This is the worst piece of electronic equipment I have EVER owned. It looks good but it functions poorly with many unwritten, mysterious and unknown attempts at explaning how and why it should work. Initially, there were questions but SANYO came out with a patch to help with the problem of freezing up and having to unplug it to make it work, that should have been a HINT. Then there was the small print stating that you can only use 2x-4x discs and some of those may not work. Now, I have the proper discs but keep getting disc loading, than an eject without any explanation or the ability to record onto them. Their website is usually helpful. But this product functions so poorly that now you cannot even find it on SANYO's website or any other DVD that they produced, imagine that. Information on this piece has been reduced to only a google search with more complaints than positives. SANYO should be embarrassed and should retify this but of course now that it is an OLD product they... Read more

This recorder has been a solid performer for me for the past two years, but now I'm down to my last compatible blank DVD disc. The unit is very picky which discs it will record on. In the instruction manual I found online (the one that came with my recorder was in Spanish) only the following discs are recommended:

DVD+R:

CMC (2.4x/4X)
DAXON (4x)
Mitsubishi (2.4x/4x)
Prodisc (2.4x)
Richo (2.4x/4x)
Taiyo Yuden (4x)

DVD+RW:

CMC (2.4x)
Infodisc (2.4x)
Mitsubishi (2.4x/4x)
Moser Bare India (2.4x)
Optdisc (2.4x)
Philips (2.4x/4x)
Prodisc (2.4x)
Richo (2.4x/4x)
Ritek (2.4x)
Melody (2.4x)

As you can see, those are discs of a bygone era. I know of no software update that would enable the recorder to work with currently available blank 16x DVD+R discs or even many currently available blank 4x DVD+RW discs. As another reviewer mentioned, this unit seems to have been... Read more

I recently purchased a refurbished Sanyo DRW500 Slim Recorder/Player on Amazon and got a great deal on it! I chose this particular DVD Recorder/Player because it is identical to the one that I purchased new when they first came out around 2001. I have owned many kinds of Sanyo products over the years and loved all of them. Although my old original Sanyo DVD recorder/player was still operable after 10 years of daily use, I loved the idea that I had the opportunity to get a new refurbised one on Amazon, knowing that it too would last at least another 10 years or more. A real benefit of doing this was that it is compatible with my TV connections, so it was very easy and convenient to just unplug the cables on the old one and plug them in to the new Sanyo and it was ready to go. The Sanyo is also very easy to operate and to set up recording on the timer, and I am so grateful that I didn't have to spend time to learn how to operate a new DVD recorder/player which can be challenging at... Read more