RCA DRC8040N DVD Recorder
from: RCA
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Electronics : RCA DRC8040N DVD Recorder |
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Rating:  - * Why no hard drive? ... Why buy a DVD recorder without a hard drive when for the same (or lower) price you can purchase an RCA DVD recorder with an 80 Gig HD (#DRC8030N)? Rating:  - * Worth a try as far as I'm concerned ... Although it seems to be pretty well panned by most of the other reviewers of this unit, we just bought two of them last week (2 TV rooms and all). They were the last two units on the shelf and $150.00 each, and so far they've been great! The TIVO'esk pause, and replay live TV buffer of the hard drive is really the best feature for us. We've recorded several TV shows via the timers and that's worked fine also. I can only think that the units bought in '05 and mid '06 had "issues". Nice looking unit, ours are all black and not like the photo in the sales add here. Easy to use on screen menu, and the varibles of the recording modes are good too. Only problem that has sometimes happened (on both our units) is sometimes after using the time delay the picture will still stay a few seconds delayed. If that happens we now know to go to "menu" and back to "watch live TV" to fix it. Just pressing the "live TV" button on remote doesn't fix it. Can't 'skip' commercials, but you can fast to really fast forward through them. As with so many things you buy now a days, the manual isn't an awful lot of help past the ultra basics of operation and setup. Comparing the different brands that are similar to this one for the price this is we feel a really good value if you're looking for this type of replacement unit. We had a DVD recorder poop out on us and so when we went shopping for a replacement and saw this unit at the store and at that price we said why not! And bought two of them! Rating: - * I Found No problems so Far ... I have had this Recorder for over a year....I did find that it will not record to the 1x 16x disks, but only the 8X..Since I have had this, I have recorded plenty with about 2 coasters...So If you can't record, Please make sure that you disks are 8x....I just love this....I have had a few freezes on watching rentals, but dvd's do skip when other people rent and don't take care of them...All prerecorded bought new have played perfectly....So, no problems so far!!! Rating: - * RCA - so bad, they're literally criminal ... I believe RCA customers should seriously consider filing a fraud complaint, and/or class action lawsuit. Like other consumers here, I followed the manual to the letter. This unit did not burn one CD successfully, but ruined 10 blank discs and I lost media I thought had been successfully burned, before I gave up. This unit is so bad, 4 out of the 5 designated RCA service centers in my area refused to service it, or said "exchange only", though exchange and refund are not covered by the warrantee. The one place that did agree to "fix" the machine sent it to an RCA tech. When I picked it up post-repair and tested it at home, the machine froze, requiring a hard reset, within 2 minutes of powering up. Again never successfully burned a DVD, though would indicate the materials were in the "library" and something had recorded onto the disc. The repair shop concurred it was a lemon. RCA finally agreed to replace the unit, and did so with their new DRC8060N model. The new model was just as bad as the 8040, right out of the box. (See my review under that unit). Though it is less than 1 year from my initial purchase, RCA/Thompson refuses refund and requires another round with the designated repair place. Even the repair tech said to stay far away from RCA DVD burners (as well as the Toshibas), and pay extra to go with Panasonic or Sony instead if you want a technology which is actually ready for market. The RCAs should not even be on the shelves, and the behavior of the RCA customer service people at the management/supervisor level indicates they know it-- their purpose is to wear out or wait out the consumer until the warrantee runs out. It is fraud. Rating: - * STAY AWAY FROM ALL RCA, GE and PROSCAN products ... The rating system here won't let us go zero stars. Too bad. This deserves negative stars, actually. The only thing worse than this unit is the customer service from RCA. I bought two of these units from a Warehouse-Type Club, one unit for the upstairs and one for down. The downstairs one skipped chapters, refused to play brand new DVD's or simply locked up tight. This went on for months. The unit is total ca-ca doo-doo. Don't even think about buying one. Then comes the RCA Customer Service Shuffle. RCA, GE and Proscan are all owned by Thomson Electronics which is no more than Thomson Pharmaceuticals, a French drug company that bought those three companies. Thomson seems to know exactly nothing about electronics and less about customer service. I hand-carried the defective unit to a local Authorized Service Center. The runaround began. A part was bad. The part was ordered. The wrong part arrived. Part ordered again. Part arrives broken. Part ordered again. No parts available anywhere in the country for a 5 month old unit. They say they'll send a new unit. More than a month later new one arrives at service center. Outside box is in perfect shape. Inside box is smashed. Unit is tested and found to be non-functional. They put a smashed-up box in a good box and shipped an already broken unit. I haven't yet mentioned that the whole time this was going on I logged literally hundreds and hundreds of long distance calls to them because they have no 800 number. After two and one half months had gone by altogether since I'd dropped it off, another new unit finally arrived. I took it, unopened, as well as the other one I'd bought back to where I'd bought them and they gave me my money back. I went to Best Buy and bought two Panasonic DVD recorders for 10 bucks less apiece. They've been working flawlessly ever since. NEVER buy ANYTHING from RCA, GE or Proscan! NEVER!! Unless you enjoy banging your head against a brick customer service wall for more than two and a half months. |
Where the NBA Dynasty series (the other initial entry is the slightly meatier Los Angeles Lakers: The Complete History) outdoes Ultimate Jordan is in the six playoff games--one for each year--as they were originally broadcast, minus halftime and commercials. Having the nearly complete game (usually running 90-100 minutes, from the TV introductions to post-game interviews) means you can skip straight to John Paxson's clutch basket or what was expected to be the final shot of Jordan's career. Or you can savor each game in its entirety, all the better to appreciate the artistry of Jordan in his three-pointer barrage against Portland or his "flu game" against Utah. You can see other great players too, of course, including Jordan's teammates--Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Dennis Rodman--and those opponents unfortunate enough to face the Bulls--Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Karl Malone, and others. Because these are all NBA Finals games, you won't see Jordan's shot over Craig Ehlo or his 63-point coming-out party against Boston, but the 1990s Chicago Bulls were a team for the ages, and merely having their games--some of them all-time classics--available for home viewing is a major milestone in archived sports. --David Horiuchi
While last-minute heroics tend to be the standard by which we define excellence, there are many other moments that have left an indelible impression, many of them highlighted here. The video clips fall into 10 categories: Dunks, Alley-oops, Assists, Steals, Blocks, Teamwork, the Clutch Shot, Moves, Hustle, and Buzzer-Beaters. At the beginning of each section is a brief introduction. Before showing the top 10 dunks of all time, for example, we learn about the evolution of the dunk--from the first slam to the man who could fly, Michael Jordan--and we hear background commentary from NBA legends such as Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Dr. J, and Bill Russell. This video recalls familiar moments of NBA lore that you will want to own for countless repeat viewings. --Jeremy Storey
