sony rdr hx900

A

apoel

Guest
has anyone used this machine so as to be able to give an objective review/comment?
any good or does not worth the money?
 
I bought a sony 900 2 weeks ago,and now I have the panny dmre-95 !!!!
I thought the sony was going to be very good,however after the 1st week the recordings off tv suffered badly from digital blocking,the timer would not switch itself off and when you went to access the recording you could not,the only way you get get the timer off was to erase the recording, doh ! what good is that ! And then the hard drive started making a creaking sound when in use and finally on vhs transfers lip sync problems set in ! Apart from anything else as soon as you go over 2 hours even by a minute on the sony the picture quality drops dramaticaly,the Panny 95 is a far superior machine and the flexi record allows you to set the exact length of time you require to get the best quality to fit on a dvd,very handy if you want to archive vhs.
Im so glad I got rid of that sony.
 
I have SONY 900 for a 6 months now. I can't agree what The jackall said. No picture blocking, outstanding PQ and build. You can switch timer off nad I have not seen lip synch problem.
But no divide function or playlist. Sorry.
 
The Sony 900 is a fab machine. If your priority is picture quality then it is the best. I have had no problems. There is a previous post that states it is no longer in production and a new model is due. Certainly its price dropped dramatically and many stores no longer list it.
 
I have to back up EN here. I bought a Sony 900, took it back because of the lack of editing features, got a Panasonic 95, then returned that and got my Sony 900 back!

It sounds lke the.jackell had a faulty one. There is no problem with timer, lipsync or picture blocking. I agree the editing capabilities are limited on the Sony and it would have been good to to have had a flexible record as an improvement on these features would have easily made the Sony the market leader.

However if you are archiving VHS tapes (which is why I bought mine and have done over 100 so far), the picture quality with the Sony on HQ+ setting is far superior to the Panasonic. Dubbing this to disc for anything under 2 hours will still give you a better picture quality (dispite the lack of flexible recording) and with a 2-3 hour recording the quality is the same as the Panasonic. Over 3 hours I concede is not very good......

Obviously this is all subjective and a lot of people will defend one of these over the other. Its all down to personal choice.

One thing that definitely condemned the Panasonic for me though was that I wanted to use my recorder as my playback machine as well. The Sony autoswitches between PAL and NTSC, whereas the Panasonic doesnt. So if you have a big collection of R1 and R2 DVDs, each time you play a DVD you have to go into the setup menu and manually change between PAL and NTSC. This I was not prepared to do - it makes having a multiregion machine sort of pointless!
 
I can definitely recommend the Sony 900. I tried a Panasonic DMRE95 & wasn't happy with the results; I returned it & got a Sony & it is great.
Brilliant DVD playback as well, whereas playback on Panasonic was distinctly
'soft'. However, there is a lack of DIVIDE on it, which doesn't matter to me
since I record to Sky+ and then can play stuff into the Sony in two or more
chunks if I want to split a recording over two or more disks.

EN are your problems sorted out? Did you get a replacement or was it something else?

Timbo.
 
Timbo, the problem vanished. May be there was something with the broadcast at this time, may be the recorder only overexposed the already existing problem in the program. I don't know, now it is OK. Thanx for asking.
 
900 Now discontinued so I would say don't buy unless you gey one at a very good price.
No Digital Tuner and editing problems. Can't divide recordings on Hard Disc etc, no flexible bitrate setting. Excellent picture quality though.
Have a look at other threads on possible new Sony machines soon or at the new Toshiba 34 - again no Digital Tuner though.
 
thanks to all of you guys. i've been trying to buy a recorder for 2 weeks now. it proved to be a very difficult task as the mixed reviews on different models prevent me from choosing one.

my budget was initially at 200-250 pounds but i kept altering it. i would have bought one(sony 900) but since i keep reading it is now discontinued, i would rather buy smth else insted of giving 500+ pounds on the sony.

i will consider the pioneer 520S or just go back to my original budget & buy a pio DVR-220-S.

hope i'll make a right choice.
 
Is this just a rumor or does someone have hard evidence? It was released late 2004 and according to Sony's website the model is listed as new.
 
No this is not a rumour. the HX900 has been discontinued. Checked with Superfi and then Practical HIFI who rang Sony UK for me.

Do a search on sony hx900 discontinued - there is another thread on this topic.

Andy
 
EN - What info do you have that the new Sony models are coming out in September, I keep seeing April?
 
stickywicket said:
Is this just a rumor or does someone have hard evidence? It was released late 2004 and according to Sony's website the model is listed as new.

The Japanese production lines are rather strange. The mass produce a million or so units, market them, and if demand is good, they MIGHT produce a few more. I suspect they have a warehouse full of these brand new but discontinued machines waiting to be shipped over to Europe in the not too distant future. I was damned lucky to get mine.

As for a price guide, I didn't go to the local Sony Centre and pay £699. Nor did I pay £599 to Currys. £501 including delivery the following week and it's multi region!. I have noticed that many of the hi-fi stores have indeed removed the reference to the HX-900 but if they are out of stock, it's no surprise.
 

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