MDR865H HD DVR/DVD Recorder with Digital Tuner (Black)

Preliminary review. I just got this unit yesterday. I did a lot of research before buying this and asked questions of the community, read the reviews, etc. I consider myself fairly self sufficient with electronics, but sometimes instruction manuals that come with electronics are not written very well, and are oftentimes difficult to comprehend. One thing I have noticed with reviewers is disappointment reading editing capabilities. Before buying this unit, I asked if you could edit commercials. Thanks to the online questions and answers from wajo2 and Bates, I had the instructions with me today when I set up the machine. Setup was very easy. Again, I had read wajo2's instructions that I found through another retailer's Q & A's, so I was well prepared. It took no time to get the channels set into the unit (I am using this particular unit with a tabletop antenna and all but 1 channel- FOX for some reason) come in with a very nice picture. I did some "test" recording today and found that timed recording setup was very simple (once I figured outage remote control). I recorded a program to the HDD and it was perfect. then, I decided to try the twin tuner capability of the unit and recorded two shows at the same time. Again.. perfect recording. Nw, it was time to test editing. I had the printed instructions in front of me that wajo2 provided and after having a bit of difficulty getting chapters set, I was able to successfully edit out the commercials. I am sure that with time, the process will become much easier. What you have t do is go into the MENU and go through Chapter delete. First you create the chapters (I did this according to where I wanted the commercials deleted. You set markers and then move the curser to where the chapter is that you want to delete and simple delete it. It works great. So far, I am loving the machine. I got it mainly to watch and record and create DVD's of some of my favorite old shows that aren't available on DVD. Thanks to reading the instructions that were posted, I think this is going to be a great machine. I willed more after I have created my first DVD. So far, I am loving it.Update #1 (05/02/16)I have now had time to practice the "editing" feature, which is really chapter editing. I find this to be a fairly simple task. Those who have given poorer reviews based on this are hopefully aware of this feature. The problem is that the manual is written poorly, like most manuals nowadays. But, I am not going to take a "star" away based on a poor manual. If I did that, every product I buy that has a manual would have a bad rating.With some additional time to learn the unit, I have found that although the manual indicates that only DVD-R and DVD-RW are compatible, I actually used a +RW and it also worked. I will test a +R later.

I own both the Magnavox 867H and 868H (bought on Amazon). The two are identical except the 868 has 2TB of internal memory and the 867 has 1TB. There is a lot to be said about this DVR, particularly after I have read other reviews and corresponded with the manufacturer. FYI I also own a Magnavox MDR513H DVR, an earlier precursor of the 868H. The two do the same things but the 867H has a far larger internal memory of 1TB, while the 513H has less than 1TB of hard drive memory.For those of you who have said that the 867H cannot record in HD, you are wrong. First of all if you have a cable box, you must have HD (and most people do these days) or you are out of luck. But if you have an old cable box that only receives analog images, you cannot record in HD. For those recording over the airwaves you have to make sure: (1) your antenna can pick up HD signals; and (2) the program you are recording is broadcast in HD as many airwave signals are not in HD. Second, the 867H can record in five different quality levels. You must make sure you have set it to record in the highest quality level. That level is “DR” for live broadcasts or “FHD1" for transferring pre-recorded material to the 867H. For copying to a DVD disc the highest quality is HQ. Shame on the manufacturer (Funai Corp. of Japan) for having two different sets of names for the same five recording levels. They are in the 867H manual if you are confused.Many have commented that the 867H/868H cannot edit out scenes or commercials. You are correct and wrong at both the same time. The most powerful function of the 513H, in my opinion, was the very precise, and easy, way to take out scenes/commercials or other content from a recording. You can do this with the 867H/868H but it is more difficult. Why the manufacturer took out this very powerful function is a mystery to me since it already existed. Here is how you can edit with the 867H:1. Find the program you wish to edit from the listing of all your programs. Scroll to it but do NOT play the program. Instead hit the “Menu” button on the remote.2. Hit the “Edit” button on your right-screen menu and another menu pops up on the left.3. Hit the “Divide Program” button on the left-side menu. A box shows your TV show or other program in reduced size.4. Hit the “>” button (Play) and your program starts to play. Use FF or other functions to advance the program to the place where you want to edit.5. When you get to the beginning of a scene/commercial you wish to edit out, hit “Pause.” Relax, if you went too far, simply hit the reverse (or forward) play buttons adjacent to the “Play” button on the remote. You will be going backwards (or forward) in frame-by-frame advance, a very slow and accurate way to get to the exact frame where you want the edit to begin. Hit “Pause” again when you are at the point where you want the edit to begin.6. Hit “Okay” on the remote. You will be asked to confirm that you want to split the program into two, and hit “Yes.” You will now have two programs, each listed separately on the list of programs.7. Scroll to the listing containing the scene/commercial you want to edit out. This program should begin exactly where the scene/commercial starts.8. Repeat steps 1-7 above. At the end of this you should have three programs on your program list where you originally had just one–the first portion of the program, the scene/commercial you want to remove, and the second portion of the program.9. Scroll to the scene you wish to delete which is now a separate program listing and hit “Clear” on the remote. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to delete this program and hit “yes.” It is now gone forever and that is exactly what you want.10. You now have the two listings of your program, the first part and the second part. Scroll to the first part and hit the “Menu” button and select “Edit” on the right-hand menu.11. On the left-hand menu, select “Combine Programs.” You then scroll to the second half of your program and hit “OK” (enter) on the remote. The two programs are now back into one minus the scene you wished to delete. It is precisely spliced and you cannot tell that it has been put back together if you did the editing correctly.12. Repeat the process for each scene you wish to eliminate.Is the above process tedious? Yes. I took out boring and unneeded scenes from Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia to make these movies shorter and more effective. It probably took me 20 minutes to do this for each movie, but now I have 2.5 hours of more-easily-watched movie versus 3 hours plus of the original movie and it was worth it! No fiddling of the fast forward on the remote. You edit it once and can watch it this way forever.In addition to the 1TB of memory to record programs on the 867H, you can also hook up an external hard drive. This is another very powerful function of the 867H that the 513H lacks. I hooked up a WD 6TB My Book hard drive and it works beautifully. This gives you essentially limitless recording ability since you can hook up as many hard drives as you want, but 6TB external memory plus the 1TB internal memory gives me lots of room even while recording at the highest level which I almost always do.I had another problem. I wanted to transfer my programs from the old 513H onto the new 867H. I asked Funai if one could do this and they said this cannot be done. They are wrong. I have done it about 30 times now and it's easy. How do you do it? The 513H (or other, older models) have an HDMI output jack. Connect the HDMI cable from the 513H to the input jacks (three RCA jacks) on the 867H. Yes, you will need a simple adapter which goes from HDMI to RCA plugs. These are readily available on the Internet. You are done. You then start playing a movie on the 513H and merely hit the record button on the 867H and record to whatever hard drive--internal or external--that you want. When the end of the movie occurs, merely hit the stop button on the 867H. The movie is now on the 867H in the same quality as before unless you record to a lesser quality. I once forgot the recording was going and recorded 30 minutes of static at the back of the movie. No problem. The 867H lets you divide a program into two as described earlier, so I separated the two at the exact point where the movie ended. Then I merely deleted the useless static which was now a separate program of its own.In short, the 867H/868H is a vast improvement over the 513H and other earlier models in that you can connect an external hard drive which could not be done with earlier models. This gives you a tremendous amount of storage space enabling you to record many programs at the highest clarity. But one deficit of the 867H/868H is that it is much more tedious to edit out content than the earlier versions. Maybe Funai will put this back in and maybe not. In 2016 Funai announced a successor to the 867H/868H but in 2017 they said this new box is not slated for release at all in the U.S. Is it a temporary delay or a permanent phase out? Only time will tell. I hope this box remains in production.And you must rememberr, there is another tremendous advantage of the 867H/868H over renting a cable-company DVR box. First, that will cost you $20 a month or other amount for every month for the rest of your life. In a bit over a year, you can pay for the 867H/868H and everything beyond that is money saved. Second, once your storage is full on the cable-company DVR, that’s it. With the 867H/868H you can transfer to one or more external hard drives and keep recording. Or burn DVD discs. Second, the cable-company box goes back to the cable company if you end service, along with all of your content unless you figured out a way to transfer it someplace else before ending service. I would hate to the 867H/868H go away if it ever does, because it is the best piece of home theater equipment I have ever owned!