Date: September 16th, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Gateway
<--SHOP FOR A HOME THEATER DVD RECORDER HERE

PRODUCT PICTORIAL & WALKTHROUGH

Although I could probably completely fill 20 or so pages with details on all the features contained within this recorder, I will boiling the list down considerably to what I found will be interesting to the reader and potential buyer.

The left side of the front panel houses the DVD tray and the unit's power button. The tray mechanism is very quick to open and the movement is smooth and consistent.

The right side of the front bezel is the unit based controls along with the front A/V inputs. Everything is extremely simple and kept to an absolute minimum for less confusion. Let's be honest though, with a remote handy, there is no real need to use them anyway unless you run out of battery power and you are in a bind.

The front A/V inputs consist of a direct DV connection along with the standard composite inputs. Now at first I thought, front DV connection, why do I need that? Then it dawned on me. What the direct DV connection allows you to do is digitally record your DV camcorder movies directly to DVD without the hassle of worrying about importing them to you computer. That's it, plug the camcorder in, record the movies directly to DVD and you are done. This is a fantastic feature that had me recording my home movies faster than I could have ever dreamed of when using a computer. Absolutely FANTASTIC feature.

The front display is your standard LED display that illuminates the media you are using, the channel you are on, the time etc. much like any other VCR or DVD player on the market.

The rear connections are extremely simple to use install and configure.

TV:

The built in TV NTSC RF modulator allows you to directly patch your cable TV through along with allowing you to coaxially connect an older mono VCR for older video recording to DVD.

AV IN:

The AV In portion is comprised of a S-Video and full composite set of A/V connections for patching in other sources like that old laser disc player taking up so much room in you home theater center.

AV OUT:

The AV Out is made up a full set of component video outputs for your HDTV, a standard composite set of A/V outputs along with a S-Video and composite/optical digital audio outputs.

Very straight forward and very easy to setup and install.

The included remote control is also just as easy to use why recording DVDs, changing TV channels or scrolling through the on screen menus. One thing I found as a fault it that some of the buttons are quite small and a little too close together. Larger channel changing buttons for example in the top left hand section of the remote are two buttons that really need a size increase. Other than that, the buttons are well labeled and respond very well. If you know how to use a standard TV remote control, you won't have any trouble with this one.