Setup and basic machine operation

The manual gives very clear and comprehensive diagrams of the various ways of attaching the audio-visual cables to fit the DVDR3480 into pretty much any home entertainment setup. Not everyone will want to record from analogue TV, but nevertheless we attached the RF coaxial cable coming from a domestic aerial. Note that if you’re in the UK this can be exactly the same aerial cable as supplies a Freeview receiver, because the signals travel in the same wire and most Freeview boxes have an RF out socket to enable the signal to be ‘looped-through’ to the recorder (which in turn loops through up to the TV aerial socket).

In our main test setup, we also wanted to record directly from cable and the Freeview PVR set-top box output (i.e. not to be limited to the 5 UK aerial analogue transmissions), so connected them all with SCART cables in a similar loop-through arrangement between their respective external IN and external OUT RGB SCART sockets.

Analogue aerial connections:    Aerial -> Freeview PVR -> DVDR3480 -> TV

RGB SCART connections:   Cable box -> Freeview PVR -> DVDR3480 -> TV

For completeness we should mention that we used the S-Video output of the recorder to take the screenshots for this review. The resolution and colour balance in the images below are just to give an idea of the screen and menu layouts, and do not really do justice to the superior display on a TV when using the RGB-out connection.

Tuning to analogue TV

When you switch the unit on for the first time, it enters an automatic setup routine which includes tuning to the local analogue TV reception. However, we’ll just look briefly at the manual procedure because it shows the stages more clearly.

Pressing the <SETUP> button on the remote, then selecting ‘Tuner’ produces the following screen:

Select ‘Auto Search’ tells the machine to search for analogue channels, store them, and return to the menu.

Tuning is very quick, taking only a few minutes to scan the UK TV broadcast spectrum. The recorder offers the chance to manage the channels it has found, by selecting ‘Manage presets’ from the tuner section:

The options for organising the channels or fine tuning their reception are self-explanatory and also addressed in the user manual.

Mini-verdict

Overall we found this to be one of the easiest recorders yet to set up, even in manual mode. The cable diagrams in the book are simple to follow and yet cover a multitude of home entertainment connections. Once turned on, the screen menus are exceptionally clear and intuitive to use. The idea of ‘tabbed’ pages to display the various setup options is well implemented on the DVDR3480 and certainly a further improvement on previous Philips recorders.

Making an immediate DVD recording from analogue TV

The first thing is to say that we found the estimates in the manual of how much a DVD could hold were slightly different from what the recorder reports as free recording time when you put in a disc. This is a summary of what we found:

Although a few minutes here and there doesn’t seem much on the single layer discs, with double layer from SP onwards you might expect another 20 minutes recording time and it could make the difference between choosing a reduced quality mode when not completely necessary. Some of the official estimate could be accounted for by the variable bitrate, which would tend to use more capacity when recording fast-moving video sources; but on the whole if you don’t record this type of thing then you should expect more recording time than Philips actually say in the manual.

Once you’ve chosen the appropriate mode to make a recording, insert a disc in the recorder tray. A small spinning disc icon appears in the top left-hand corner of the TV screen while the recorder assesses what type of disc it is. The disc class is then briefly displayed and the icons disappear.

Factory default recording quality is set to ‘SP’, but this can be altered before you start recording, in two ways:

• Short way: Press the <REC MODE> button on the remote, which shuffles through the 6 quality modes by showing little icons on-screen.
• Long way (and to set/change the machine default): Press the <SETUP> button and change the recording mode from there:

To start making a recording of a programme currently on the display, just press the <REC> button on the remote: this is the so-called ‘One-Touch Record’ (OTR) facility. The recorder will start with a brief on-screen message summarising the settings.

If you want to limit the time for this immediate recording mode – which otherwise carries on until the end of the disc is reached – you press the <REC> button again. This firstly limits the recording time to 30 min, and each successive press increases it by another 30 min. The maximum is 6 hours, providing there is enough space on the disc.

The recording can be stopped at any time, after which there is a brief pause while the recorder updates the disc with the recorded information.

Disc menu of recordings

If you want to watch what has just been recorded, press the <DISC> button on the remote. Another nice-looking menu is displayed with thumbnails of the recordings on the disc and various details of each on the right-hand side. In the screen below, the top left recording is selected and the details on the right are: programme recorded from BBC1 on the 15^th March at 9.15am; length of recording is 10 min at HQ quality (approximate size of 600 MB).

Below that is the remaining capacity of the disc after accounting for these six recordings: if HQ is needed then there’s just over 37 minutes (or approx 2.5 GB) remaining. Changing the recording quality to something lower should increase this capacity; and pleasingly, pressing the <REC MODE> button on the remote updates this information straight away for the new quality setting.

Selecting a recording to watch is easily done using the arrow buttons on the remote, after which the currently selected icon becomes a motion thumbnail with an emphasised border. The motion continues well into the recording, rather than the common limit of the first 10 or 20 seconds, so it’s possible to identify a recording by watching the thumbnail for a minute or two. In fact – although we didn’t actually test this – you can probably watch the whole program from the thumbnail if you want.

Don’t forget if you want to watch the +R or –R recordings you‘ve made on a different player or recorder, the discs must first be manually finalised from the ‘Setup’ menu. Finalising of the discs seems quick and takes little more than a minute, except for the DL discs which can take a couple of minutes.

Finalising doesn’t apply to the rewriteable formats +RW and –RW: amazingly the DVDR3480 seems to both auto-format and auto-finalise the -RW to DVD-Video.

Mini-verdict

Overall this DVD recording process is superbly implemented in the DVDR3480, in no small part due to the intuitive menus. It is simple to use and we would guess be easy for most people to get used to very quickly. The disc updating procedure after the recording finishes is pretty quick, and the on-screen information is relevant and concise. Similarly, choosing playback of the recordings is made exceptionally easy with the motion thumbnails, especially where a series recording has been made and all episodes starting off almost the same.

Recording from external inputs

This is pretty much the same as for recording from the analogue transmissions, except that you have to select the correct input for the recorder using the <SOURCE> button on the remote. Each button press cycles through the two options of ‘CAM’ (the front panel IEEE1394 (FireWire) digital input) or ‘EXT2’ (the rear SCART connector carrying RGB) and then back to the analogue TV reception.

Note that there is no S-Video input, with the standard DIN socket at the back being an output only. The front USB port is playback only and not available as source for recording.

Timer recording

The DVDR3480 allows up to 7 timed recordings to be stored at once, as long as the projected recording times from first to last are within the same month’s time-frame (ie not a particular calendar month). In most cases this will not be a problem, except for those who might be going away for longer than that, or who want to make more than 7 recordings in their absence. However the timer does allow for repeat recordings at the allocated time settings, and which will still only count as one entry in the timer schedule.

Unfortunately there is no facility to take advantage of VPS/PDC (the analogue recording signal that is broadcast to allow late adjustments in programme delivery). Nor is there a VideoPlus facility, so all timer settings have to be manually entered.

The timer menu has the same menu colour theme as the others, but is in table form rather than tabbed. Pressing <TIMER> button on the remote shows the blank table, and pressing the <OK> button starts to add information into the first line:

As indicated by the small triangle-shaped arrows, you can use the <UP>/<DOWN> arrow keys on the remote to change the parameters at each step; alternatively the number keys on the remote can be used if the suggested entries are a long way off what you want. Using the <RIGHT> and <LEFT> arrow keys moves along the line of the table to enter or change the information about the timed recording. When you’re happy, pressing <OK> again enters the data as a timer entry and starts the next one.

The DVDR3480 allows timed recording from all its inputs, so you can set a timer to record from a cable or Freeview box by selecting ‘EXT2’ as the source. Similarly, you could make a timed recording from a DV camera via the front IEEE1394 FireWire input (select ‘CAM’ as the source). Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, you can’t select the front USB socket as an external input.

Once you start to add a few entries, it’s possible to accidentally over-run the disc space available. In this case the machine will prompt you to remember to change discs if necessary. Alternatively you can use the ‘AUTO’ setting for record quality in the timer entry, where the recorder will automatically select the best mode depending on disc space (note that this is NOT like a fit-to-space function of some recorders, where the bitrate is optimised in a continuously variable way, but merely selects one of the 6 predetermined recording quality modes). It is also possible to disable a timer entry without removing it from the list; say if you don’t want to use it one particular week or to have it excluded from the calculation of disc space.

Here’s an example of a semi-populated timer, with many different alternatives selected:

Mini-verdict

The timer facility is clearly laid out and easy to use. The on-screen table format helps enormously in locating booked recordings. However because setting a timer is more intensive on the use of the remote control buttons, the sponginess of the arrow keys became more obvious and a bit irritating for this particular procedure. Lack of VideoPlus is a minor concern but perhaps left out to keep the costs of the recorder low.