Comments on: DVD Harddisk Recorder Makes My Thumbs Hurt

By: batterie

batterie — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:35:33 +0000

Sometimes these electronics products are made with extra care and extra interest that takes the simplicity of the product from it.I face the same situation before when I bought a nikkon digicam a year ago.They should try to make these products user frienly so customers can enjoy with It else it will be a headache for them.

By: Bjarne Jakobsen

Bjarne Jakobsen — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:15:50 +0000

@Jesper, thanx for the speedy answer.

Late last night I decided to return the damn thing as it does another annoying and so far inexplicable thing.

For some reason it makes my Sony TV flip between 4:3 and 16:9 picture format app. each 10-15 seconds when watching the TV channels trough it. I did not succeed in finding a solution either in the setup of the HDD or setup of the TV. It only does it when watching TV not when playing a DVD.

So back it goes. The vendor has accepted this today with no fuss at all.

Thanx for offering me some of the noise mat – nice gesture mate.
I’m not sure it would have helped me a lot though – I tried to simply hold the HDD in my hands to see if it was mostly resonance with the glass shelf in the TV table – but the noise level didn’t drop at all. Perhaps I’m just hypersensitive to noise. I think I will change to a Panasonic model – they should be almost noise free (or so I gather from review pages). I hope I can find one with almost the same features and a reasonable price.

I don’t think I would ever use a copy DVD to HDD feature anyway so that would probably have been easy to live with. But the whole manoeuvre needed in order to make an OTR would have annoyed me no end.
Not only shouldn’t they claim it to be ‘one touch’ when you clearly need to do several things first – but it entirely misses one of the points i.e. the ‘spur of the moment’ recordings. Any short sequence on the TV – say in the news – is almost over before you can get ready with your OTR.

Anyway – thanx for the input.

/bjarne

By: Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:59:35 +0000

@Bjarne, i still have to publish an update with more experiences, annoyances and more.

To address your specific issues directly:
* the noisecontrol mat helps a lot: I cut 4 small pads from the mat to cover the rubber feet. Still you can hear the direct fan noise, but at least got rid of resonnance from the shelf.

* DVDs work perfectly for me too. (the only thing — as I previously mentioned — i cannot copy dvds to the harddisk because of copyright issues)

* I managed to reduce some of the pain in recording to the harddisk, by memorizing some of the stuff. One tip: when using OTR(one touch record), you have to touch these other buttons before the OTR/REC:
1. Press “Rec to…”
2. Press SELECT on “HDD” for selecting harddisk
3. Press REC/OTR

It’s your decision if you will keep it or return it. If you do decide to keep it, you can have a piece of the noise mat from me.. I only used a fragment of the entire mat. Let me know if that can help you (my phone number is on the contact us page)

By: Bjarne Jakobsen

Bjarne Jakobsen — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:12:43 +0000

Hi…

It worries me to read these complaints – considering that I just bougth one of these things and obviously did not spend enough time reading reviews beforehand.

I plugged it in yesterday and so far have ‘only’ experienced minor annoyances like the setup system, the hopeless userguide and that unexpected infernal noise the harddrive put out. I haven’t tried to record anything yet and the DVD we played last night worked perfectly.

I would very much like to know if you have had new or revised experiences since october. Did you succeed in creating your own menu setup ? Did the noise dampening mat from germany help ?

I still have about a week to return it to the internet vendor if I regret the purchase. Do you still have/use yours ?

/bjarne

By: justaddwater.dk | What It’s Like To Be A Usability Geek

justaddwater.dk | What It’s Like To Be A Usability Geek — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:33:10 +0000

[...] had a chance to confirm the usability issues I have seen and written about earlier (and want to write more [...]

By: Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:44:37 +0000

Thanks for your comments, and thanks to Laust Nielsen for encouraging me to post updated info. I will — hopefully within not so much time.

By: Laust Nielsen

Laust Nielsen — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:09:56 +0000

My KiSS DP-558 just died on me today and I was thinking about maybe getting this Amitech recorder instead.
Now that you’ve had yours for a while, are there any new thoughts to be added? Like, have you seen a different recorder with the same features but with a better user interface?
Would you recommend me buying one of these and have you contacted Amitech about the user experience?

By: Morten Bock

Morten Bock — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:42:47 +0000

Thanks for a good review. I’ve just received a special offer on this machine, but I think I’ll pass on that.

By: Allan Krings

Allan Krings — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:20:40 +0000

I just received my 736 DVB-T, and I like the looks and the specs. But it must be defect, ’cause I cant even play a DVD! It makes a disturbing HD noice and it is really frustrating to use. Very annoying with the upside down thumbs up icon that was supposed to tell you that you cant do whatever youre trying to do. It insist that every CD and DVD I put in the drive is empty, which makes me laugh and cry at the same time. And we’re not talkin home burned CDs or DVDs – they are bought and have been played without problems in other players (and PCs).
It was supposed to replace both my old DVD player AND my DVB-T box, thus leaving extra space and a cleaner look (and reducing the total number of remote controls to 3!).
It seems that Amitech was just too quick to launch this product on the market. I find that they are very arrogant not to have a forum and to charge you 4,8 dkr per minute to get phone support!
I have filed a complaint with Amitech this friday afternoon, but cannot expect to have an answer before the middle of next week. That is shitty customer support. If they had a forum (like 95% of dealers), users could help users all around the world, but maybe they have some bad customer feedback to hide from the public????

By: Michael Bernth

Michael Bernth — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:34:52 +0000

The usability of most consumer goods are notoriously shit. It seems like its the last thing that enters the whole process. From what inside information that I got, Kiss uses engineers to design the graphical user interfaces and the overall navigational structure. And I guess they are not the only ones. Usually, even the most trivial task is a pain. The only products I have seen where they take the poor end-user into consideration is the ones from Apple, but I hope that there are others.

As far as the slow start-up and noise – that would drive me up the walls.