Philips CD Recorder - Piece of junk ??

[cjacek]

Hello,

2 weeks ago I bought a Philips CDR770 CD Recorder and have used it no more than a handful of times. The price was very attractive being only $200 Canadian dollars + tax. Anyway, even though I'm not a newbie when it comes to gear such as this I've encountered a problem. Recently the unit became "unresponsive" when it finished "finalizing" a disc. I had to turn the unit off and on again. Other times, some of the commands for erasing a disc, even though I followed the steps carefully, failed to respond. Only when I ejected the disc and then put it back in again did I manage to erase the cd. Now, I've read a couple of negative reviews before I bought the unit but I thought what the hell, the price is good and it's a Philips. They invented the cd and how unlucky can I get ? Now I'm wondering if I should take the unit back for a full refund ? Will it give me anymore problems ?? Has anyone experienced this type of problem with a Philips ? Has anyone any advice for me ? Should I ditch that piece of junk ? Problem is that there is no way I can find another cd recorder in this price range. What to do .. what to do ..

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

Daniel

 

[detuned6]

i feel your pain

I have the same burner(double deck) my buddy has the same problem w/ finalizing with his, it will gust sit there "waiting" after finalizing, he has to turn the unit off to finish.
Another thing getting Digital audio cdrs cost twice the price of pc cdrs.
Heres a problem i have with mine, i recorded my little demo on the phillips and made a copy whent to my friends house to make copys on his pc(becuse its 8x faster and cheaper) the dam pc will not read the 1st song, ok, maybe bad disk?, i tryed 4 copys, and my master copy. put the songs in differant order, And no dice -im pissed, my last idea is to make a copy on a cdr-w and try that. but i have a feeling it will not work either.
I dont whant to make like 50 copies on the phillips becasue i feel that i will be limiting the life on the thing. Then i will be fucked.
Tascam has a small burner in the $400 range. Other than that im stuck with this thing......................

 

[DDev]

Detuned - Your problem is because of this thing called serial copy management system (SCMS) that the lower end home recorders employ which puts a limit on your ability to copy CDs (something the record industry imposed on digital recorders). The higher end studio recorders, like the HHB's and TASCAM's bypass this. I think I've seen a thread somewhere here about how to get around this.

Darryl.....

 

[DDev]

I don't know how to post a link to a previous message, but...

Do a search on "scms" and look for the subject "need a good CD burner" originated by crgman from about a month ago.

Lots of good info in there.

Darryl.....

 

[sjjohnston]

SCMS

Whatever your problem is with playing a Philips-burned disk in your computer, I doubt it's SCMS: (i) SCMS doesn't restrict playing of disks, only recording and (ii) computers don't implement SCMS anyway (at least not any I'm aware of).

A Philips deck will follow the SCMS scheme. It will set the SCMS code on the disk appropriately ... but the computer won't even look at it (nor would any deck if all you're doing is playing). The Philips deck will also refuse to make a digital dupe of a disk with the SCMS code set to "no copies," but that's not relevant to your problem.

 

[detuned6]

Detuned - Your problem is because of this thing called serial copy management system (SCMS) that the lower end home recorders employ which puts a limit on your ability to copy CDs (something the record industry imposed on digital recorders). The higher end studio recorders, like the HHB's and TASCAM's bypass this. I think I've seen a thread somewhere here about how to get around this.

Darryl.....

I dont think thats the problem . I made a copy on the pc off a phillips made cdr brfore. The phillips stuff just does these weird things sometimes , unless its the disks. Not all burns are created equal(fuck you phillips) i guess you get what you pay for!

 

[rushfan33]

Yeah....basically from my experience they are a peice of runny dog crap. I had one that worked great for a while and then the night Geddy Lee's Solo Album was being featured on the radio, it took a shit on me. I had to buy another one just to record the broadcast that night and then I was going to take it back. I would've had to take it back anyway because the day after the broadcast it immediately started to flash "Service....Service....Service. I tried to do what the book says to do in these cases but it didn't help.

I'd say take it back and save your money....it's better to have nothing than to have a bad unit that works only when it wants to.



RF

 

[cjacek]

Thanks guys Yeah, I'm gonna take it back today ! It's strange but I was reading several reviews of the Philips CDR770 today and and at LEAST 2 people had that same problem with the player as I did. Seems to be some type of flaw in most of their players. Did I ever tell you I almost lost a finger when opening the cd drawer (Those who have the 770 will know what I'm talking about !). The drawer comes at you in a instant ! You have to be pretty fast to move out of the way !

Daniel

PS I'm thinking of getting the Roland-Edirol UA-1A. It's only like 100 bucks and will solve my mix-downs to my pc. Have you guys any experience with the UA-1A ? I assume that you could record in real-time with it ??

 

[Dave Brophy]

I recently researched the consumer double-deck CD recorders and saw lots of complaints about the Philips and Sony models.
The TDK model gets good grades.MARS music is selling the refurbished TDK for $200 usd.I bought a refurbed one from J&R Music in NYC,and it was about $200 shipped.
The model # is DA-3824.
I've done 30 or 40 discs on it so far and haven't had any problems.

 

[cjacek]

I recently researched the consumer double-deck CD recorders and saw lots of complaints about the Philips and Sony models.
The TDK model gets good grades.MARS music is selling the refurbished TDK for $200 usd.I bought a refurbed one from J&R Music in NYC,and it was about $200 shipped.
The model # is DA-3824.
I've done 30 or 40 discs on it so far and haven't had any problems.

Thanks for the info Dave. I think I'll look into the Edirol UA-1A after all.

Daniel