Sony RDRGX300

I should have read the reviews – I doubt Sony is still selling this thing but if you find one out there, forget it.  You will be impressed for a while but sooner or later as we all found out, it quits reading its own recorded discs.  The dvd-r discs seem fine as do the movies but it will not read the dvd-rw or dvd+rw discs.  It will format and record them with no problem but will give you a "Cannot play this disc" error any time you reinsert the disc.  It was a thing of beauty. We were using it like TiVo. I have to take it 75 miles to get it fixed.

Good – I have had this unit for a few weeks now and have not been able to fault it. I use it mainly to record TV shows that my wife and daughters do not want to watch or the shows are on late at night. I use the 6 hour mode and discs can be played on other players. I have bought other recorders in the past and had to return them as they would freeze, lockup or fail to record.

This recorder has done everything I have asked it to do. Easy to use, takes the 4 common disc types, very good recording quality. Plug it in, hit setup and it takes you through all the steps needed to have you recording in a few minutes. Does not have a DV input for copying from video camera but at $390 it makes a good recorder for the family room.

The menue screen is very plain, grey colour.

The 6 recording levels are hard to follow as they appear as HQ, HSP, SP, LP, ELP and SLP. This represents 60, 90, 120, 240 and 360 minutes.