completely for tape. The DVD worked fine.

Then they called me later and said there was no similar model so they were going to refund my money less shipping. I sent them a copy of the Amazon order with all the information. They were going to send shipping labels by UPS arriving in 4 or 5 days. That
time past, so I e-mailed them and they said they made a mistake, said it should have been 1 or 2 weeks. That went by and nothing again. I called them again and she said she reordered the labels and sent me information about returning the product. Still waiting for a result from UPS to pick it up.

This machine has a great playback picture and works very well with my other components. You could pay twice the price for other combo units and by lucky to get anywhere close to the quality.

great unit-great recorder-had unit for lest then a year no trouble yet but must get the right brand of blank dvds to record to(see the manual for recommended disc)the only issue i had with the manual was it was xerox copy of the manual not he real manual from the fac..the unit i bought came from a refurbish vendor..overall i'm very happy i bought this unit...so far