Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
The equipment freezes all the time, even when I use the Philips CDR. I´ve lost 50% of my blank cds, and in three months of use, it is back to the repair shop for the third time.

Summary:
At first I was very impressed with both the recording quality and the price of my Philips 570 CD Burner. The quality of the recording is amazing ( I used the 570 in conjunction with a Technics SL-PD9 CD Player[which is an incredible CD Player, hopefully I'll submit a review on it soon] , by utilizing the optical digital output on the PD9. Very soon however I discovered that several brands of blank CDRs would not finalize with the player. The repair crew at the store where I bought and returned it experienced the same problems with a couple of other brands eg. Maxwell , Samsung etc...
N.B. contacting Philips is a waste of time because their customer service department know even less about their products than you do.
The inability to finalize would not be such a major problem if the 570 simply would not recognize certain blank CDRs when you put them in the player. In that case you could just return the blank CDR and get a compatible brand. this is not the case and the refusal to finalize renders the blank CDR worthless and takes up space in the 570's memory (which will eventually render the 570 inoperable).
Overall the 570 is a piece of junk that is not even worth the time I've spent reviewing it. If I could I would give it 0 Stars, but since I can't .....
P.S. for any of you unfortunate souls who are stuck with a Philips Burner, I recommend using Kodak Audio Gold blank CDRs or Philips CDRs.

Strengths:
Excellent quality recording (when it works).

Weaknesses:
wastes a lot of blank cdrs by recording on them but then refusing to finalize them.

Price Paid:  $349.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
Is anyone else having these problems ? The aggravation far outweighs the benefits.

Strengths:
Great when it works.

Weaknesses:
I'm on my fourth unit. It freezes up during finalization and is VERY temperamental.

Summary:
When this recorder was the only one on the market, it Initially possessed a unique feature that allowed the use of computer data CDRs that are cheaper than the consumers CDRs designed for use with the recorder. This feature has now been disabled and the CDR880 is no longer attractive to buy for the following reasons:
- There are two more models on the market for consumers (that is to say SCMS is used to prohibit further copying using digital method) the Marantz DR-700 and the Pioneer PDR555RW that can offer superior revording quality features and construction.

- The recording quality of the CDR880 on a scale form 1 - 10 is 8.5. The resulting recording is rather shut-in and compressed with lack of treble, snap and depth as compared with the Pioneer which I rank at 9.5 and the Marantz at 10.

- Maratz's recorder is based on the Philips but was improved everywhere including the mechanical aspect of the transport.

The Philips transport is supported using rubber grommets to suspend it and allow it to absorb shocks, but there is nothing underneath them. So after few recording of around 40-60 minutes the rubber gromettes will begin to lose its poor grip and will drop slightly. This will result into imperfect recording where imaging is lost.

- Repairing this unit is very costly since the entire recorder is made of three components and PHILIPS USA has NO TRAINED technicians to repair it. So if your macihne is under warranty and are lucky to convince them that there is a problem they may replcae the part(s) or give you a new one. However, if your warranty has run out and have not purchased extended warrany then you are out of luck and your investment is out of the window.

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To VIEW the inside of this recorder goto http://freespace.virgin.net/andrew.kwan/cdr870p/photo.html
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I just wanted to share my experience with those who are looking to buy a PHILIPS recorder and strongly recommend the Marantz and the Pioneer taking into account that the Marantz is based on the PHILIPS and the company is owned by Philips.

Philips technology is great but they seem to ignore other important factors to deliver a first class product.