“One small step for home recording, and one giant leap back to Wal-Mart!”
Introduction
The Polaroid DRM-2001G represents the next step in the evolution of set top home television recording. This successor to the VCR and DVD recorder is able to save a recording directly to a hard drive. This is advantageous for two reasons. The first is that it eliminates both the cost, and the clutter of a pile of discs or VHS tapes for the recording media. The second is that in general this is a more reliable process- I’ll trust a hard drive to a dirt and fingerprint prone disc or tape any day of the week. A side benefit is that it virtually eliminates media compatibility issues. Let’s see how well Polaroid implemented this breakthrough technology.
Why Polaroid?
Polaroid was well known for their instant cameras and overpriced film. Since they more than missed the digital imaging revolution, they now have a line of rebranded electronics, perhaps best known for their portable DVD players. Most folks believe that the 2001G unit is based on the Phillips DVDR3455/37, the differences being a smaller hard drive and mono tuner for the more affordable Polaroid.
What’s In the Box?
The Polaroid DRM-2001G packs the following in their $219 retail box:
- Polaroid DRM-2001G unit 80 GB hard drive
- Remote control
- Two AAA batteries for the remote
- Coaxial cable
- Component cable (video, audio left, audio right)
- Stereo cable (audio left, audio right)
- Manual
There are no S-video, or component video cables, and the included cables are kind of short, so there is a pretty good likelihood that you’ll need some additional cables to get this all put together.
Connecting Wires
The first step is hooking up the Polaroid DRM-2001G to a standard coaxial input, and then this passes through to the television. In my case, the signal source is an antenna. If you have an older TV with no other inputs, this will not be adequate as this only is for the antenna. When playing back any content, it gets sent to the video and audio outputs, so you’ll need to hook those up as well. This is kind of annoying because I like to setup a separate DVD player to the TV, and I have only one set of inputs, so without an RF adapter, this is simply not possible.
For the video out, there are choices of one yellow wire video (composite), S video, and component video (which breaks the signal into the 3 colors and is reportedly the best). If you’re expecting the new HDMI out for use with an HD set, well, you’re out of luck with this lower priced gear.
For the audio, there are a few choices as well. I used the standard RCA stereo left and right outputs, but there is a digital out for those with dedicated receivers. There are both optical and coaxial digital outputs available.
Plug it into the wall outlet, and we’re ready to go.
Initial Setup
When first plugged in, I initially noticed two things. The unit has a bright red LED by the power switch, and a bright green LED for the clock in the center of the face. I’ve figured out that for whatever reason, the red LED turns on when the unit is off, which kind of makes absolutely no sense. The clock (more on my difficulties later with it), also is stuck in military time. Be aware that if you plan to put this in a bedroom, unless you desire to use this as a night light, you’ll need to cover up the face in both spots with some cardboard to get some shut eye. Hardly a “Sharper Edge” level of refinement here folks.
With the Polaroid and TV on and connected, the setup routine is similar to most better VCR’s and DVD recorders- the usual scan of the channels after we designate antenna or cable. On the first try it only found two stations, but on the encore attempt, it found them all. The tuner is quite good as it displayed a UHF station that my TV’s can’t get a usable signal with.
Setting up the clock became a real hassle. Even my cheapie Ilo DVDR05 can take the time signal off of the PBS station. It’s a great technology that insures we never need worry about daylight savings time, always be accurate, and never see the dreaded flashing “12:00.” While the Polaroid is listed as auto clock set, it never quite got it right. I had it set to the Eastern time zone (EST), but it kept coming up an hour short for whatever reason. I did wonder if the signal was wrong, but my Ilo still had the right time so I ruled that out. I reset to factory defaults, and tried again; still one hour off. I then tried the Polaroid set to the Atlantic time zone. I now had the right hour, but the minutes was still off by three. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you want to record back to back shows on different channels, an accurate time is key to making that happen. The only workable option is to manually set the time, and with the new daylight savings time next year, you’ll have to remember to change this also, as well as keep the clock in sync with monthly checks. Don’t forget that I couldn’t get it out of military time. Whomever engineered the clock should be drawn and quartered as far as I’m concerned.
What’s That Blowing Sound?
The Polaroid DRM-2001G has both an optical drive and a hard drive (Western Digital 80 GB PATA; it’s reportedly simple to swap out for a larger one…) in its innards along with the required electronics and power supply. If this sounds a lot like a computer, you’re right, and as such it needs to be cooled with a fan. Whenever the unit is powered on for any reason, you can hear the whoosh of air circulating; the hard drive is very quiet. To me, it sounds like too small of a fan at too high a revolution, and reminds me of my Averatec notebook, only louder, or my Shuttle desktop, which is a little quieter. When watching TV, I really don’t hear it on the other side of the room. However, with the TV off, I could easily envision this keeping a light sleeper up at night if it was recording something. Maybe a fan swap and some Dremel action could remedy this…
Recording
This is the one area that the machine actually is worth something. The programming is simple, and clear. Times can be entered either by scrolling up and down, or directly with the channel numbers on the remote which is a rare find and better than scrolling till your thumb hurts. We can even enter a name of 8 characters to identify our program later on. The quality can be set to a one hour speed, on up to a 6 hour speed, with interim points of 2, 2.5, 3 and 4 (this refers to hours of content per single layer DVD). On the 6 hour speed, the quality is worse than VHS at the 6 hour speed so you’ll need a higher quality recording speed. At the better speeds the quality improved considerably.
It is possible to record directly to a disc in the DVD drive, but that’s not really the point of the machine. Besides, you can always record to the hard drive, and write it later to a disc for keeping, or to watch on a DVD player in another room. Speaking of discs, the drive supports DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW which is better than many other machines. I’m not sure about media compatibility because when I tried to write from hard drive to a rewritable disc, three of them in fact, two plus and one minus, let’s say the Polaroid was a three time loser in that department.
Hard Drive Playback
One thing that I really like about the Polaroid DRM-2001G is how organized the content is on the hard drive. All of the recordings are there, nicely laid out, with the title tags that I setup when I entered the timing of the recording. It can even be sorted by the date, so I can watch multiple episodes of a show in order. This is a great feature as with my DVD recorder I end up with a pile of DVD discs and have to swap them in and out for a while to find the right one frequently.
The other features of playback are a little disappointing. There is no “faster with audio” option that allows me to skip past slower portions of a show and still hear the dialogue (this is the only way I get through some slower films). Speaking of fast forward, it is kind of hard to not go too far, and have to backtrack around the commercials. It’s either too slow or too fast, but never just right. Ditto for rewind. We can zoom, but only on the center of the screen unlike most DVD players that let you scroll around once zoomed. If we stop playback of the hard drive, it starts again at the beginning; the way around this is to pause it, but I worry about screen burn in if it is more than a minute or two.
I was able to split a show into two segments, which is useful if it was two one hour episodes, and I watched the first hour and want to delete it, for example. While other users have reported success with editing out portions, like commercials, I was not able to do this. In my view, even if it worked, it would be too tedious to do this routinely, and the deck is not accurate enough so it would hardly look professional. Serious editing would be better done on a higher end desktop computer with some appropriate software. But alas, I digress.
The Remote Control
I would describe the remote as average. At least it uses real AAA batteries, and not the watch batteries I’ve been seeing lately in some of these toys. The buttons are a little small, and I need a flashlight in the dark to see the lettering. At least the center navigation buttons, surrounding the enter control, are larger, and I can feel these in the dark with no difficulty. The rest is not even close to ergonomic.
The other issue is one of power. The remote needs to face the Polaroid deck straight on. The range is about six to eight feet. Anything beyond that, and you’re out of luck. That’s really a shame as I have generic replacement remotes, that retail for under $10, that perform a lot better than Polaroid’s included remote. There are even isolated reports of users transplanting the IR LED on the remote to improve reception, but I wouldn’t recommend this to the average consumer.
DVD Performance
Unlike a Tivo that only has a hard drive, the Polaroid also has a DVD drive in it. Earlier, I complained about not being able to hook up my DVD player to the same TV because of only one set of video and audio inputs. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t get rid of my DVD player because of this Polaroid.
Polaroid’s player itself had some stutter issues on discs, by my eye, they were minor fingerprints and scratches. I had to fast forward my way through, or else I was at a standstill at points. These kind of defects never bother my Sharp DVD player, and for the record were all original pressed movie discs.
As if this wasn’t enough, when playing back any DVD, Polaroid displays a little logo in the lower right hand portion of the screen. I’ve never encountered a machine that did that, but it is truly annoying, and it’s there throughout the playback. Sorry Polaroid, pay for your own advertising!
Also, I was watching a DVD movie, and the Polaroid was set to record a show to the hard drive. I got a message on the screen saying that unless I stopped the DVD, it could not record. Even my junkie Sylvania DVD/VCR combo deck could play a DVD and record to VHS and it’s beyond me how the secret of this got lost to the ancients. This Polaroid multi tasks about as well as a guy during the last quarter of the Super Bowl with the score tied.
Firmware Upgrades
The phrase that comes to mind is “fuggedaboutit.” There are no firmware upgrades on the Polaroid web site, and from the looks of things, there aren’t going to be any.
And the Envelope Please…
I was really on the fence with my purchase for a while. On the one hand I really liked the killer app of TV recording to the hard drive, and how organized my shows were (the most ever). However, on the other hand, with so many quirky behaviors, from the clock, to the DVD player, to the fan noise, to the Polaroid logo on my screen, I’ve decided to throw in the towel and the Polaroid DRM-2001G will be returned to Wally Mart. Also pushing things was that the end of analog television is coming in early 2007, and this Polaroid will become a doorstop for antenna TV viewers.
However, now that I’ve gotten a taste of hard drive TV recording, I’m working on collecting parts for a home theater PC. This is too awesome a technology to not have on top of the TV!
–Jonas
