Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 17 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.
With the new HD TiVo in place, it was also time to consolidate the rest of the home theater in the media closet. This meant it was finally time to retire the 4-head Goldstar VCR my wife had bought back in 1995! But I wasn’t quite ready to drop VHS altogether (we still have a lot of old tapes laying around). Since the S3 had replaced my Toshiba TX20 in the media closet, that meant no more DVD player either. So, based on a good review in Consumer Reports I purchased the Samsung DVD-VR335 DVD/VHS recorder.
This combo unit combines an upscaling (over HDMI) DVD recorder with a 4-head VHS deck. You can copy back and forth between DVD and VHS and it supports just about every DVD format out there (including dual-layer but not including the new HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats, of course). It’ll also play DivX files. I’ve already used it a few times to burn HD shows from the S3 onto DVD. Of course, it’s not HD on the disc (the S3 feeds the Samsung over S-Video and composite audio), but the quality is better than the TX20.
My VR335 had to go back to Samsung for repair (bad power supply) so I replaced it with the newer VR357. The only difference between the two is the VR357 lacks a tuner (which I never used anyway).
What is it with Samsung and power supplies? Just over four years later and my VR357 won’t power on anymore, just like the VR335! I can’t remember the last time I actually used it, what with my TiVos and Netflix streaming, but it’s annoying that it would just die out of the blue with little use. It’s way out of warranty by now, so I guess I’ll just recycle it and then wait and see if I need a replacement. This could be an excuse to get a Blu-ray player, but since I hardly play DVDs anymore that might just be a waste of money.