MUSTEK R320A review

The idea of bundling a DVD player with built-in decoder and a set of low-cost speakers to create a home cinema in a single box is nothing new. They are the midi-systems of the home cinema world.

Mustek has gone one step further by adding DVD recording to the mix, and has produced a unit with an awful lot of functions. The R320A can play the usual range of disc formats including DVD+/-R and DVD-RW, CD and MP3. It can decode Dolby Digital audio, but not the alternative DTS format, and output it to its 5.1 surround-sound speaker set. It also includes a built-in AM and FM radio tuner and can record TV to DVD+R/RW in one of five different quality settings, although it doesn't have an electronic programme guide (EPG).

The package consists of a silver central unit and six speakers. The five small satellite speakers all look identical: plastic and lightweight with holes in the back, enabling you to mount them on the wall. The sub-woofer is also silver and lacks weight.

Video inputs and outputs are numerous and include component outputs for progressive scan and S-video inputs to record directly from a camcorder. Unfortunately, the quality of playback is not as good as we had hoped, either from the component or SCART outputs. The R320A showed increased artefacts in flat areas of colour and noticeable horizontal lines. Sound quality was a little better, with the speakers turning out an acceptable performance with no distortion, even when turned up high. The maximum volume wasn't anything to get excited about but will more than suffice in smaller rooms.

The recording functions worked without a hitch. We copied some footage from a DV camera through the composite input to the supplied DVD+R at the default quality setting, which allows 120 minutes of recording on a disc. The result was acceptable and looked close enough to the original footage. However, there's no support for dual-layer discs. We'd rather buy a DVD writer for a PC, which would enable us to edit footage before writing it to disc, and a dedicated hard disk-based PVR for recording television, which is more flexible.

If you don't have a surround-sound system or DVD recorder and want a simple device that gives you everything in one box, the R320A is incredibly cheap. However, its performance is average and hard disk recorders are more flexible overall. The R320A has missed the boat by a couple of years.