I had the Sony RDR-GX300 DVD recorder set up in less than half an hour. The remote control is fairly user-friendly, but there is one aspect that is not mentioned in the user manual. There is a panel at the bottom of the remote control which you must slide towards you to reveal the buttons for recording. Most user manuals for electronic products are disorganized and this is no exception. The DVD recorder itself is excellent. I purchased a Philips DVDR985A DVD recorder last year which has a few features that the Sony RDR-GX300 doesn't have. However, the RDR-GX300 is the best choice especially since all Philips DVD recorder suffer from DISC ERROR and DISC WARNING problems no matter which brand of blank DVD media is used. I use Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+RW blank media with both the Sony and the Philips, and I've had no problems with the Sony RDR-GX300. Here are the pros and cons of this unit:

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PROS
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The RDR-GX300 can... Read more

Contrary to the production description, the Sony RDR-GX300 DVD recorder does not have an i.LINK interface for one-touch transfer from camcorders. The Sony RDR-GX7 does have an i.LINK interface. By the way, Sony plans to release the RDR-HX900 DVD recorder in November 2004. This will be the best DVD recorder on the market because it will have a 160-gigabyte hard disk, an i.LINK interface, and it will support DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW. (...)

Philips and Sony are the major manufacturers of DVD recorders that support DVD+RW. Unfortunately Philips is having a lot of problems with their entire line of DVD recorders. You can read the reviews yourself. I made the mistake of buying the Philips DVDR985 instead of waiting for Sony. I will stick with Sony from now on.

Before purchasing the Sony RDR-GX300 I had owned the Phillips DVDR75 and Panasonic DMR-E100HS . Both these units were top of the line when purchased. The Sony unit is by far the superior product.

The Phillips was very cheaply made, unreliable e and had a difficult and confusing user interface. It also was very particular about the brands of DVD it recorded on, resulting in a significant amount of trial and error and wasted discs. In addition the Technical Support was terrible, the wait was long and the technicians were not knowledgable about the product.

The Panasonic is an excellent machine. The ease of use is excellent and clear even for a novice. The hard drive is huge and the quality of the recording, particularly in HQ mode is quite good. The major issue with the Panasonic machine is the fact that it is limited to recording only DVD-R and DVD-RAM formats. The absence of DVD-RW writing can be limiting because the DVD-RAM can be played back on very few... Read more