Customer Reviews:
 Does everything I want perfectly October 4, 2006
M. Stringfellow (UK)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
After using this DVD recorder for a few weeks I still have yet to find something I don't like about. It was straight forward to setup, it's easy to use, the menu system is easy to navigate, it records great on the HDD or to DVD, it is easy (and quick) to copy from the HDD to DVD, it records to dual-layer DVD's, has plenty of storage space and it looks great.
It is great value for money especially considering it has a HDMI socket (and lead supplied), so unlike normal definition DVD recorders it is quite future proof as it looks good on HD-TV's. It should last me until Hi-def recorders or Blu-ray / HD-DVD recorders come down in price!
I would recommend this to anyone who wants a straight forward no-nonsense recorder, however it isn't lacking on features and has some useful editing features.
 Excellent, but a few annoying traits... February 18, 2007
G. Byrom (Hampshire, UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Having lived with this machine for a couple of months now I can honestly say it has surpassed my expectations for a DVD recorder. I bought it in the full knowledge that it won't record on the +R/+RW discs which is a "feature" of all but the more expensive Samsung models, presumably because of licensing issues. This really is not an issue; you just need to be careful which discs you buy. Picture quality is also excellent with no artifacts in normal recording mode using Sky (the longer play options progressively degrade the picture quality as expected, but it's still pretty good).
My main complaints would be:
1. the difficulty of recording discs to play in other people's players. I guess this is a problem with all recorders but it surprises me that the major manufacturers can't sort out their format problems between them. Some of the problems I have had are to do with the discs I've used and not the recorder, but some are not. I've discovered that the best way to get this to work is to make recordings that have no menu structure and only a single title on them (for some reason the Samsung's method of creating menus seems to confuse some (but not all) players and multiple titles do likewise), and copies from HDD to DVD should be made at low speed only - the HS copy modes frequently give "dirty disc" errors on my Sony player and others.
2. unfortunately, there is a severe synch problem between audio and picture towards the end of recordings when copied from HDD to DVD at low speed (in synch at the start, out of synch by about a second at the end of a two hour recording). This doesn't happen when recording directly off air, only when copying from HDD to DVD or vice versa. I don't really understand why this would be. Strangely, it doesn't happen on high-speed copies - but then, see problem 1.
3. Annoyingly, like most recording devices, the machine won't start recording a timer recording if it's already turned on at the time the timer is supposed to start. This would be fine, except that because there is no audio pass-through when the machine is turned off, I have to leave it turned on all the time just to watch TV through my amplifier. This has caused me to miss several recordings just because the machine is already on! I can't fathom why recording devices do this anyway and it's extremely frustrating that manufacturers seem to consider this a "feature" when in fact it's the most inconvenient thing I can think of (my VCR does it too, but since it passes the audio through, it's never been a problem as I can just leave the VCR turned off - can't do that with the Samsung).
So there we have it - it's a great machine and at Amazon's price I would recommend it to anyone for recording quality and features (DIVx, HDMI, easy multi-region hack etc, and it was[...]quid more expensive elsewhere), but you have to learn to live with the above little foibles. Except for problem 2 above they are relatively minor niggles anyway which probably occur with all DVD recorders - [...]
 Poor product description February 27, 2007
Mr. K. D. Harrison
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I purchased the Samsung HR735 partly because of Amazon's product description about the Cable Box Control feature. On receipt, I find that it's not got any such feature. This is disappointing because, like many, you can't set a timer record without leaving your cable/sky box set switched on and set to the required channel, and therefore can't set it to record more than one programme on different channels.
I've twice pointed this out to Amazon but, as at today, the product description still says the Cable Box Control feature is provided.
Amazon's failure to address this aside, it's not a bad product from Samsung.
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