The most immediately apparent thing about the DVR-520H is its extremely slim design. We´d pretty much become resigned to the fact that hard drive equipped DVD recorders were chunky little numbers, but the DVR-520H proves that theory wrong. At 5.9cm high it´s got a lower profile than many standalone DVD players. Basic controls are situated on the front of the player, along with a blue or orange light to indicate whether the system´s in hard drive or DVD disc mode.
The remote for the DVR-520H is laid out well, but it´s also extremely busy, which may prove a little daunting on first examination. It also makes it harder to replace with a universal remote, unless you plump for a higher-end model capable of replicating the fifty-odd buttons on the remote.
Features:
The DVR-520H comes with an 80GB hard drive, good for just over 100 hours of recording. It supports four different recording modes, from fine, which will give you one hour of high quality video on a single layer DVD-R/RW disc, to EP, which will cram six hours onto a disc at greatly reduced quality. The DVR-520H only supports –R/RW discs, making it a slightly less appealing option than players that support the plus format as well – but as long as you´re careful buying disc blanks that shouldn´t be too much of a problem.
Like other hard disc equipped recorders, the DVR-520H supports chase play – where you start watching a program before it´s finished recording – and it´s possible to dub material recorded on the hard drive onto a recordable DVD disc – and even the reverse, subject to any copyright enforcing features like macrovision. The 520H features high speed dubbing to discs – up to 8x, although there´s a catch with that, which we´ll discuss below.
When dubbing from hard drive to disc, it´s possible to reduce quality, so if you´ve recorded at fine quality but realise you only want to dub to one disc, you can downgrade – but not upgrade, of course. The catch with re-encoding on the fly is that you can´t use the DVR-520H´s high speed dubbing mode at the same time – it can only handle re-encoding in real time, which could prove laborious for longer recordings.
Performance:
As a player, we´ve got virtually no complaints against the DVR-520H, which performed well with every bit of media we threw into it. As a basic disc recorder, too, it´s not too shabby, aside from its inability to handle DVD+R media. That´s not a terrible problem, but given that other recorders do manage cross +/- compatibility, it makes the DVR-520H a less compelling option than it otherwise would have been.
We tested the DVR-520H´s hard drive recording in all quality modes. At fine (1hr/disc) and standard (2hr/disc) modes it produces good quality visuals and audio, even with fast action scenes. Move further down the quality chain, though, and as is the case with most recorders you´ll see more digital rubbish onscreen, especially with anything that involves lots of motion.
The DVR-520H can handle using both sides of its hard drive/DVD disc functionality simultaneously, so it´s possible to watch content on the hard drive while recording onto a disc, for example. Our tests with this went flawlessly, and it´s a great feature to have, especially to avoid family arguments about what to watch, both now and later.
Remember how we mentioned the catch with high speed dubbing of discs? Well, the catch is that you must have discs that are both rated for up to 8x recording, and recognised by the DVR-520H as such. We tested with some quality media that worked flawlessly in this regard, but switching over to some more cheap and cheerful discs resulted in the player switching to real-time mode only. That´s a limitation that any DVD burning drive will have – and the alternative of being able to ‘force´ discs to record would leave you with a big pile of coasters – but it´s still worth keeping in mind.
