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Samsung DVD-VR357

Sun, Jan 6, 2008

Samsung DVD-VR357 Review:

Samsung DVD-VR357 - We delayed several years buying a DVD-R because so many models had mixed good/bad reviews. Finally when our DVD player died we moved up to this DVD/VHS double recorder. It doesn’t have a ‘tuner’ - it expects some form of cable/dish tv input - but we haven’t used an antenna in 10-15 years, so that didn’t matter to us at all.

1) Ease of use. There are multiple types of DVD (DVD+R, -R, -RW, +RW etc). There are extra steps with most, to “initialize” the disk and to “finalize” the disk. But the Samsung DVD-VR357 will do most of these steps automatically if you want to. It will also make automatic chapter titles every 5 minutes.

2) Works with hard disk recorder. We have a hard disk recorder with our cable system and I’ve heard some DVD-R are extremely finicky about recorder. Samsung DVD-VR357 seems to record anything so far that is on the hard disk recorder of the cable system.

3) Compatibility with older equipment. We’ve tried both DVD+R and -R and they have always played on our DVD-PC, and most have played on a four year old plain DVD player in the house. Apparently no recorder generates a home DVD disk that plays on every machine always. This one seems pretty good.

4. Advantages of DVD-R. Obviously, the DVDs are vastly smaller than VHS and you can use them in portable players, laptops on airplanes, etc. There are four record fidelities. 1 HR, 2 HR, 4 HR, and 6or8 HR. (Double each if you use more expensive double layer DVDs). We have a routine old TV set, and the 1 HR and 2 HR modes are visually the same. 4 HR is a little fuzzy, and 6/8 HR is noticeably fuzzy, but better than 6 hr VHS for sure. At best it’s probably not quite as good as commercial DVDs but neither were home recorded VHS tapes. It does take a while to recognize any DVD (commercial or home-made, maybe 20-30 seconds; apparently it has more to “think” about than a regular old dvd player).

5. In/Out cables. Samsung DVD-VR357 has a wide array of input/output cable types, including HD cable output (but it is *not* an HD recorder).

6. Bells and whistles. When you are finishing a disk, for example, it will have 2 one hour shows on it. The Samsung DVD-VR357 DVD will open with two little pictures of the first image of each show. You can get into a menu with 26 letters and scroll around and pick out a title for each track, if you want. Tedious but possible. There is one-button copy between DVD and VHS, assuming it is not a commercial and copy protected DVD or tape source.

7. Disappointment. The Samsung DVD-VR357’s box says “plays MP4″ and the manual “plays .AVI video.” We could not get any home videos in these formats to play. Would be great to solidify this feature in a later model. Does play standard audio CDs and MP3s-on-CD.

7. Summary. The world of DVD-R is a little more complicated than VHS recording but this model automates most of the options if you want it to, like auto-initialize and auto-finalize. DVD-Rs are compact, take on airplane etc, and cost as little as a quarter for blanks if you buy a large spindle. We’re quite happy with the visual quality but we have a routine old tv and routine cables, we are not video experts or HD people.

—– By Bruce_in_LA

Samsung DVD-VR357 Features