DVD Recorder In Aldi @ 129.9

Stan 10

What do you think of this DVD Recorder in Aldi on Sunday 21 May

http://www.aldi.ie/special_buys2/productnl_211.html

cast_iron

Seems like another cracking offer.

The best thing about these ALDI/LIDL electrical deals is the warranty.
No high street (or local) chains offer a 3 year warranty on this kind of stuff - for free.
Win win situation really!

watty

Lidl has one on Monday also.

modrover

Folks,

Any idea of the hard drive capacity. Is it 80 or 160 and will it be compatible with HD TVs. (Not that I have one of these yet!)
Thanks.

Blaster99

The name might hold the answer: "DVD Recorder with 160GB Hard Drive". I would guess it takes analogue input but LiDL were never ones to put much in terms of specifics on their web site and seeing as it's white labelled Chinese muck you can't really get independent reviews of it.

St Senan

cast_iron wrote:

Seems like another cracking offer.

The best thing about these ALDI/LIDL electrical deals is the warranty.
No high street (or local) chains offer a 3 year warranty on this kind of stuff - for free.
Win win situation really!

Not really a win win situation, You get a 1 year warranty with a Targa, Medion or Tevion Product in the shop where it was bought the other 2 years you will have to either send or bring the item to the UK if its faulty
I would rather have Pioneer Sony or Samsung with a 1 year in shop Warranty

cast_iron

scaller wrote:

Not really a win win situation you get a 1 year warranty with a Targa, Medion or Tevion Product in the shop where it was bought the other 2 years you will have to either send or bring the item to the UK if its faulty
I would rather have Pioneer Sony or Samsung with a 1 year in shop Warranty

Interesting. Didn't realise this - i've never actually had the chance to return something to them.
Makes a bit of a mockery of the 3 year warranty then really - surely the point of purchase should be the point of return if there is a problem.

I see your point regarding prefering the Sony/Samsung 1 year warranty. I think I would probably stick to known brands too. Though it's the exactly same as ALDI/LIDL for the 1st year, but after that you pay for parts AND labour on repairs to Sony/Samsung items, and just postage for Targa, etc. I know postage will prob cost as much to uk, but when buying it that cheap you'll prob end up dumping it and buying a new (and better equipped) one just as cheap!

Can't speak for Samsung, but Sony parts are very expensive to replace, and in recent years (like them all), gone down in quality alot.
Sad part about it is the WEEE charge was intended to tackle this problem, but here in Ireland, in practice, the opposite has in fact occured.

Blaster99

Sony has a uniquely poor reliability image among major brands in the trade.

My personal experience with products from Aldi or Lidl has not been great, but they have a lot of fans out there so it can't be all bad.

pbirney

Stan 10 wrote:

What do you think of this DVD Recorder in Aldi on Sunday 21 May

http://www.aldi.ie/special_buys2/productnl_211.html

Palmerstown ALDI never received their supply

L1011

scaller wrote:

Not really a win win situation, You get a 1 year warranty with a Targa, Medion or Tevion Product in the shop where it was bought the other 2 years you will have to either send or bring the item to the UK if its faulty
I would rather have Pioneer Sony or Samsung with a 1 year in shop Warranty

Tevion picked the unit up for me, although they took an ETERNITY to send a replacement back.

Odd that they sent a replacement when it was just a dead HDD, though. Machine I sent back wasn't in a refurb/resellable state (top was scratched to death by the bottom of my LCD)

Benedict XVI

Exuce my ignorance on this but I saw on the Lidl add that the DVD Recorder has 'Timeshift, pause live TV', does this thing work in the same way as a SKY + box?
Can I set it to record and also pause and rewind tv as I watch.
I have the standard Sky pakage right now, no movies or sport'.
Can I just plug this thing in and it will do the same things as Sky +

watty

Not at same quality and with no automatic EPG.

It has to take a digitla signal that has been made to analogue back to digital and re-compress.

True Satellite, Cable and DTT PVRs have the HDD inside the receiver box and record the live digital data as it is and thus playback is the same as live.

The Analogue fed PVRs, even from analogue TV aerial can't compete on quality or on ease of use (no integrated program guide / EPG).

But essentially after the input is reconverted to digital the recording and playback is similar concept to Sky+, or other direct PVRs

Daavid

I think this is the Lidl one. http://www.targa.co.uk/cms/targa_2_646.php?produkt_id=413

I don't see mention of a USB connection back to PC which would've been nice.

Stan 10

Any one got any tips on setting this one up

Can get it to play ok but I want to transfer video to dvd

Stan

Skyuser

Stan 10 wrote:

Any one got any tips on setting this one up

Can get it to play ok but I want to transfer video to dvd

Stan

Get a scart a put the scart out in the video and scart in on the dvd. Thats how I set mine up on Sky. Although the pic looks a bit zoomed and I don't know how to change it yet.

Ulsterman 1690

(double post)

Ulsterman 1690

cast_iron wrote:

Sad part about it is the WEEE charge was intended to tackle this problem, but here in Ireland, in practice, the opposite has in fact occured.

Not sure I follow I thought the WEEE charge was to do with enviornmentally safe disposal rather than enhancing the economic feasability of repair the effect of which would be marginal and outweighed by the reqirements to use things like lead free solder which is causing the repair industry (whats left of it) a lot of headaches at the moment

RE: Warranties there are different types like
1) where the manufacturer is responsible for paying for the goods to be transported to/from the factory/repair centre
2) Where they send someoe to your home to repair the goods (rare)
3) Where the customer is responsible for shipping costs.

Warranty repairs are often done with reconditioned parts and warranty replacments (or swap outs) are often themselves reconditioned units (that used to belong to someone else). Occasionally one gets a brand new unit if no reconditioned units are available or it is a low cost item (where defective units just get binned)

Its pretty rare now for stores to become involved in the warranty process (Its too much trouble for most of them) but some "authorised distributors" for the major brandnames still do.

Needless to say when one buys something with a "x year warranty" the above process and which type of warranty one has is rarely explained (the sales people themselves probably dont know)

The warranty process as described above is not to be confused with the returns process under the sales of goods acts (where stores are required by law to offer a refund) which tends to be a much more short term (generally accepted as 28 days but not set in stone) arrangment

Hal1

Got one meself, there alright figured it out reading the manual had some trouble setting it up. It needs to be setup first like program the date and time then it tunes in the tv, its ready to go after that.

It doesn't have a hard-disk at all it takes dvd-r + dvd-rw of course.
Lots of audio and video inputs, audio in/out video in/out, s-video, scart etc.

channelsurfer

bought one on sunday. took a while to master it alright as its a bit complicated. Complaints are its slow to load and the picture quality even on playback of dvds with a new gold plated scart instead of the one supplied are poorish compared to the sony non-dvd recorder I have allready. Cheap at the price and does a job but then ya get what ya pay for so overall its good but dont expect excellence.

watty

It's the quality of the screening in the cable of the wires inside that sets SCART quality. The Gold is not helpful and if any dampness will attack non-gold socket.

Stan 10

Skyuser wrote:

Get a scart a put the scart out in the video and scart in on the dvd. Thats how I set mine up on Sky. Although the pic looks a bit zoomed and I don't know how to change it yet.

I have done that and I can record from the TV and the Set Top Box but I still can not copy the video to DVD. I dont no where I am going wrong

Stan

channelsurfer

thanks watty. The scarts I got were in Aldi as well in the same offer so no idea of the quality of the scart. didnt realise the gold made no difference. Anyway sure it will do me all I really wanted it was for to record from the tv which is handy.

cast_iron

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

Not sure I follow I thought the WEEE charge was to do with enviornmentally safe disposal rather than enhancing the economic feasability of repair the effect of which would be marginal and outweighed by the reqirements to use things like lead free solder which is causing the repair industry (whats left of it) a lot of headaches at the moment

From what i remember on the introduction of the WEEE charge (and little was said on this at the the time), the EU planned the WEEE charge to be on by the manufacturers. The theory was to encourage them to make more reliable products that would last longer (like the old days) because they would be the ones forking out for the disposal of it. It was an attempt to reverse the current trend of all goods becoming disposable too quickly.
But, this being Ireland and all that, the consumer gets shafted. The charge just got slapped straight onto the end user, hence making absolutely NO differnce to the manufacturer. A bit of a headache for retailers, but they can't claim anything off their suppliers.

Now on the enviornmentally safe disposal side of things it may well serve it's purpose, but in this case it's the retailer who gets shafted. He sees none of the WEEE fee charged, though he will have to deliver, for example, a new washing machine, load the old one into his van (possibly after up/down 2 flights of stairs!), take it away, store it for a week or so, then bring a load to his local assigned dump. And supposed to absorb this cost to compete?

And people wonder why we are a nation of begrudgers?:rolleyes:

Also, good point on the warranties. I think stores should be the number one port of call for returns/repairs. They sold you the item!! Also, the type of warranty should be clearly stated for all to see at time of purchase.

Ulsterman 1690

If the WEEE charge is an EU initative how come its only in Ireland (seemingly) at the moment.

Or is Ireland being used as a guinea pig like seems to have been the case with the smoking ban/bag tax etc

cast_iron

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

If the WEEE charge is an EU initative how come its only in Ireland (seemingly) at the moment.

Or is Ireland being used as a guinea pig like seems to have been the case with the smoking ban/bag tax etc

I wouldn't quite agree that we are "guinea pigs". That implies there is a higher power trying these issues out on us. Quite a theory, though not impossible. One for the conspiracy theorists!

The WEEE directive came in in January 2005. Ireland was one of the first to introduce it (August '05), others will follow.

bmaxi

anybody have trouble setting this up through a satellite system? I've tried to set up both sky and Lidl systems using scart but keep getting " no channels found" when I scan. Am I missing something?

watty

Scan only works via aerial.

bmaxi

Sorry to be thick as a brick but how can you tell what you are recording if you can't see a picture on the screen, or is this a different question?

Charles Slane

bmaxi wrote:

Sorry to be thick as a brick but how can you tell what you are recording if you can't see a picture on the screen, or is this a different question?

I'm just guessing here (because it's hard to tell without seeing the recorder, satellite and TV set-up), but I'd guess that your satellite receiver (is it a Sky system?) should be connected by a scart cable to your DVD recorder. Make sure your satellite receiver is tuned to a channel that you'll immediately know is from the receiver. Your DVD recorder should then be connected by scart to your TV.

Can you can see the output of your DVD recorder on your TV? If so, there should be a button on the DVD recorder remote control allowing you to switch the input (on some remotes it's actually called "input"). When you press this it should switch between the tuner on the DVD recorder and any scart inputs that are plugged into it and that input should be the picture that then appears on your TV screen.

Sounds a bit comlicated but I hope it helps.

channelsurfer

having both the dvd recorder and went through the same problem what charles is saying it correct. at the very bottom left of the remote control is a button called input. hit this until scart comes up then it should work. make sure the sky box is connected to the dvd recorder via a second scart.

bmaxi

Spot on lads, the button is actually called source on my remote you've saved me fromtearing out what lillle hair I have left, thanks.