In October 2010, Sony Australia loaned Media Access Australia an RDR HDC300 Hard Disk Drive/DVD recorder to review for its caption capabilities.
The Sony RDR HDC300 was reviewed by Chris Mikul and Ally Woodford.
Initial set-up
The initial set-up was straightforward, although the Autoscan function seemed a little slow.
The caption font is large and clear, with text on a black box background.
Recording to the hard drive
You can record a show to the hard drive simply by pressing Record while you’re watching it. Regardless of whether the captions are on or off, the captions can be activated on playback or deactivated as required.
You can also use the electronic program guide (EPG) or manually set up a timer recording.
Recording via all methods to the hard drive allows the captions to be displayed as required but they can also be deactivated.
We tried to watch one program whilst recording another. This initially proved problematic, but after some scrutinizing of the manual, we worked out we needed to program the Sony’s remote control into our Samsung HDTV before we could do this. Once this was done, we could switch between the recorder and HDTV so we could watch one program with captions whilst recording another with captions. The TV was controlled solely from the HD/ DVD recorder remote which was handy.
Dubbing and recording to the DVD
Once a program was recorded, we then attempted to save a program to a DVD. Although the dubbing process worked, on playback we discovered that we could not view the captions.
We could also not record directly to a DVD. For these reasons, we found the Sony RDRHDC300 a little lacking in its functionality for people requiring captions.
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