Aspire Digital AD-8091 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder
By: ASPIRE DIGITAL Average Rating: 2.5 Total Reviews: 23
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 On: 2008-08-30
This started out being a great, inexpensive dvd recorder that worked well...at first. It would freeze up a lot requiring me to unplug it often. After a couple of months I was unplugging it several times an hour. It cant even perform the basics right anymore and wont read/play the very dvds I recorded on it. And there is no company support!
On: 2007-12-16
So much to say but where will I start I bought this in 2005 from Walmart brand new I currently have my third and final dvd recorder, not because this one is a keeper but because my one year warranty is up and has been for a while. This I will be throwing in the street just to watch it crash!!! It was good when I got it I loved it, but now not only will it no longer timer recorder(atleast a year), it will not OTR it will not play a disc without begging and pleading from me and when it does pLAY A DISC IT WONT GIVE IT BACK!!! Yeah it keeps the dvds I have to pry them out and be careful not to scratch the dvds! So I say absolutely positively DO NOT BUY THIS RECORDER dont think youll be the lucky one with this recorder your just not gonna be.
 On: 2007-05-13
I was fortunate to get this product on sale and am very satisfied with it.
It includes the option to record and play DVDs in PAL format (used in
Europe) and it is great. I would recommend to anyone, especially to
users of multiple formats. It creates up to 6 hrs of very good quality DVDs.
The product was delivered in a timely manner in excellent condition.
On: 2007-01-02
I saw many bad reviews for this recorder but for the price of $76, the cheapest I could find at this time so I purchased it. The remote was not working and could not set up or program. I could open and close the tray from the recorder without the try but nothing else. Had to return to amazon. No wonder the price is getting cheaper but it will not be worth to try this recorder.
On: 2006-05-05
In less that 3 weeks after I received this item it became defective by having only audio - no picture. I wrote them an e-mail using the address that was in the owners manual. There was no response to my e-mail. There was no way that I was going to use the phone number listed in the manual and have to be on hold indefinately, all the while paying for the phone call myself.
An e-mail to Amazon was returned in less than 24 hours saying they would give me a refund and pay for the postage to return it. My thanks to Amazon for standing behind their sales even when the manufacturer wont.
On: 2006-04-11
I shelved this piece of junk moonths ago. It doesnt always record as scheduled; the machine sometimes doesnt turn itself on to do a scheduled recording. If you have weekly recordings for the same day, only the first one will be recorded. If you set the machine to record once a week at, say, 8pm it will turn itself on everyday at 8pm. If you try to play a blank DVD, the machine will freeze. The clock is faster by one minute each month. In its first year, the tuner stopped working. I got a new unit with the manufacturers warranty. A year later it froze every time I tried to record. Needless to say, thats game over. This piece of junk is useful only as a player, not as a recorder.
 On: 2005-12-08
It took us a couple of months to fully understand this product, but we now know enough to burn cds with ease and have had no complaints .
It took my wife a couple ofweeks to learn how to turn it on to the right channel, since you may have to hook it up differently than the normal way, and the eject button on the player itself wont eject the dvd, only the remote will ??.
It is now a year old and still going strong. I have has ample dvd players that have wasted away in less that a year , so you have to give it credit!
But its job was to copy family dvds from video and play dvds and it does that , so just give it a chance and get past the really bad instructions .
On: 2005-11-03
This thing is the biggest piece of junk, I just bought it and the menu wont even come up. I have tried hooking it up 10 different ways and still nothing. I contacted their customer support and got No response. I downloaded their firmware upgrade and it wouldnt even load. Trust me when I say follow the old saying "You Get What You Pay For" buy a great brand name and get a great product, buy a cheap brand name and get a cheap product.
On: 2005-05-05
Found this thing for 129.99 at a local store. Figured it cant be great for that price, but hey you can always return it. The only thing this unit did well was play commercial dvds. It has the worst tv tuner performance ive ever seen, and as for burning dvds Ill never know because it always froze. Aspire has a firmware upgrade available... it would not even load. They should be ashamed to foist this lemon on consumers, and retailers should be ashamed to sell them.
 On: 2005-05-01
This is a competent DVD recorder once you get past the poorly written and edited instruction manual. It is also very important to download and install the ROM upgrade that Aspire offers on their Web site (www.aspiredigital.com).
The main plus of this unit is its low price. It makes good quality recordings using DVD+R and +RW media. I use it for archiving shows Ive recorded on my cable PVR, and sharing them with a few friends who dont have cable. I also transfer a lot of movies I have on Beta that havent come out on DVD (and probably never will!).
My main problem was figuring out how to "finalize" DVD+R discs. This is necessary for making the discs readable on ordinary DVD players. (DVD+RW discs do not have to be finalized for compatibility, though the target player has to be able to read DVD+RW discs to begin with.) When I went to finalize my first discs, the menu appeared to be not available. Then I found a review of the unit on the epinions site, where the reviewer had the same difficulty. He discovered that the recorder had to be in Monitor mode to access the menu for finalizing. If anyone has this problem, just hit the DVD/TV button on the remote to get "MONITOR" to display, then go into the Setup menu to Play/Edit Disc, and select Edit Disc. Finalize Disc is finally available!
There is really no excuse for such a crummy manual, and that is the main problem with this recorder.
On: 2005-02-18
Do NOT buy this worthless junk. I thought I could use it to record TV shows.. First time I tried to play the recorded show back, I immediately noticed the audio volume is at least 10X LOWER than the TV source or any of my other VCRs also connected to my TV. So, to barely hear the dialog from the Aspire DVD, I have to crank the TV audio up to maximum... which allows to me to hear a lot of hiss and hum, and will knock me over if I accidentally switch back to the TV. I called the Aspire "tech support" and finally got through after many hours and learned the "problem" was that I was using the Aspire internal tuner to tape TV programs from (excuse me?)... seriously, he said to get proper audio I would have to use a second external tuner and feed it into the Aspire.
I taped three programs and learned pretty quick the unit was unreliable for turning on and taping at a specified time. I learned that the reason is it may not be "recognizing" the DVD-RW disc when it spins up and then it just shuts off and records nothing. Silly me, I bought ten brand new top quality DVD-RW discs thinking they would work in a machine specifed to record on DVD-RW. Well, they do sometimes.....
The last salt in the wound was that when I tried to watch the three programs I had recorded, I immediately noticed something was wrong. One of the "thumbnail" images for each recorded program was changed and was the same image as the previous one.... and when I clicked on the one that had been corrupted, it refused to play and just made lots of whirring and clicking noises. Program destroyed and lost forever.
So, in summary: unreliable for recording, may destroy a program you did manage to record, audio is defective by design. Other than that.... no problems to report.
I have no idea how this dog ever got out of the kennel.
 On: 2005-02-07
This unit is riddled with bugs. [...].htm
but it does very little to fix the problems of this model. It is EXTREMELY difficult to get it to finalize dvds. The quality with the rf connection is horrible. Its a nightmare to get around on some of the menus. I would save my money and try a different manufacturer.
On: 2005-01-31
The unit works ok, if your watching a show and hit record. If you try to do a Repeat timer recording, the unit turns itself on everyday. example: I want to record a show EVERY friday from 10 to 11. If you set it up as a repeat recording, it will turn on the unit every DAY at 10:00 and never turn it off. so every morning I find the unit on.
I have been able to record shows I am watching with little trouble. I downloaded the firmware update too.
On: 2005-01-11
i just bought one a month ago and have had no trouble what so ever. I have been recording some old tapes from my vcr and they have come out perfect. Also watched all 3 Lord of the Rings and enjoyed everyone of them. I would recommend the Aspire to anyone. I would also like to say that Amazon was great also with their delivery. Thanks so much. A HAPPY CUSTOMER
by: dikteren On: 2005-01-04
Do not buy this unit. Somewhere between 70-90% of the DVDs that I have attempted to burn have turned into coasters. The worst is when you spend 3 hours filling a disc with stuff only for the unit to freeze up. At this point, the only way to get the AD-8091 to respond is to unplug the unit. After plugging it back in, the DVD+R disk is fried and not recognized by the unit, so the unit locks up again. Then you have to use another DVD+R disk. Then you may have a 50/50 chance of recording and burning a full disk without the system crashing on you. Dont touch this thing with a ten foot pole!!!
On: 2004-12-08
I have no problem with this machine, especially the cost. The only hangup is using DVD-RW and trying to erase/format the disk for another round of recording. It is still new to me at this point, but it takesa lot of back and forth with the remote to get it to finally accept the fact I want to erase/format and even to finalize a disk. I hope it will be easier-so far it isnt going along as the instrction book says regarding this problem. The pictures are extremely good even at the slowest speed-I am ridding myself of all my VCRs now!
On: 2004-12-06
got it 3 days ago. never had a dvd. came home, hooked it up and watch a dvd with my family. have been recording shows for my kids since. saw previous bad review before i got it, and was worried.. but i have had no problems other than figuring out how to use our current vcr with it. just need to read the directions.
On: 2004-11-30
I wasted at least 12 hours trying to get this thing working! I read the owners manual, bought the recomended brand and type of media discs, and now I have a small pile of trashed discs. This thing freezes up and I had to keep unplugging it from the wall. Maybe it should come with a "clapper" switch. It looks like others have had good results, so maybe Ill ask for a replacement unit. I wanted entertainment, but got aggravation. It would stop during the recording process, and another time it actually completed, but then it couldnt play what it had just recorded! I tried to "finalize" the disk etc.. no good. I even visited the Aspire web site for help. They should rename it "Expire"!
On: 2004-11-12
I recently purchased the Aspire Digital DVD recorder and am blown away by it. When I found out I could set the recorder to record programs and also move all my VHS tapes to DVD I was amazed. I have a friend who has the Phillips piece and a comparison of the two the Aspire works just as well. Im more impressed with its ability to also play music and DVDs. At this price point consumers cant go wrong.
On: 2004-11-11
I recently purchased the Aspire Digital DVD recorder and am blown away by it. When I found out I could set the recorder to record programs and also move all my VHS tapes to DVD I was amazed. I have a friend who has the Phillips piece and a comparison of the two the Aspire works just as well. Im more impressed with its ability to also play music and DVDs. At this price point consumers cant go wrong.
On: 2004-11-04
I have owned the AD-8091 for a few months. It took a little bit of time to get used to recording on DVDs, but this unit works great! I use it to time-shift my favorite TV shows (mostly on DVD+RWs) and make permanent recordings of cable TV movies and home movies from VHS, 8mm and VHS-C. I cant remember the last time I recorded anything with my VCR! The AD-8091 is also a great (progressive scan) DVD Player. CDs sound great too! I also like that it can play MP3 CDs. All in all, I highly recommend this model!
On: 2004-11-03
I have owned the AD-8091 for a few months. It took a little bit of time to get used to recording on DVDs, but this unit works great! I use it to time-shift my favorite TV shows (mostly on DVD+RWs) and make permanent recordings of cable TV movies and home movies from VHS, 8mm and VHS-C. I cant remember the last time I recorded anything with my VCR! The AD-8091 is also a great (progressive scan) DVD Player. CDs sound great too! I also like that it can play MP3 CDs. All in all, I highly recommend this model!
On: 2004-10-15
My experience with this unit has been PERFECT. Over the past several weeks, Ive recorded off of TV 2-3 times a week, Ive copied from my miniDV camcorder, Ive even used it as a digital audio recorder to archive some of my LP records (remember those?). The Aspire Digital recorder has been everything I could hope, and at a GREAT price. I highly recommend this model. I do recommend using good quality recording media, as Ive heard of many recorders struggling, glitching, and locking up when using cheap, no-name discs.
On: 2004-10-15
Ive been shopping around for well priced stand alone DVD recorder in order to transfer my VHS tapes that have slowly been
deteriorating onto DVD media. The AD-8091 had an excellent price so I bought one. Hooking up my VCR to the AD-8091
was relatively painless, and after setting up the on screen menu I was quickly copying my tapes to DVD media. Ive recorded
a few TV shows and movies as well and so far the unit has worked very well with both DVD+R and DVD/RW media. I did find that brand name blank media works much better than generic media. A plus for this unit is that it is a progressive scan DVD player that also plays MP3 and regular CDs. Overall its
a good deal for what I paid for it. I can recommend this unit.
On: 2004-10-03
This items has plenty of features for the price but this is of little value if you cant record DVDs. When attempting to record TV broadcasts to DVD+RW, the unit would freeze between 30 to 60 minutes into the recording and not respond to commands from either the remote or front panel controls. The only option was to unplug the unit then plug it back in. Changing to a different brand of DVD+RW disc did not resolve the problem.
The manufacturer acknowledged this problem and posted a ROM update on its website. After installing the update, nothing changed. I will return this item to the retailer tomorrow after owning it for seven days.
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