The Samsung DVD-SH897M HDD & DVD Recorder is one of the latest generation of devices to use to record TV (somewhat akin to Sky Plus) operatiing on Freeview and with the benefit of no subscription.
We have had a Panasonic DVD Recorder (in addition to Sky +, TiVo, a Media Center PC and a further Phillips DVD recorder) for around 6 years, but following the passing away of our Panasonic (very early model) we picked up our own Samsung DVD-SH897M Hard Drive and DVD recorder a little earlier today.
The machine is well specified and that certainly influenced our buying choice, as well as the price point (249 in store at both Comet and Currys .. cheaper prices available online). You can find the full specification on the Samsung site here
Setting up the device was a breeze for us as we simply needed to swap out our old Panasonic and plug the cales straight in and then switch on to watch the Setup Wizard set it all up for us. We haven’t yet succumbed to HD viewing trying to get value from our expensive outlay as an early adopter of large screen Plasma technology (£2800 back then … ouch!!), and connect via scart, but component and HDMI arealso catered for.
A surprise to me was that although prominently marked as Freeview + (meaning that it meets the freeview consortium specification for watching Freeview and recording from it), it also includes an Analogue tuner. That may not seem useful to those currently within a Freeview reception area, but it does mean that the Samsung DVD-SH897M could come into contention for those still awaiting Freeview as the analogue service can be recorded from. [worth noting that I don't know if this is a common feature]
As can be seen from the Full Specification and User Manual. a variety of additional input sources may be used to either view, listen from or to create DVDs from …. or to simply copy to and from the hard disk. This assumes that the input to the device supports the mass storage protocols .. the usual suspects should work just great, such as ipod, thumbdrives, digital cameras and external hard drives, though there may be some exceptions to that rule.
It also comes with a Digital AV connection for camcorder connection aliwng you to play back or to copy to disk or DVD straight from your camcorder.
Given that the machine has native support for DivX playback, then the 320Gb capacity will be capable of holding 100s of movies at a great quality.
One touch record from the Freeview Guide with series set up means easy recording of TV to disk or DVD.
The same model is available with smaller hard disk sizes, but we always find that more is better … and at this time, I don’t know whether the hard disk can be upgraded as a DIY task. Personally, I don’t intend to invalidate the Samsung DVD-SH897M to find out.
The Samsung DVD-SH897M HDD & DVD Recorder is a feature packed machine, yet still easy to use so far without reaching for the manual just yet. The DVD-SH897M was the only machine on the shelf that ticked all our boxes and actually threw in a few more features on top.
Very satisfied with our purchase.
Samsung DVD-SH897M DVD Recorder 320GB Hard Drive DVB-T with Freeview+ HDMI Full HD 1080p Upscaling USB Host CD Rip EZ Rec Mode - Gloss Black
£232.92
Samsung
Samsung DVD-SH895M. Video: MPEG2 / MPEG4 / DIVX (DIVX 3.1 ~ DIVX 6) , DVD-RAM / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / HDD, DVD-video / DVD-RAM / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / HDD. Audio: PCM, MP3, Stereo. Disk drive: 320 GB, JPEG, MP3, MPEG4 (DivX). Still image: JPEG. Colour: Black. Energy management: AC 230V ( 50 Hz ), 28 W. Weight & dimensions: 3600 g, 430 x 55 x 300 mm, 55 mm, 300 mm, 430 mm More
