Samsung DVD-SH871M/XEU Freeview+ 160GB HDMI Hard Drive Recorder

Some problems but tolerable - just

I bought this machine many many years ago and there has been a time where I've never needed to use it much given the rise of streaming and connected TVs/players that have become available. I now use the player simply to play some DVDs now and then hooked up to my new Samsung 4K TV. The player is simple to use, menu options are easy to navigate and in general, it is very easy to set up. Being a recorder we have also used it to record discs in the past as well as stored content in the HDD. This is what you paid a premium for back in the day because recording onto a DVD (instead of VHS) was the next level.These days though, the player does have a few problems and probably now down to the fact that this machine is ageing. Firstly, the playback of discs is noisy, as another reviewer mentioned it's a bit like a plane taking off which can be very distracting from trying to watch a film in quiet. You can even hear the cooling fan at the back in very quiet environments. The noise also extends from the machine attempting to play a disc which when it is unsuccessful will just start to randomly spin the disc inside. Often I've had to unplug the unit and plug it back in just to restart it due to it not responding to any commands.Secondly, over time the player has also started to show difficulty in reading certain discs it'll become very noisy, starts to think about what to do and often loads slow and slow to boot up. Sometimes it'll reject discs but then the second time you put them back in they'll work. Have tried to clean the lens a few times and this sorts it out for a while but it's still a very temperamental system. I think the lens is probably starting to give up - have used a lens cleaner a few times just to get it to read a few discs but overall have needed to be very patient / eject and re-insert the disc a few times to get it to work.Thirdly, it seems to be really picky and choosy with what discs it wants to play - I entered a Region 0 disc (which can be played on any player regardless of region code) and the player just spins and spins the disc forever. It really can be very frustrating even with the correct region code as you're often waiting and waiting for the disc to eventually load. It did work but not after switching on/off and inserting the disc a few times.Haven't used the digital TV /EPG aspects so can't comment on that. Can't tell if the supposed upscaling is doing anything useful but have not had any issues with picture and sound quality, even when used with my soundbar everything has been in sync as it should. The Anynet feature makes it easy to control simple aspects of the TV with the player remote, which is crammed full of buttons of various sizes making it longer than necessary - at least playback buttons should be more prominent.I think over time the condition of my player will only get worse, to the point where it'll stop reading discs completely, but over the last few months, the machine has been useful to playback a few discs using what we already have rather than needing to go out and spend money on a new player. My next upgrade will be a Blu-ray player of course.Luckily I seem to have the patience to deal with this, but there have been times where I have literally wanted to throw it out the window! As this machine ages, it's slowly becoming more and more hassle but I will use it until it dies. The play has a feature range that you won't find in even the most basic DVD players nowadays.

After seeing this item i instinctively bought it without reading reviews against my better judgement. after reading them i feared for what i had done, after reading reviews it suggested that it wasn't worth its scrap value. However i have found the machine easy to use and had very little to complain about. The guide is slow yes, but it is not unusable and does vary from day to day. The series link and recording ability is perfect and have only occured issues due to power cuts. Overall would reccomend even if it doesn't set the world alight.

Having experienced the same problems as described in other reviews, although I was happy with some aspects of the machine, the really slow remote response and EPG (painfully slow) I was not happy with, therefore I contacted Samsung. The guy on the phone said they had not had any common problems reported! He suggested I get it looked at by approved repairer. They arranged for collection and within a few days it was sorted. Turns out the machine needed a software update. Since it has been returned everything is so much quicker and I have no problems with the recorder at all.

This is a perfecty adequate machine - with a good sized hard drive. It is simple and fairly straight forward to use and the combination of HDMI, DIVX and legacy SCART connectioons make this very inexpensive recorder a useful addition to the clutter I keep under my TV. One button recording, easy to set up - you are all wondering where the buts are going to come in...? Well, here they are:-There is no clear indicater of the space used on the HDD - and nothing I can see anywhere that tells me how much time/space I have left... We have twice missed the end of a film, because it ran out... which it does because unlike more expensive HDD recorders, when its initial 8 hours of "oh just leave it overnight dear, there is bound to be something to watch on it" is over - it carries on by continuing on a new recording... which uses up considerable space...Now it does have the ability to split a recording... and the review speed is reasonable - but when you are watching a short programme in the middle of 8 hours of recording and the telephone rings, so you stop it, or put it on hold... after only a few minutes it switches the playback off - once stopeed it cannot remember where it was... so you then have to plough back through the full 8 hour recording to find it again...It doesn't like reading vdeos made on the pc - but it is comfortable with pc generated DivX films... so the whole thing is a mixed bag... If you have oodles of money to burn, get a more expensive recorder with more features... If you want a perfectly good, straight forward and basic HDD and DVD recorder to go with your HDMI TV... then it is a bargain...

Having bought this to replace a 3 1/2 year old Panasonic HDD recorder and to work with a Samsung TV, we've been disappointed that the recording capabilities are less/worse than from the older technology.We've programmed it to automatically record from the TV, but with no success, so have stopped relying on the timer & do it manually. Having transferred films, with the intention of copying them to disc, the cumbersome editing facilities make this a chore. Perhaps we were spoilt by the precision of Panasonic, but had not expected things to have gone backwards since getting thatIf you stop a recorded programme (or pause it for longer than about 10 minutes), it goes back to the beginning. Who remembers to place a "marker" when the phone rings?It buzzes/whines when certain DVDs are played. We returned the first machine as the level was unacceptable, but as it still occurs on the replacement machine with some DVDs, this seems to be a design fault.Overall, this doesn't live up to the high standard we expect of Samsung products.