I first bought this recorder but returned it when I found that it would not properly flag a widescreen recording as 16x9. In fact, not many recorders will. What happens is all images are recorded as 4x3 so if you set the recorder as 16x9, widescreen will be recorded squished and if you record as letterbox, it will record with black bars top and bottom.
Recently I re-purchased the 3505 because I discovered that if you use a RW disc, you can copy it to a PC and use the freeware Ifoedit to change the recording to 16x9 with letterbox and pan & scan enabled. Find the instructions on the Internet. Then re-burn to a new disc. This way, it will show widescreen on a widescreen TV and letterbox on a 4x3. I prefer to set it on Pan & Scan since the image looks like a regular TV image and won't have to worry about re-flagging the recording.
The SDTV tuner is excellent.
Make sure you go to the Philips website and download the latest firmware that is supposed to address the memory problems. My machine was made in Feb 2007. When I tried to do the firmware update, I noticed that the original firmware version was greater than the update so I didn’t do it. My machine retained the stations even when I had it unplugged for several days. I only had to reset the clock (needs resetting after 30 seconds of no power per the manual).
I had some problems with a +RW 2.4x but had success with +RW 4x and –RW 2x.
Overall, I like this recorder very much. Very good price compared to other SDTV recorders.
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