RCA DRC8320N DVD Recorder
By: RCA Average Rating: 1.0 Total Reviews: 16
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 On: 2008-05-19
I cant think of a single good thing about this system. It took forever to rewind tapes, and was very slow in turning off and on, etc. Then the audio randomly went out one day, instead only producing a static sound. The display then went out, and although you could hear the system power up, there was no display. The system then would not open or close to eject VHS or DVDs. The final step was for the system not to respond in anyway. It is now a dead useless piece of junk, and under a year old. Save your money, and do NOT buy an RCA!!
On: 2008-05-04
I purchased this unit 15 months ago, hardly have used it in that time. Unit will not power on, company said will cost $130-150 to fix it, mail back at my expense. Wal Mart with original receipt and box will not do a thing past 90 days. I paid $172 a little over yr. ago for this unit. Manual was a nighmare trying to figure out how to set up unit.
This is piece of junk, had a prior older VCR (magnavox or sony) for 18 yrs. that still worked but wanted to upgrade to DVD/VCR player recorder.
Will never buy another RCA PRODUCT AGAIN.
On: 2008-04-23
All of the nasty reviews are true. What a waste of resources! Dont even think about buying one of these or anything else RCA (Chinese) makes. Timer function useless, user guide worthless.
On: 2008-04-17
Dont buy this product. I had mine for about one year before I finally figured out that its junk. All of a sudden during taping a DVD, it stopped working and I now have a VCR tape and DVD stuck in it. None of the buttons will work, it wont shut off, eject, or rewind, etc. The screen reads "hello", but the junk wont talk to me. Its going in the trash and Ill never buy another RCA electronic again! I hardly even used it before it broke.
On: 2008-02-17
This item was replacement for a DRC8300N that was also bad. It took many months of fighting with RCA to get a replacement and I did not want this model as it also had problems on internet reports. They said to take it or leave it.
The replacement DRC8320N has the interface error that so many report. RCA wont answer calls or they put on hold and never return when they hear it is this model. One nice lady said they have many reports of problems and cant fix them, then she hung up.
I will never buy anything again from RCA. I bought my original unit two years ago and had problems almost immediately. Since then they have just jerked me around.
To be fair, the unit was fantastic in all ways when it worked. But I only got about 20 hours on the first before it died and about 30 on this one.
On: 2008-01-18
I purchased the RCA8320N DVD + VCR recorder four months ago. All of a sudden, it stopped working. The DVD in the player is stuck, the VCR tape is stuck, the screen reads, "Please Wait". Ive unplugged it several times hoping that would reboot something but to no avail. When I called the RCA folks, they told me I would have to send to the Service Center or take it to my nearest RCA Authorized Dealer. I cannot believe I have to pay shipping for this thing and only having it for 4 months. I am sure if I take it somewhere or send it, they will try to charge me a boatload for this piece of junk.
Dont buy it. Youll be sorry if you do.
On: 2008-01-16
We didnt really use this much, so I was pretty surprised when it died, just 30 days short of the 1 year warranty. RCA support is a nightmare. The 866 number on the unit says theyre so overloaded with calls that I should wait 3 days before calling back. I e-mailed their support, who gave me a number to call for an RMA. After waiting an hour to talk to a rep, it turned out that number didnt handle this model and he gave me (you guessed it) the original 866 number to call.
On: 2007-12-27
I was so excited to start putting my video projects to disc. That excitement disappeared quickly when time after time I had failed attempts at creating quality discs from this machine. Whenever I hit rewind or forward fast or pause, the sound disappeared when I resumed playing the disc. This happened on all eight attempts to record a variety of home-made videos. The project has now sat on hold for two years since I became too frustrated to return to the project--thanks to this awful DVD Recorder+VCR Combo!
It is JUNK!
On: 2007-04-16
The firmware is toast, everytime I turn it on it wants to do the whole initialization thing, then it doesnt pick up any channels during auto-scan, it will only record to one DVD format, although the box claims many. When you get it home, and after you wade through the nearly incomprehensible users manual, thats when you find out about the DVD format thing. This is, no doubt about it, the worst ever consumer electronics product Ive ever bought. Id send it back, but that would deprive me of the pleasure of taking a hammer to it.
 On: 2007-03-23
WTF? If you push any button during some ongoing action, the disc is toast. Unplugging and re-starting is the only way. Mostly. I just love the poorly translated instructions. Old Low Norse into Chinese into American English apparently is a bad thing. I guess, ya know, this whole technology is not done fermenting. Garbage-in = Garbage-out
On: 2007-02-15
Out of the box the remote didnt work. I tried different batteries with the same result - nothing. Then I let it sit for awhile and it worked for awhile - long enough to get past the initialization of the unit (it wont work until you get past the initial setup). Once again the remote wouldnt work so I tried the front panel copy button and that seemed work and so I waited for the DVD recorder to finish. I played the DVD in my player and was greatly disappointed with the product. I told a friend that it looked like the original AFTER the 100th copy. I repackaged it and returned it the next day. P.S. the instruction manual also gets a very low rating - reminds me of the level of work school aged children produce when they dont want to do the work required.
 On: 2007-02-14
OK, Im not sure about my overall rating yet, as I just got this. So far, the hardest part has been figuring out the instructions and connecting the machine to my TV, which is an older TV, and it is not stereo; it took trial and error and guess work to figure out how to get the sound to work, and that I only needed to connect one audio output to make it work. My TV set up was a little different than shown in the manual, but I could not tell from the picture where the hook ups went on this unit. I happened to have some dvd discs around that are dvd-R. I wasnt sure from the manual if they were compatible, and what the difference was. I called up the help line. The rep said that + was prefered and automatically would finalize while the - would not. I asked if If coud finalize myself, and he said yes. But so far I dont see in the manual if this can be done manually on a dvd r disk. Im trying out a vcr to dvd copy now, so Ill see what happens. I thought a lot of setting up was guess work. It would help a NON techie to be more definitive with more specific steps within the manual. Other than that, My TV picture has NEVER looked so good, even better than the dvd/vcr player I was using before this. I tried playing a vcr and it looks great. I havent tried a dvd yet or other disk. If I have any problems, Ill report back. VCRs wont be around forever,so Im not going to be too picky about this if I can actually convert the tapes I have to disc. I cant say yet if this is useless, but Ill report back if it turns out to be. For now, if it works Ill keep it. If it does not, I have 90 days.
On: 2007-01-28
I bought this machine at a Meijer store, and the salesperson had no recomendation on this one versus a few other brands. I purchased it based on what the outside of the box said.
I thought it was easy to set up and I never even looked at the directions. I was able to transfer several tapes to DVD, both home movies and old VHS movies I own. They played back fine in this DVD player.
Soon I found that in some DVD players, the disks wont play at all. In other players, the DVDs paly but there are no chapters (which I put in) and wont pause, rewind, or fast foward. They only place they will play is in the machine they were made on.
At the time I wasnt sure if it was the recorder or the disks, and sadly I had to put the project aside for a few months. Now that I have again tried, Im not sure I will ever get it to work properly. Unfortunatly Im way passed the alowed time to take it back to the store. Im feeling rather burned right now.
I am planing to contact RCA over this machine and my RCA Lyria mp3 player that only works half the time. Based on these two experiences, I will never again buy from RCA.
On: 2006-12-11
I wanted a simple machine, but with high quality picture, primarily to convert home videos from VHS to DVD. The salesman in the store recommended the DCR8320N, stating that it is the latest. The machine looks good and the descriptions on the box were addressing my needs.
It took half a day to read through the manual, which is not great, but on par, and may be a bit better than manuals for similar machines, i.e., it was written in a reasonably good English. Installation and setup were OK, except for the Remote and Channel Search. The buttons on the Remote had to be pushed hard to effect functioning, and many times that resulted in skipping past the desired function. After long search for channels I got two that were OK and one with bad picture. Repeating the process and trying various things did not produce a better result.
The DVD playback picture quality was good, however, the picture kept breaking up with newer DVDs and on some the player was showing both the movie and portions of the additional features on the disk. I discovered that playing an old DVD cleared the problem temporarily. Then there were icons continually displayed during playback of newer DVDs, which were not easy to get rid of.
The picture quality of the VCR was bad, both with newer and with older tapes, as well as, with home videos. There were noises coming from the tape drawer when a tape was put in and removed, that sounded as scraping of a spring.
Aside from the bad picture, the transfer of VHS content to the DVD was trouble free and easy. Creating chapters and indexing was easy, except for the difficulty with the Remote, as I described above.
After three days of wrangling, I returned the machine.
On: 2006-12-02
I should have known something was wrong when I saw a big stack of these at the store and none of the salespeople recommended them. I dont know if this thing actually records because it never worked. It seemed to overheat after I hit Record and shut off. In the process, it made coasters out of the discs. I did some research and these are actually manufactured by some schlock company in China. RCA just puts their name on it. I guess quality control is nonexistent. I took it back for a refund. I should write RCA and tell them to reimburse me for the discs it destroyed.
On: 2006-11-25
I used to own the previous model the DRC8312N, but the VCR was such poor quality I decided to purchase a DRC8320N. Not only is the manual impossible to understand, it took me from 1000 am to 4am to figure out how to work it. Mine had a malfunction that kept the disc tray from loading. Instead when the power was turned on the tray kept opening and closing by itself. When I pressed set-up on the remote the tray would open and close. The display on the screen would show "Input Rear SV, CH3, Tape Eject" I took it back to Wal-Mart for an exchange but this one did the same thing. I called RCA who couldnt help because my problem was not in their troubleshooting section. So they told me to send it back at my expense and they would either repair or replace it. I told them if the have an 8312 laying around to send that instead. Stay away from this unit at all costs. Get an 8312 if you have to.
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