Only skin deep

*UPDATE*

It's been very cold the last week so I didn't feel like going back to the store to return it yet. So in the last couple of days I've had the chance to encounter several more problems. I discovered that the buzzing I heard from the tuner is present on the analog outputs as well and it is getting worse. Another problem with the tuner is starting to get more frequent as well. With the progressive scan activated the picture keeps dropping out, or the recorder loses the sync with my projector I am not sure, but it is not the projector nor the cable because this does not happen with my other recorder. Also the machine stops randomly during playback for no apparent reason.

With so many obvious problems I am beginning to wonder if I didn't just get a defective unit. Maybe I'll exchange it for another one and see how the second one does. I'll report again if i do.







This is without a doubt the best looking DVD recorder I have tried. For its appearance alone it has been on the head of the list of recorders I've wanted, but because of its brand and relatively higher price I was always reluctant to give it a try. OK I admit it: I am one of those people with very strong biases towards different companies, and Samsung has been on my no-no list ever since I saw the immense satisfaction a friend of mine got from playing hoops with his Samsung VCR and the garbage dumpster. My only first hand experience with a Samsung product was with a DV camcorder, and it was a complete piece of junk. Where I get in trouble is that no matter how well I know that Samsung is crap, I can't get over how much I am attracted to the design of many of their products.

FF >> Long story short, after finding it pretty much impossible to find a recorder with all the features and performance that I would like, I finally decided to satisfy my guilty pleasure desire for the DVD-R135. Although it didn't surprise me, I was very upset that its beauty yet again turned out to only be skin deep.

After the initial set up - which was fairly quick, I had to rush quickly because the new episode of Prison Break had just started and I wanted to record it so I can watch it with my bf later. I popped in a blank DVD-WR disc and it asked me if I wanted to initialize it, I was already late for the show so that kind of irritated me anyways, but the initialization took well over a minute, which is much longer than any other recorder I've used. After that, however, the recording started almost instantly. I was quite happy with the picture of the built in tuner, and most importantly the Stereo sound. After watching this first recording my first thought was "WOW", the picture looked almost as good as a commercially released DVD. This was very promising, and I thought that maybe I was wrong about Samsung, almost felt guilty. Right!

Let's get back to the set up. As soon as I plugged it in the front display showed the word "Auto". I wasn't sure what that meant, it turned out it was auto clock setting, which never worked out. Beyond that there were no more prompts after switching it on. I had to manually go into the set up menu, which is hidden under the general menu button that is also used for disc operations. This is not something I've seen on other recorders but I didn't mind it too much. The tuner scanned the available channels quickly and they came out cleaner than I had ever seen them.

The set up menu further boosted my enthusiasm with several very nice features, the best of which was the user selectable time for the commercial skip. Most recorders just skip 30 seconds and you can't change that. The Samsung let's you select 15, 30, or 60 second intervals. The other nice feature (on paper at least) were the black level control, and what seemed a redundant brightness control. The was also some kind of noise reduction option.

The one thing I really didn't like about the set up menu was that you can't use it during disc playback. I change the aspect ratio of the player quite often and like to be able to do it at any time, but here it is only possible after stopping the player manually (some other recorders I've used will stop or pause the playback when you call the set up menu, and some will just allow you to do it during playback - this is my prefered kind).

Well it was late and I didn't have any more energy to play with it so I went to bad all happy with the great looking recording I had just watched. After spending a very long day at work and school, thinking how cool it is that the best looking recorder I've wanted so much, turned out to be the best performing one as well, I could hardly wait to get home and continue my tests.

This second stage of the trials didn't go quite as I expected. The first worrisome thing I noticed was that even the recorder was in stand by mode the whole day it was considerably warm to the touch. I thought "no biggie" after all it's not uncommon for recorders to build up some heat, although it usually happens when they are on. I popped a newly rented DVD with the pretty bad movie "The Librarian", and settled in my bed to watch it. The movie was beyond boring, but what bothered me more, was that the picture was unusually dark and sort of hazy. Like watching through a not very clean window. Here is where I found out that the many complaints on different forums were indeed true. For a reason beyond my comprehension the brightness level of the built in tuner and the DVD playback are not the same. When you set up the brightness to low, the TV channels come out very nice and saturated, but the DVD is almost unwatchable. If you pump up the brightness control to "bright" makes the tuner unwatchable, and only slightly brightens up the DVD image, but still not enough to make the picture acceptable.

At the end only the tuner part could produce excellent results, and this was the reason for my first night excitement. The black level control (not to be confused with the brightness control) doesn't work on anything but the interlaced signal, so I switched over to check out the interlaced performance, which normally gives me better results anyway, but not this time. The picture now was not only dark, but also grainy, and with tonnes of contouring. That was just about enough to make me run for the store to return, but it turned out there was more.

The previous night was one of the coldest lately so I had two different heaters in my room and I kept hearing a low, but very unpleasant hum, which I thought was coming from one of the heaters. On the next day, during various tests and comparisons with my older recorder (which involved a lot of connections switching on the back of my receiver), I noticed that the home was actually coming from my sound system and only while watching TV through the Samsung's tuner. I tried everything possible - both the coaxial and digital outputs and switching from bitstream to PCM, but nothing helped. I then checked with my old recorder to see if the problem was not in my sound system, but thankfully it is not. So with this annoying low frequency hum, the best feature of this recorder is effectively defeated. Additionally, the volume from the digital outputs is much quieter compared to any of the other recorders I've tried.

Well poor picture and poor sound are a reason enough to return even the best looking, and most feature rich DVD player or recorder, but I know that Epinion's wonderful advisers, with their teachers' complexes will be unhappy if I don't cover as many features as I can think of and give me low rating, so here it is. The rest, which to me it doesn't really matter.

Recording - the DVD-R135 only accepts -R/WR media, which I do not prefer because it always requires finalization to play in other machines. There are 1,2,4,and 6 hour recording modes plus a flex time for timer recordings. There is a little twist though, through menu on the settings page the longest recording time could be extended from 6 to 8 hours, but this is not given as a separate mode. The various recording modes are selected through a dedicated button on the remote. As I already said recordings from the built in tuner looked stunning. Editing is possible only on WR discs in the VR mode (video or VR modes can be selected by formatting a WR disc in either type through the disc menu). There is an auto chapter maker, but unlike other recorders I've worked with, the timing on this one is not user selectable, but instead depends on the recording mode - about 5 minutes in the two best modes, and around 15 minutes on the two low quality modes. There is another interesting feature called "instant recording" which allows quick start of the recording after the press of the button, without initialization first. Not sure how this works, but it does, and I am guessing that the necessary formatting is done after you press stop, because then you have to wait about 10 seconds for the recorder to process. During that time you can't do anything else with the recorder.

Ins and Outs. This model is fairly full features, with all the available outputs - composite, S-video, component, and HDMI. No built in RF modulator though. The HDMI outputs in 480i/p, 720p., or 1080i. The switching, however, is a two step process. The resolution has to be selected from a set up menu, but switching from 480i to any of the other modes is done through a little button, hidden under a front panel door. This is a bit idiotic, but I guess the presumption is that you'll only have to do this ones. What bugged me that after pressing the progressive scan button you have to confirm on the screen, which could only be done through the remote, which of course you've left on the couch when you got up to go push the button on the front panel. Luckily activating the progressive scan mode does not affect the output of the coaxial and S-video outputs. Now only if the signal that was sent was any good...

I was also glad to see both coaxial and optical digital audio outs, but as I already said the volume level through both is very low, and I wasn't very impressed with the surround field on my usual Star Wars Episode 3 test.

The inputs were much less comprehensive - S-video, and coaxial in on the back (no component), and only plain composite and firewire on the front (no front S-video).

The remote control. Like the main unit is quite attractive, but not all that easy to use. The buttons are fairly small and crowded, and the layout is not particularly logical. The play/pause button is very hard to find by touch, and is surrounded by 9 other similarly sized and spaced buttons. The number buttons only control the tuner channels and cannot be used for direct chapter access - I hate that. The more I look at the remote layout, the less logic I see in it: the audio button (for DVD audio selection not for tuner) is stuck next to the tuner's channels scroll butons and the commercial skip button. This whole arrangement is positioned prominently in the very center of the remote and separated by enough space from anything else. The range and response of the remote are good though and I appreciate the dedicated buttons for step by step in both directions, chapter skips, and fast and slow search (they actually share buttons and slow is done after pause).

The other thing I was happy to find was some disc resume, but it only works if you don't take the disc out. There are also bookmarks for the disc.

The front display is just as pretty as the rest of the recorder, with fairly large, mild green numbers. Unfortunately as with all other recorders I've tried, it will only show the clock when the unit is turned off. At least though, the clock is present on the main on screen display, along with the date and the rest of the information, but the display menu only works if there is a disc in the recorder, otherwise pressing the info button on the remote does absolutely nothing.

I feel like I am missing something... This is a very small and light unit and there is no cooling fan (this is obvious, it does get hot!), but the good side of that is that there is no noise. The body is all metal with the front panel plastic, the unit is about an inch thick.

Oh yeah, I remember what I was going to write! This recorder only plays NTSC discs in the US, and the region hack does not work on region 1 machines. I've never been a DIVX person so I don't know how that works, but it is supposed to. The timer recording allows 16 programs to be scheduled per month. The digital to analog converter is 10 bit 54 Mhz - I had the hardest time find that info, but it was somewhere in the manual. Pressing play after a recording does not bring the title menu, but starts playback of something, I am not sure exactly what. Last night after recording prison break, I pressed play and it started at a completely random point on the disc. I also experienced random weird stops - while it was playing just a regular DVD it just stopped for no apparent reason but it did resume after I pressed play again. If you keep it on pause for longer than 5 minutes it stops the disc and goes to the last input selected.

The verdict on this one is ABSOLUTELY NOT! But I don't want to finish like this. Instead I will give you my wish list for my ideal DVD recorder. Hoping some Philips exec is reading.

DVD recorder wish list:

Design - I love the DVD-R135 design, but stick the tray in the middle and the display to the side. Keep it this size and weight (or lighter).

Be made by Philips and not in China!

Play both PAL/NTSC, have 100-240 volt power supply, an easy region hack, and both PAL and NTSC tuners in STEREO.

Have a full featured disc resume even after eject!

Display the clock on the front panel at all times!

Include TV guide - it might not be perfect, but it's better than nothing.

Support the +WR video format and make the - format disappear.

Up-convert signals through the component output too.

If you include a hard drive I am not gonna complain about it!

Put a little more thought in the remote control!

Faroudja DCD-i will be highly appreciated as well as a 12 bit 108 Mhz DAC.

Keep the price under $200!