I bought this as a replacement for an old DVD player, thinking the record feature might come in handy. It plays DVD's just fine, I agree it is a bit slow as others have mentioned for the loading and such, but not a big deal. Eventually I started using the record feature to record off old tapes and off tv, that's when I discovered all the problems.

1 - the machine would get very hot, I was afraid to use it for too long. I looked around the box, there is no evidence that this "burner" has a fan in it. I have set up an oscillating fan up that blows over my machine to keep it cool now.
2 - The DVDR freezes up sometimes, to the point I have to pull the plug and start over.
3 - Setting the timer record for the tv only works sometimes, leaving me very frustrated when I miss my favorite shows when they are on too late for me. In the times that it did work, there were skips and flutters in the recording when I played it back.
4 - I tried the One Touch Record... Read more

There are so many things wrong with this deck, but these are the three things that are most infuriating to me:

1. If you burn a DVD on an Apple computer using iMovie, and you try to play it on this machine, it won't work.

2. When you press the eject button, it takes literally about 5 seconds for the tray to come out. I've owned cheapo, $50 DVD players that operated more smoothly. Everything on this one seems to take longer, as if the machine is thinking about things before it decides to do what you want it to do.

3. If you want to use the DV-to-DVD feature -- that is, burning a DVD from a DV camera hooked up by Firewire -- be prepared to have LOTS of failed discs. I've spent several afternoons just trying to get one smooth burn of a DV tape.

I've had pretty good luck recording stuff directly from cable TV, but that's the only reliable feature. And if you think about it, that's the bare minimum that this machine is supposed to do... Read more

Granted, this product records well, but everything seems to take forever. I stand around waiting for startup, I stand around even longer for Open/Close (that's what really gets to me). And now, after 8 months, every other disc I play makes a tremendous noise, as though it is off balance.

Don't do it! Shop around.