Samsung DVD-VR335 DVD Recorder

It works, I'll give the designers that. But it's one of the most frustrating pieces of gear I've ever bought...maybe the MOST frustrating for a unit that works.

The remote is impossible! It's made up of tiny buttons that require an inordinate amount of pressure to activate, and the remote has to be aimed pretty much straight at the unit to work. With so many excellent remote controls to inspire and educate the designers (such as the TiVo remote) why does anyone still design a remote that's so hard to use?

The basic operations of recording a DVD have many steps and are almost totally non-intuitive. Everything has to be "just so" in order to do something as simple as, say, retitling a recording or finalizing a disc. Even the "one-step" controls don't work intuitively when I try to do something as simple as recording from the built-in VHS deck to the DVD.

I can not imagine that Kun-Hee Lee (the Chairman and CEO of Samsung) has ever tried to operate this piece of gear. If he had, he would have fired his engineers, right after tossing this unit into the Han River.

I really hate this unit and regret buying it and look forward eagerly to the day when it dies and I can replace it. But I give the unit two stars because it does work...if you can figure it out (keep the manual handy) and get your fingers around that godawful remote.

I'vw owned a -335 for about 2 months now, and really like it. it features some nice options for the recordings that it makes, like the ability to "split" one show into two (yes, you get ot choose WHERE the split happens).
the only two disappointments that I've founds are (1) it will only record on the free space at the END of the disc. if you have 3 shows on a disc, and erase the first 2 (on an RW disc), you still can't record on the newly freed space. only when you erase the last show on the disc can it recognize the space at the start of disc. in fairness, the manual warned me of this, so it is no suprise. just REALLY inconvinient, it turns out.
and (2), there doesn't seem to be any way to disable automatic time-syncing w/ cable. since the gov't decided to move DST this year, that was quite annoying for a few weeks. the manual suggests nothing for this, but I've gotten reasonable results from having it sync to a non-station. clumsy, but not a deal-killer.

all-in-all, I can happily recommend this unit.

Easy to set up & works great. The remote is a bit confusing at first. Easy one-touch recording to DVD.

This recorder has many excellent features as described above, but if you want to have the up-converting to 720p or 1080i feature ALONG WITH 5.1 AUDIO then an annoying in-your-face error message saying "HDMI Audio not supported" pops up in the center of the screen for several seconds. It can also pop up in the middle of a movie at the layer change. The only way to get rid of this message is to switch to 2.0 PCM audio and lose your 5.1 surround or not use the HDMI output and stay at 480p.
What's so frustrating is that the unit WILL supply 5.1 audio out of one of its other jacks along with the HDMI video - it just bugs you constantly with this stupid message.

Another smaller annoyance is if you have a DVD that uses different angles then the word "Angle" appears onscreen with no way to remove it.
I have read online that Samsung issued a firmware fix for one of its other units to cancel all on-screen messages (that you have to reset whenever you re-start the unit) but they went ahead and included the message in the VR335 anyway!

Since upconverting was one of the major reasons for choosing the DVD-VR335, I am seriously considering returning it.

I had my doudts if the hd up function actually work, but to my suprise it takes a standard dvd makes it appear to be hd. The only thing I notice that I don't care for are TV show played through the unit, the picture size shrinks. The same thing happens with TV recordings. I may have a setting incorrect, I'll contact samsung.