The dubbing feature from the HD to the DVD burner is a little slow (it's actually 1x mode) unless you activate highspeed dubbing, but has a neat timing feature where you can schedule a dub from HD to DVD in the future. I pop the DVD in when I go to bed and it's ready to pop into a stand alone DVD player when I wake up. I was so happy to see that the DVD-R played in my 6 year old Sony DVPS-550S player!!!

My biggest beef is the lack of editing support. You can edit scenes, add chapters, and move things around but the menu is clunky and it take for ever to change the name of a title with the remote control. I now burn to DVD -RW, finalize the disc, and dump it onto my PC for advanced editing and then reburn to -R disc. I was debating on whether I needed a HD unit or not. A HD makes it a lot easier to use the unit as a VCR, which I have started to do.

Overall, VERY satisfied with this unit. I was lucky to get it on Amazon for 379!!!

Great machine (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Finally something that can replace your VCR and do more. Easy to use once you figure out all the steps. Be sure to read the manual.

Best deal going. (Rating: 5.00)
Review : The DV-HR300U is a fabulous product. VERY easy to setup and use. The manual can look a bit intimidating at first, but it is fairly well written for as much as it's trying to cover and if you are at all comfortable just diving in and pressing buttons, then the manual becomes more of a reference book since the on screen prompts are pretty much self-explanatory. Sharp isn't usually known as being the best in home A/V, but I have to say this unit seems to be built quite nice (the remote is absolutely hideous though) and it's features and performance are on a par with any of the "higher end" manufacturers. I haven't had any trouble recording to HDD or DVD, everything works just like it should, right out of the box. I suspect that if you are having as much trouble as some seem to have you might have a bad machine, as everything I have tried so far (recording from satellite, and camcorder to HDD then dubbing to DVD) has worked flawlessly and the picture and sound have been spectacular. It will not copy commercial, copy-protected DVD's (or VHS, I suspect) by itself...if that is your intention, you'll need one of the devices by Sima to bypass the macrovision (or one of the old APEX DVD players), or use your PC for copying DVD's and keep all the menus and extras. I bought this when the price was $379, but even at $449, it's a heck of a deal, especially when compared to the similar Panasonic models or the TiVo with DVD-R and there is no monthly fee. Easier than most VCRs to program to record. If you think you want/need it, get it, you'll probably like it.

Good buy, but a few catches (Rating: 3.00)
Review : Overall, I'm very happy with this machine. As a movie buff, it really has increased my intake of moviewatching. There are some great and innovative features that made this a HUGE step up from owning a VCR and DVD player for home entertainment. But there are a few drawbacks I've found not to my liking, so really it's a matter of perspective of what you want out of it.

As far as the hard drive recorder goes - AWESOME! The ability to record and simultaneously playback is a standard option with DVR's, and this one is no exception. You have standard recording speeds (FINE, SP, LP, EP) and you can also manually select from 32 grades in between. I find pretty good results between SP and LP without too much noticable picture loss and likened it to VHS on its best day. Last week I put one of my laserdiscs onto a DVD and then watched it projected on a big screen. The quality was deplorably soft, and this was at one notch below SP. We watched the rest of the film on the TV and it looked fine, just beware.

The ability to dubdown movies from the hard drive onto DVD is another plus, but don't be looking for any fancy menu authoring options on that score - it's very simple and basic stuff at best. Most disappointing to me is the fact that it can't create a thumbnail menu of chapter stops on a DVD, but it can on the hard drive. ON the plus side - High speed dubbing of titles from hard drive to DVD is really sweet. It takes me 15 minutes to dub down a two hour title onto DVD - just note that you have to record that title in High-speed dubbing mode or you can't do it. No matter - we're used to dubbing in real time so it's no biggie.

Another major flaw is the lack of ability to see time remaining during playback. I absolutely don't understand this oversight - you can only view the total time played during playback and total chapters. Weird and annoying for me.

Note that at the best speed (FINE) you can only record one hour onto a DVD-R. Hollywood DVD's are actually twice the size of DVD-R's you can buy in the store as they have two layers of data. So if you want pristine quality on your DVD's, your movie better be under 60 minutes otherwise you'll just have to live with recording at the SP speed, which is good but certainly not flawless. I don't consider this to be a flaw with the recorder - it's just where technology is at and most consumers are unaware of this fact.

The timer recording functions are fine. I have a cable box so I can't record on one channel while viewing another, but the ability to playback elsewhere on the hard drive while recording (as mentioned above) is a huge plus. My cable box does have a built-in timer, so I can program to record on multiple channels if need be.

Couple other notes on speed - the boot time of this machine lags a bit. Often takes 20-30 seconds before I can do anything, which is a little irritating to put up with, but this is a low-end computer so oh well.

I love that there's a 4-pin firewire input. Alas, it's only an input so the fleeting dream of hooking up additional hard drives to maximize the recording space was quick. You know they could easily make these units expandable, but that's probably too much power in the hands of the consumer for their liking. With maximum quality selected (FINE), you will get a max of 20 hours on the 80 GB hard drive.

I don't think DVD recorders have been "dumbed down" to being all that intuitive and user-friendly. I caught on fairly quickly with this machine, but I kept on referring to the manual during those first two weeks trying to figure out how to do certain things (like view remaining time on a DVD title, say).

On the whole, though, I am happy with this machine. I know I've dwelled on the negative, but other than those issues, it has worked as promised. I've been watching a lot of movies as a result and archiving some of my old VHS's and for that it's invaluable. If you have the cash and desire, go for it, otherwise I'd wait until they make them cheaper, faster, more intuitive and bigger hard drive space.

***ADDENDUM ON 7/7/04***
Few things realized since I wrote this that warrant notice. First, you can dub from hard drive to DVD just about anything, but you can only dub from a DVD to the hard drive if the DVD was recorded with this machine and not finalized. Kinda helpful, huh? Even if you have a DVD that you created yourself of your own movies or someone elses, you won't be able to go from DVD to HD.

Also, I was infuriated with creating chapter stops on a DVD with this machine. I could not figure out a way to go from a program on the HD to DVD with chapter stops that I had created using their chapter marker features. Well, turns out that the only way to do it (from my experience of trying just about everything) is that chapter marks will transfer only if the original program is recorded with High Speed Dubbing Priority. You cannot do a DVD dub with preselected chapter stops with Rate Conversion Dubbing - only Hi Speed mode. Why? Who knows, but it's better than nothing.

Great machine but..... (Rating: 4.00)
Review : This Sharp DVD recorder is fairly easy to use and works well with one exception. If you are at all interested in recording channels 56-60,you may be out of luck. On both machines I got, (great service by Amazon getting me a replacement) the channel automatically changes to one of the Line inputs so channels 56-60 will not record. Sharp is aware that "some of their machines" have this issue, but there is not a recall at this time. They suggested that I could send it into them for repair. They do not seem to have nailed down how many bad ones are out there. Since I am 0/2, I have decided to keep shopping.