With its WEGA-styled chassis, Sony's SLV-D350P is the perfect high-convenience complement to today's silvery home-entertainment components. This versatile combination deck offers the convenience of VHS recording and playback and high-end progressive-scan DVD performance, handling just about any conceivable media format, from VHS and S-VHS tapes (which it plays at standard VHS resolution) to DVD-Video, video-mode DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW, as well as MP3 CD and JPEG picture CD. From your library of VHS videos to your digital music files and digital photos, the SLV-D350P lets you enjoy them all in the comfort of your living room or bedroom.
Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the SLV-D350P can deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts. Other DVD functions include bookmarking, picture zoom, parental lock, and a screen saver.
The VCR section offers one-month, eight-event advance programming to commercial skip. Your camcorder or gaming console plugs right into the front panel for hassle-free connections. Its four-head design ensures smooth slow-motion play (forward and reverse) and clear still-frame images, and with hi-fi sound the unit records and plays back stereo audio tracks. Its 19-micron heads deliver the clearest possible picture when recording or viewing in EP (extended-play) mode.
Commercial skip makes it easier than ever to zip past commercials and unwanted "coming attractions," jumping forward 30 seconds for every press of the commercial-skip button.
Connections with combo units are often inconvenient, forcing you to use separate video hookups for each section (DVD, VCR), a problem for older TVs. This player has it figured out: a single RF or composite-video connection to a television will display either the DVD or the VCR signal, depending on which format you're viewing. If you want to view DVDs in S-video or in component-video (either interlaced or progressive-scan), you will need to use two inputs, as the device will not upconvert the signal from the VCR to either of those higher-resolution formats. Not to worry, though: any component- or S-video-equipped TV will offer sufficient inputs for both of the SLV-D350P's formats.
It's a different arrangement for audio: you can listen through a single set of stereo analog-audio cables for each component (one is supplied), or--if you want to enjoy DVDs in discrete 5.1-channel surround sound--you can send the DVD's audio to a compatible audio/video receiver and a multichannel speaker system through a digital-audio interconnect (either optical or coaxial, not supplied). The unit also comes with an RF cable that will transmit DVD/VHS audio and video to your TV, a multilingual onscreen display (English, Spanish, French), and a multibrand TV/DVD/VCR remote control.
What's in the Box
DVD/VCR combo, remote control, remote batteries (two AA), user's manual, stereo analog audio interconnect/composite-video cable, coaxial video cable, and warranty information.
1 Well, it works great for me!
My family actually owns two Sony SLV-D350P DVD / VCR Combo players and have been using them for several months now. So far, there's very little to complain about, except for two things: when playing either dvds or videos, the player makes an unusually loud noice that can be quite distracting. Also, the menus are very confusing (as is the button arrangement on the remote) and take some time to get used to.
But on the other hand, as soon as I put in a vhs tape, the Sony player automatically handles the tracking, a feature that's not included on the RCA DVD/VCR combo. Plus, the EP recording mode looks just as crystal clear (if not better) as the SP mode! This really comes in handy when you want to record more than one movie on each video. Overall, a solid investment and highly recommended.
2 junk
First unit exchange by the retailer after 32 days. Problem-rolling snow. Second unit returned to sony after 92 days. Same problem. Customer service poor. I will not buy sony products again!
3 Stay Away
I recieved this as a Christmas present. It was purchased refurbished at the Sony store the day after Thanksgiving and last night it just stopped reading all DVDs. It worked perfectly for 5 months, but then suddenly just died.
I searched online to see what I could do to fix it and apparently lots of other people have encountered the same problem even with brand new units. The only way for me to get it fixed is to send it back to Sony who will exchange it for another refurbished one for $33.
Stay clear, it just isn't worth it. If you decide to buy Sony, make sure you get a good warrantly plan because chances are that you're going to need it a year from now.
4 At least it worked for the first 90 days...
Unfortunately, I own one of these DVD/VCR units, and as a result I will probably never buy another Sony product again. The unit worked fine for the first 3 months, and then the 90 day warranty expired. The deck now fails to record on a timer, randomly ejects tapes even when it's been off for hours, and in some cases just locks up completely.
After speaking to Sony about getting the defective product replaced, I was told that a replacement would cost anywhere from $33 to $128, assuming I could prove a date of purchase. A 90 day warranty is pathetic.
This unit appears to have been designed to fail. Definitely not something you would want to own.
5 works ok for me
I actually have two of these units and both work fine. I've had them for well over a year. I don't know - maybe I got lucky. I had one disc that would not play a few months ago but I just assumed that netflix sent me a bad disc. If you've already got one - don't despair, apparently not all are faulty.
6 DVD Playback is Terrible!
This was a complete waste of money. Many DVD's freeze up and most skip and glitch making them unwatchable. Stay away completely.
7 Absolute Junk...Avoid this unit...poor warranty service
Over the years, I have purchased many Sony products with great success. This unit is the exception. The DVD portion failed within 30 days. Sony's policy is to send you a rebuilt unit and charge you $30.00. Unacceptable for a brand new unit. AVOID THIS SONY DVD COMBO PLAYER.
J.L.
8 Picture is fine, seems to work fine, but the NOISE????
I have had mine for only a few days now. I have had no trouble with the picture or play of either VHS or DVDs. My complaint is with the background noise of the unit itself. Both the DVD and VHS mechanisms make a lot of noise when in use. Some noise is to be expected on either type of unit in this price range, but the noise with either of these are too much and is not drowned out even with a "normal" volume. The fast-rewind works great, but the unit practically vibrates and again, is LOUD!
Perhaps I just got a bad one. But I will be returning it nonetheless, sticking with my stand alone DVD player and older Sony VHS which is not as featured, but not as noisy, or perhaps I will look at the SLV-D550P, which has better reviews than this one.
9 Avoid this unit
Doesn't play some DVDs at all. For instance, I rented King Arthur (released 2004) and had to watch it on my computer as my SLV-D350 refused to read it. Now 6 months after I purchased it the DVD player refuses to play anything. It just tells me to check the disk for whatever I put in. After calling support regarding my 1 year warranty I am informed that the 1 year warranty is actually a 90 day warranty because labor is not included. I find out now that Labor is required for ALL units. So I can pay them (2+ hours of tech support phonetime) 25% the cost of the original unit and pay for shipping to get a refurbished unit that may or may not be the same Model #. I'd actually prefer a different model. Avoid this unit... Avoid Sony until they get their act together. My last Sony DVD player was great, I just wanted to try out a progressive scan model. I'm moving on and suggest you do to. At least avoid this worthless model!
10 Stay away!
So much for expecting quality from a Sony! We own a variety of Sony equipment, from HDTV to digital cameras, entertainment systems, and four other Wega televisions. This DVD player makes me so angry I want to throw it out of the window (at high speeds). It will pause (mostly on layered DVDs), skip, magically play subtitles after being paused, and most infuriatingly of all, just flat out won't recognize many DVDs inserted in to the machine that check out on our other DVD players. I can use it as a VCR, but that's not why I bought the darned thing. This is certainly the last Sony DVD player I will ever buy.
Richard Baumgartner
Plymouth MN
11 Sony DVD problems
To the reviewer below who said to do a Google search on Sony DVD problems. The correct Google search should be for "sony C:13:00" not "sony ch:13".
12 Works Great for me
I was amazed with so many bad reviews. I have ordered this from amazon and using it for almost 6 months. I don't watch movies everyday but on weekends. So far this combo been great for me. No problems. Infact one DVD was rolling on my friends DVD but ran fine on mine (it was on region zero or something). It plays all formats of MP3 that I tried. One of the formats didn't work on my other sony DVD... amazing. Initially picture was not that clear then I change the cable that goes from combo to my TV (my TV does not have inputs), picture got clear. Thats the good thing I did. I use the cable came with the combo. I have no complain with this combo except that I agree remote buttons are too small.
13 Disappointing
I received this DVD/VCR combo for Christmas and am completely unhappy with it. When playing DVDs, the picture breaks up, skips and freezes. I know it is not my DVDs causing the problem because they work fine on my other DVD player, which is also a Sony. I can't believe this is a Sony product!
14 No problems here.
I have had the unit for a month now and have been giving it a real workout. I constantly play dvd and vhs through it at night. The vcr is very good. playback of my tapes is better than any vcr I ever owned. DVD palyback is excellent also. I have the componet outputs hooked up for video and the optical output for dolby 5.1 There are alot of bad reviews so I consider myself lucky that my unit has been flawless to date. The remote is a bad one. To small and hard to read. As a matter of fact the only thing Ive noticed is the open command works slowly.
15 Well darn...
I got this as a Christmas gift from my parents. It has been working fantastic for a week. But a few days ago it started to skip a little. Today it was really bad. I've been watching my DVDs of the Britcom Red Dwarf, which is one of my favorite shows so the DVDs are in perfect condition, and it skipped badly. I tried the same scene over and over...still the skipping. I tried the same scene over and over on my PC DVD player and no skipping at all. So I went back to the Sony and still the skipping remained. It's also random as well (not the same type of skipping). I watch an episode of Seinfeld and no skipping. Very annoying.
It seems like this model is problematic. I may get with mom and dad to trade this thing. This sucks since 3 years ago we went round and round over computer monitors. That replacement failed after the warranty was almost up. They want me to mail it off at my cost.
Piss poor quality is what we get from these companies now. And crappy warranties. Sad.
Anyway, I went with Sony because I have a Sony SLV-662HF VCR that's been used and abused for more years than I can remember and still it goes on and on.
16 It seemed like a good idea...
Everything was working fine. I started watching Return of the King (DVD) to test it out and everything worked great. Then the machine started freezing up, and I couldn't stop or start the movie it was just frozen on one frame. I tried several other DVDs and they worked initially but the machine started acting up over time. I tried unplugging it overnight like it suggests in the manual to combat "condensation." It worked fine in the morning but I got 6 minutes into Ferris Bueller's day off before it crapped out on me. I will be returning it. VCR portion works fine.
17 What's in a name?
This item LOOKS great and has the SONY name...but its performance is definitely lacking. Upon engaging the machine, a buzz is heard. Watching a DVD is best. Only a slight buzz and the picture quality is adequate. But inject a VHS tape and the machine's buzz goes into overdrive. It is EXTREMELY loud and it will buzz along with the movie like an added track of unnecessary white noise.
I'm still looking for a good replacement. I was ready to send this back the day after I bought it, but held onto it and will probably donate it someday soon.
18 Great player until...
This player had everything I was looking for...progressive scan/component output, CD-R & R/W support, MP3 support, and the selling point...advertised DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW support. I make a lot of my own DVDs (not pirated movies) and wanted to make sure the new player could read them. Problem is that it only reads them for a few minutes, then you get digital breakup and the thing eventually stops playing! I've returned the product twice hoping I just had a bum machine - no luck! I'm convinced it's a design problem. Never had a problem with production DVDs, just consumer-created ones. If you play a lot of personally recorded DVDs, stay away from this thing. You'll be greatly disappointed.
For the record, the failing DVDs were verified against a 6-month old Toshiba portable (with the same advertised features as the Sony) and a 7-yr old Panasonic set-top (that doesn't even claim to support DVD-Rs!) and all of the discs worked perfectly. Go figure...
19 Failed out of the box
I selected this unit over other similar units because of the brand name. Out of the box, the unit could not load any of the movie DVDs that I tried. After a long delay, it would report an error saying that the disk could not be read. These DVDs all worked in my other DVD player. I took the unit back and exchanged it for another of the same model. Brought it home and it had the same exact problem. I then bought a different brand of combo unit and it worked just fine. It looks like Sony has a poor design or extremely bad quality control. The other brand had the same features and cost $50 less than the Sony which I bought on sale. Don't even bother trying this DVD combo.
20 False Advertising
Don't buy this machine if you want, and think you are getting, the Commercial Skip feature. My ProScan which finally broke, had it and it was a worthwhile feature.
Sony advertises the D350 as having commercial skip, when in fact, it doesn't. Instead of marking the commercial, as my ProScan did and then automatically fast forwarding through upon replay, the Sony just has a 30 second "skip" button, meaning you have to manually "skip" each commercial, in 30 second intervals.
This is, at best, false advertising by Sony. I expected more from them.
Image quality, both DVD and VCR are very nice, and set up is easy.
Remote is very confusing.
21 Sony SLV-D350P DVD/VCR Combo
Wow all of these bad reviews weren't on the web site when I ordered this DVD/VCR Combo. Now I'm really upset. The one I purchased is a xmas gift and hasn't been opened nor hooked up yet.
My original reason for writing my opinion is that they sent my order of the Sony DVD/VCR order UPS in it's original box, with what was in it and everything. I was mad because it was a gift and if my son would have been home, he would have known what gift he was getting. Not to mention it could have been stolen easily.
Now I'm really upset that all of these bad reviews have shown up since I ordered it. Now I have it wrapped and must just wait for him to be disappointed with it not working. OH MY !
22 OUTSTANDING
This is an excellent product for the price. I own one. The DVD and CD player is good. I send the sound to my home theater receiver and it sounds wonderful. The VHS portion plays better than my other stand-alone SONY VCR. What I really liked is that this unit has Quasi-S Playback so I can play my S-VHS tapes. The picture is good. What I found amazing was that the EP record mode (6 hour) looked better than the SP (2 hour). I played some EP recordings made on this unit on my parents' JVC and the picture was outstanding. My only complaint with this unit is that the remote is too small and too "busy" with all the buttons very close together. If you want to watch DVDs, record and play VHS tapes without going beyond that I would highly recomend this SONY unit.
23 Just OK
I bought this DVD/VCR combo solely because it's a Sony and I have a Sony 6.1 Surround sound home theater system. I was fairly satisfied with it for a while. The picture quality was above average and the audio was not that bad. About 3 weeks after buying this player, I tried playing some MPEG movies that I had burnt on my computer but it wouldn't play. I was very disappointed! Now that I know that, I probably would not buy this player again.
24 sony dvd players are junk
do a google search on sony ch:13 and you'll find 54000+ hits on complaints about their players. Their customer servise denies the problem too.
Buyer Beware!!!
25 Well Worth the Money
This is my first purchase of anything by Sony, and I am very happy with it. I originally purchased a dual unit by GoVideo, but returned it the next day because of the poor playback quality of the VCR side. I am quite pleased with the playback quality of the DVD's and VHS tapes on this machine. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because the buttons on the remote are small and make it difficult to read.
26 Stay away !!
This combo dvd & video seemed like a good idea. I purchased it since it was made by sony. I have been very disappointed. The picture quality is sooo poor. It is a piece of junk! Stay away.
27 Conveniently broken after 13 weeks
I bought this DVD/VCR combo from Best Buy about 13 weeks ago. The DVD player worked fairly well until the screen froze while watching The Ring. I could not get the unit to stop, play OR eject. I tried this several times with the remote and buttons on the unit over a few day period with no luck. Best Buy didn't want anything to do with it since it was over the 30 day return/exchange period. Sony now wants to charge me $29.95 to exchange it for a refurbished unit or $59 for fixing and returning my unit. So in summary, I spent $159 for the new unit, $29.95 for a refurbished unit and the associated shipping charges. Let's hope that Sony can get it right the second time around. I would not recommend ANYONE buy SLVD350P from Sony.
28 Starts skipping and has happened with other Sonys
I had the same problem with this DVD player and another Sony DVD player, that cost twice as much. They both seemed ok at first but started skipping after just a month or two use, and it became progressively worse. First just a skip or two, it made me think maybe the DVD was scratched. Then, would freeze up and skip certain scenes. Finally it got to where it wouldn't play any DVD I own all the way through, and wouldn't even recognize certain DVDs- it would just keep spinning and saying "No disc".
We bought 2 $99 Panasonic DVD players and threw away the Sonys, and to my surprise, the Panasonic ones have been playing perfectly for over a year now, NO skips or other defect or quality problems. I recommend Panasonic DVD players as being the best, and advise anyone to stay away from the overpriced Sonys.
Read up some other reviews and see for yourself.
29 DVD Problems
I've had this unit for a little over a month and it completely stopped reading DVDs. It still reads audio CDs and the VCR is decent. I'd steer clear of this combo.
30 Upgrading from stand alone DVD player
I bought this unit to replace my stand alone Sony DVD player, I picked this one since it had optical out and I could reuse my optical audio cable. This is not a component style device. The volume button on the remote does not control the stereo, it does the television instead. My Television does not have an optical input so I went into the menu and adjusted the outputs. Still no way to control the audio on the stereo. It does however have some neat features. You can lock the dvd door to keep kids out, but not the VCR door. You can zoom in on the picture up to 4X's on DVD's. The old Sony DVD remote works so I can watch movies and control the stereo's volume. You can watch DVD's and VHS through the RF making this a simple plug and play device.
You cannot use both the DVD and VCR function together.
31 TV Picture was distorted
I bought this product and it was easy to install. I have DISHTV and there was no diagram to tell you how to install it. Once I did, I noticed immediately that the TV pictures wasn't as good as before. It was grainy and had a slight flicker. I tried to get information from Sony and got only canned answers back which were non responsive. So I have repacked this item and intend to return it. Very disappointed. I may try it one more time because it does have the items I was looking for and maybe this was a defective product. I was concerned about the criticism of the product in general by the other customer but I am willing to try it one more time before switching to another company.
32 Wow!
We have had this product for 7 months now. We have 2 teenagers in the house and loads of extra kids. The machine records, plays, and rewinds endlessly. It has played recorded DVD's from our camcorder and computer easily with no picture distortion. I believe Sony has produced a good product!
33 Bad Product, Bad Customer Service
When I first bought this, DVDs would freeze at times and the image would decay to pixels at times. I contacted Sony customer service and they said that it was due to finger prints or scratches on the DVDs. After I had the machine for about 2 to 3 months, the DVD player stopped reading DVDs completely. I again contacted customer service and they told me to ship it to Texas and that they would send me a refurbished machine for ninety dollars. Actually, ninety was the minimum cost for labor since the warranty only covered parts. It could cost more if any of the parts were not covered by the warranty. Considering the cost of the machine, this was not a good option. I am stuck, but I hope that others won't make the same mistake and buy this machine. Also, after I ran into problems, I looked on Amazon for reviews of similar Sony DVD players. Sure enough, others had the same problem.
