LG RHT599H 500GB HDD DVD Recorder with Freeview+

Received this today. Very well packaged, promptly delivered and a good price (£14 less than when I first checked it out a couple of weeks ago) - £190. Bought to replace our vintage LG VCR/DVD player which still works fine but is hopelessly out of date now, and a bit of a brick. Setup was very straightforward. We have Virginmedia so it was just a case of unplugging the old VCR and plugging this one in. It automatically searched for channels but once it had found the cable feed I stopped it looking further. Although it has Freeview+ built-in we won't be using it unless Virgin wacks the subs up too high! There are tons of bells and whistles so we started by just making sure we had it connected up correctly so as to see TV this evening with the recorder turned on and turned off (i.e. pass through). No problem. We then tried a brief recording just to learn how to do it and, again, it's very straightforward as long as you read through the relevant bit in the brief but sufficient manual. Frankly, once you've set up one recording it's pretty much second nature and logical. One pleasant surprise was the lack of tape noise (obviously!). 500Gb seems loads of space (compared to our old 3 hours max) but I'm sure we'll soon be filling it with all sorts of stuff. Next step will be burning to DVD. A very neat, trim piece of kit. If I can work out how to do it I will update this review as we try out all its capabilities over the next few weeks. update 6th April, 2013 Continuing to work well. Copying (dubbing) to DVD very simple and fast - as long as you remember to set it to the 'fast' option. I set my first DVD copy to SP (standard play) so it played the recording and dubbed it in real time. My second one took about 4 minutes for a recording of about 1hr 40mins. The timeslip feature is very good. Once you start recording, if you missed the beginning then, as long as the recording is at least 15 seconds into the programme then you can get it to play it from the beginning while it continues to record the rest of the programme. I used Amazon generic blank DVD+R disks. Formatting was straightforward, page 26 of the little manual, as was finalising. Both recorded DVDs run fine on the player and on my PC.

I bought two of these machines and they are absolutely brilliant. I just love them. They can record up to around two thousand hours at a low quality setting which is not visually great, but may be useful for low-cost security purposes. However if you set it correctly, it can record over 500 hours of high quality recordings. The programing could not be easier, just look up what you want to record in the program guide and press 'record'. When doing it this way, the machine sometime makes mistakes, so after setting a recording time from the guide, go into 'TIMERS' and highlight what you selected, the program title will be shown, then extend the start and finish times. When you do this, the program title will disappear but this does not matter as you can re-enter it after the recording is complete. Of course, you can enter what you want to record straight into 'TIMERS'. It is possible to cut/add/move edit anything which has been recorded and it can also burn to DVD anything you have recorded that you want to archive, therefore super-good for the home-movie buffs. If a retailer can supply me with more of these LG RHT599H 500GB HDD DVD Recorders with Freeview+ at the price I paid for the first two, contact me, I want two more.

I WAS A BIT DUBIOUS ABOUT BUYING THIS UNIT AFTER READING SEVERAL REVIEWS ABOUT IT. OK, I'V HAD IT ABOUT A MONTH AND TWO THINGS STAND OUT AS GRIM; THE WAITING TIME BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENS AFTER PRESSING THE KEY PAD IS PAINFULLY SLOW, SEVERAL TIMES I THOUGHT THE UNIT HAD RETIRED FOR THE DAY. THE KEY PAD -- OH DEAR! OK FOR CHILDRENS FINGERS BUT VERY FRUSTRATING FOR A GROWN MALE. THE KEYS ARE TOO SMALL, MUCH TOO SMALL. HOWEVER, GOOD POINTS OUTWEIGH THE BAD; EASY HDD RECORDING AND PLAYBACK, AS IS DVD, FIRST TIME SETUP DOES ITSELF, HDMI TAKES SEVERAL MINUTES, PLENTY OF ONSCREEN INFORMATION, EXCELLENT SIZE HDD... AFTER READING REVIEWS OF A NUMBER OF OTHER RECORDERS AND THEIR DOWNFALLS, I'M GETTING USED TO THE TWO GRIM POINTS OF THE 599H AND CONSIDER THE UNIT A VERY GOOD BUY.

We were looking for a replacement dvd recorder for the mother in law for christmas. This was set up before xmas for her but the hdmi lead did not turn up straight away so we used a scart cable. The picture and reception was not all that good. This could have been a communal arial problem. But I knew that the scart leads arent that fast. When the hdmi lead came I put it in for her and took out the scart lead and it worked very well great picture quality. She soon was able to go to the quick and easy recording mode as she is 82 and she can record now and delete things and still play her dvd collection. She is very pleased.

After buying an LG television, I thought I should buy the LG HDD DVD Recorder to keep it all compatible and invested in both at the same time. While the Electronic Programme Guide is useful for recording programmes, especially films, I discovered the editing facility completely let the HDD machine down! Every programme recorded has a second or so of a previous introduction or advert and the editing refuses to remove this! I then discovered that the films I recorded on channels like ITV, Channel 4 and Film 4 - where there are adverts - the editing, despite showing the start and end in the preview windows, actually fails to delete the channel cards advertising the name of the programme recorded during every advert break! Hence, I am very disappointed with LG. If you are looking for a machine where you can keep recordings and edit them then the LG RHT599H HDD DVD Recorder with Freeview+ (er Freeview+...?) should be avoided. If you just want something to record a soap on, and then delete afterwards, then the LG RHT599H is more than adequate. UPDATE: Three weeks after receiving this machine, the aerial connection failed and all I received was static on the screen. When I finally got a window to come up it wanted a password! Amazon very kindly allowed me to return the machine but then a friend suggested 'factory settings'. I did this and BINGO! everything was okay! BUT, a week later - TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS! - after recording movies and Merlin, when I went to watch the programme, despite saying it was 45mins in length (correct!) it only played a few seconds and said there was a hard disk error! I copied the programme to a DVD and - you guessed it! - DVD reading error! I am returning this HDD DVD Recorder to Amazon (who were very sympathetic and understanding - so a thousand thanks to their customer service team), which I should have done a week ago, and am looking for an alternative make - maybe go back to Sony! I just wished I hadn't also invested in the LG television, which I hope doesn't let me down over Christmas!!!

Bought this to replace my much missed Sony DVD recorder. It surprises me how few TV DVD recorders there are available now witha digital tuner. MOst seem to be discontinued in favour for HD digital recordings. Shame, the Sony worked well until covered with builders rubble. This does work reasonably well, but have to say, it's more complex to operate than the Sony. It does have a hard disk built in and it is probably easier, certainly less stressful to record onto onto the built-in hard disk and then dub onto a DVD. You are not then faffing about with different menus while the program is starting that you want to record. It should be easy to program a recording, but as (especially) BBC are notorious for not starting on time, you risk missing the start or end of a program. There are also some compatibility between the disks and some dvd players, which is frustrating, but it's better than nothing. The biggest drawn back is that it does not have an ethernet port to enable recording from on-demand tv services, which is a shame. But it's better than having no recording facilities at all. Soif this is all that's available, go for it if it provdes the functions you need.

This is the best HDD recorder I have ever seen ! records from the TV free view , the virgin box and the inputs on the front, ie video camera. Various qualities available for various tasks. The built in edit software is great, cut out the adverts, has an ultra slow speed for you to make sure you get it right every time, also split and combine features for all eventualities. The ability to write to DVD is always a good thing. you can record a series then put it on disk. or simply wipe as you prefer. Various record qualities are available to write to disk, whole series on one DVD if you wanted to !! Big HDD allows a lot to be recorded before you need purge. SP quality I recommend, Very high quality gives 248 hours of recording, plenty for the average user, and enough for the die hard like me !!!

This unit has had 2 glitches (failures) so far in the 4 weeks that I have had it. Like all combined DVD and HDD recorders it suffers from the odd glitch. It is NOT logical or intuitive to use once you get beyond a simple record a TV program. If you want logic and greater simplicity in use then buy a Panasonic. PROBLEM AREAS: On initial setup it failed to find and store all of the available Freeview channels (including the main ITV ones). But, on doing a full re-scan the unit did appear to find and store all available channels. It failed to record a BBC program (2nd of 4) set on series record. Other than a simple record (one off for one program) setting record from the guide is NOT intuitive and the various options are not explained in the brief instruction booklet. Series record does not show as such in the "Timer Recording" listing although it does (mostly) seem to work. So resist the temptation to edit it manually to specify "weekly" or "daily". If you cancel (delete) a series record in the "Timer Record" listing the item reappears in the list if there are still future programs available. You need to go to the next occurrence of the program in the guide and press "Record" again. This removes the record marker from the guide and deletes the entry from the "Timer Record" listing. Panasonic is much simpler! The response time for actions from the remote is a little slow, but id you are not a manic button presser then you can live with this. You cannot "MARK" items on DVD discs for multiple copying (dubbing) to the HDD. But you can "MARK" items on the HDD for mutiple copying to a DVD. GOOD POINTS: It is cheaper than an equivalent specification Panasonic and has a much greater variety of connectors than the newer Panasonic models. So if you want to record from other devices and are reasonable technically competent this is for you. The HDD at 500GB has more than enough storage for you to keep programs for months until you get around to viewing them. The quality of both picture and sound on recordings is excellent, and the up-scaling of DVDs is good. OVERALL: Providing the problems experienced so far do NOT increase it does not seem to be as bad as some of the worst reviews suggest. BUT, neither is it as good as the best reviews would suggest. Generally it seems (mostly) that it does what it is supposed to although it is awkward and illogical to use at times. But it does what it should (I hope). But as said above ALL of these combined DVD Recorder and HDD Recorder machines do have their own peculiarities and glitches. YES, we should expect better from these major manufacturers but I do not think we will get it unless we all STOP buying their goods until they get it right! Amendment to above (30/10/13) - having been away for a week and set 2 recordings I returned to find that this unit had NOT recorded either!! It appears to have locked up trying to perform a software download. Front panel showed OTA when switched on and screen showed software download which was not moving and stayed at around 25% complete. In set up I have unticked the "download in standby mode" option but only time will tell if this solves the problem. LG NEED TO REVIEW THE SOFTWARE OF THIS PRODUCT AND RELEASE A DEBUGGED VERSION VIA THEIR WEBSITE. All settings that are set to on by default should work and should NOT disrupt the operation of the unit. I NOW QUESTION IF THIS UNIT IS FIT FOR PURPOSE - IF IT CANNOT BE RELIED UPON TO RECORD PROGRAMS (IT's PRIMARY PURPOSE) THEN IT IS NOT. I HAVE NOW REDUCED MY RATING FOR THIS PRODUCT FROM 3 STARS TO 2 STARS.