I've been upto my old tricks again buying another faulty dvd recorder off ebay. This is my last one for a while as I don't need anymore now. This one for the grand total of about £20.05 minus quiddco.
The seller stated that since coming back from holiday the wharfedale has been permantly stuckin setup and there is nothing displayed on screen. I guessed that they turned the power off before leaving for holiday and the wharfedale lost its settings. I also guessed that this would result in the wharfedale going back to scart mode and that the wharfedale had been originally configured to hdmi. So when he came back there was no picture via hdmi and he assumed the recorder was faulty. Anyway I managed to get it for £13.10 plus postage. I thought even if the recorder itself was faulty I'd get a 160gig hard drive out of it.
Feature wise it has a dvd+r/-r/+rw/-rw type optical drive. Thats what the specification says but on one of the pages it says only dvd+r/+rw so not sure which is true another page contradicts again.
It has front av inputs with only composite and no s-video (there is a reason for that) plus DV/firewire input. At the back two scarts. coaxial digital output, RF in and out plus 2 audio out phonos and a composite output. There is no analogue tuner.
Component appears to be strangely setup on the wharfedale if I'm reading the instructions correctly if you select interlace the scart gives out RGB but if you select progressive the scart gives out a progressive component output and the manual shows a picture of an adaptor cable that goes from scart to 3 phonos for component and you have to run a seperate audio cable from the two audio phonos to the tv (I bet it would also work from scart as well though). Not seen this arrangement before. Not seen the adaptor cable available to do this either. Neither have I seen any wharfedale owners asking where to get the cable . Very strange. The scart input socket is configured for RGB I believe but I've not tried this yet. No support for s-video on any sockets at all. The other socket is of course hdmi which can display 576p, 720p and 1080i. It doesn't do 1080p.
These wharfedales which are actually made by Vestel of turkey are very modular. You can get the same model with or without a hard drive plus a choice of hard drive sizes plus you can get it with either a analogue or a freeview tuner. The freeview tuner connects via s-video. This is one up on some of the Toshiba models currently sold which are only connected via composite but not as good as models with a RGB connection which I think my Panasonic has but I could be wrong. No dvd recorders as far as I know take the raw digital information from the DVB-T tuner for recording, only freeview pvrs do that. I've not seen a dvd recorder where you have the option to just record freeview direct to hard drive without choosing a quality setting.
General operation of the Wharfedale is ok. The remote layout isn't amazing but acceptable. The menu's themselves seem logical. Editing is basic and not very user friendly.
I have experience of 3 other dvd recorders, 2 panasonics which I own, a sony my mother owns and now this wharfedale. Its powered by a LSI logic processor but I don't know how this compares to other dvd recorders. No mention of divx or anything like that. It can play mp3s from disc you can't move them to hard drive.
You can dub files to a dvd while recording a freeview program and while watching a stored video. You can not do any editing at all while dubbing.
Splitting files is slower than the panasonic and deleting sections of files only skips those sections rather than removing the bits. If you dub to dvd the bits won't be recorded. So to fully reclaim hard drive space you have to delete the file rather than edit it.
From what I've read elsewhere if you replace the hard drive it will automatically prepare it, itself. You don't have to get any special discs or service remotes.
I bought this for a bedroom CRT set and for that purpose is more than satisfactory. I can't imagine using it in the living room because it just wouldn't be satisfactory for me in that regard especially on a 42" display which I have. Its certainly eccentric in design. Why limit recording to composite and s-video quality and then fit a hdmi socket with upscaling where the limitations of composite and s-video would be more striking. The reality is the hdmi socket is a pointless addition. Whats more annoying is the earlier vestel model that wharfedale rebranded which didn't feature hdmi output had RGB recording!
Good points.
Excellent quality samsung optical drive (reads iffy dvd video discs no problem)
160GB hard drive plus you can upgrade it yourself (not confirmed).
Has RGB scart passthrough when in standby.
My unit is multiregion. I tried my region 1 of 'finding nemo' and it played.
Good picture quality from dvds in scart RGB or hdmi.
Upscaling HDMI output to 1080i (not tried yet and only really useful for DVD playback)
Can watch dvds even NTSC dvds while recording from freeview.
Can watch video from HDD while freeview is recording to HDD and also dubbing from HDD to DVD.
digital video input for recording from camcorders.
Bad points.
No s-video inputs
Only records from external sources at composite quality.
Freeview recording is composite quality.
Internal fan triggered by heat sensor is quite noisy. Could be annoying if used in a bedroom.
Basic Editing.
Known reliability issues.
Wierd progressive component output option requiring special cable (confirmed).
Easy to end up with a black screen if you select various options wrongly.
No divx playback.
MP3 file manager is pretty basic.
No ability to move files onto HDD except actual recordings.
High power consumption (a revised version of this model reduces this but is also a major reliability problem in that it can struggle to come out of standby but you have the option to disable low power standby mode. Its normal consumption is about 38 watts and 24 watts in standby)
Summary.
A poorly designed product with regard important features, performance and usability. It gets the job done in a rough unsatisfactory way.
Please note the Logik LDVR1608 and LDVR808 are the same vestel origin as the wharfedale except for the styling differences plus the LDVR808 only features a 80gig hard drive. Not sure if the Logik models feature hdmi output.
Please also note I'm not recommending this set. Its working for me but if you have the money and don't like fiddling and playing about with gadgets like me you'd be better off with a higher quality, easier to use recorder like a panasonic or sony.
Argos do not provide good support for this unit. The manual is poorly written. Vestel do not provide good support. They are practically unreachable if you have questions as they are an oem supplier and aren't really interested in the end customer.