|
There comes a time when you have to admit to yourself that there just isn’t enough room in your living room for all those shelf-sagging, retro looking videos anymore. But the last thing you want to do is re-buy them on DVD, and thanks to Samsung’s DR330 DVD/VCR combo you can convert them onto DVD, saving you a bundle.
Design
|
By owning the DR330, you are making your room look more stylish already, simply by getting rid of your VHS tapes, so it doesn’t really matter what it looks like. But for those of you who are techno-conscious, it is a nice looking piece of kit. The silver design doesn’t take up too much room, measuring in at 43 x 32.1 x 7.9cm and weighing 4.8kg. The DVD drawer is on the left and the VHS slot on the right. The LED screen is located centrally at the bottom of the player, and to the right of this you’ll find 6 control buttons.
|
| Features |
For ease of understanding we’ll divide the features between VCR and DVD. Starting with the features that are common to both, you can navigate around the easy menu system, which comes in 6 European languages, and here you can set a parental lock by choosing a password. The DR330 has a progressive scanner and Dolby Digital Output working concurrently with DTS digital output, taking care of the sound. Around the back of the machine you’ll find that it has coaxial and optical digital outputs. We like how Samsung have made the DR330 extremely compatible, by accepting CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, SVCD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD, CD, and Video CD. It also accepts many types of media including DVD-R and DVD-RW for recording. When searching for a certain scene we noticed that it has more searching speeds than normal, with 6 ranging from x4 to x128. It has 3 slow motion speeds too. You can record in four modes, including XP, SP, LP and EP. If you are anything like us, you will see a programme advertised and then forget all about it until everyone at work is talking about it the next day. Well now you don’t have to, as you can set up to 12 events for the following month. For music lovers, the DR330 supports WMA and MP3, and you can check out your holiday snaps as it supports M-PEG4. Ok, as we expected, the DVD features are more plentiful as there is obviously more you can do with a DVD. For example you can zoom into the picture by 2 and 4, and you can even select the camera angle. If you fancy brushing up on your French, you can watch your movies in many other languages, these come with subtitles too. For the VCR, just two features to mention and they are one-touch recording and auto-play. The DMR330 acts as a tuner for up to 99 channels, and comes with an antenna cable and a video/audio cable. We were let down by what the DMR330 had to offer in terms of connectivity. We expected to see a HDMI connection but all we got was a composite, S-video, and an analogue audio.
|
| Performance |
Without HDMI we thought we were going to be disappointed by the DMR330’s performance. However, we were pleasantly surprised. The progressive scanner and 3D noise reduction features really were worth their weight in gold as they helped the picture performance out no end. We connected it up to Sony’s W-Series 40” LCD, which we know provides a superb picture performance, giving us the opportunity to really put the DMR330 to the test. The poor black levels offered when watching a DVD concerned our first impressions, but once we had tweaked them slightly we were happier. There was no sign of any major picture noise, only a slight blur on some fast motion scenes. The easy-to-use menus made our life extremely easy, and converting from VHS to DVD was a doddle. Sound was truly faultless; we cranked it up and found dialogue to be crystal clear. Audio has powerful bass in all the right places too.
|
| Overall Opinion |
If this player had atleast one HDMI input it would be our new best friend, but it hasn’t so we’ll call it an acquaintance. The above-average picture performance and great audio was a pleasure to be a part of, and the fact that it's easy-to-use excited us too. For a reasonable price, you get a storage solution, DVD player and VHS player in one, and in our opinion, you couldn’t want for more.
|
| |
| By Lisa Malyon |
|
| |
