DVD Recorders

Pop round to your local library (reference section) and grab a photocopy of the December 2003 WHICH? Magazine - there's a good review of DVD recorders in there. Panasonic seem to be favoured - friends of mine have bought them and been happy!

David

Admittedly it's been a while since I looked at domestic DVD recorders (a couple months, but that's quite a while in techno-world!), but I was very unimpressed with the ability of the DVD recorders to really replace videos.

Due to the restrictions on real-time encoding of the video stream direct to the disk, you couldn't get more than an hour of really good quality video.

Plus, reducing the quality to get more on the disk doesn't result in "nice" increased noise across the picture in the way that LP mode does on VHS, but you get awful, intrusive digital artifacts which really ruin the picture.

So I'd check very carefully before investing. And I'd, as suggested above, consider the time shifting boxes such as Sky+ or TiVo, or even (for the techno-literate) Personal Video Recorder (PVR) type software and hardware for your PC.

If the DVD recorders are now up to a standard to replace VHS, I'd be very interested to hear that.

Chris

I've replaced my video with a Phillips DVDR70. The quality of the 4 hr mode is much better than VHS and useable at 6hr. The 2 hr is superb.

It also records and monitors in 5:1 so I can listen to cable and terrestrial in surround live through te DVDR, as well as listen during playback. Recording is as simple as video (or as complicated, depending on your view!) and it has videoplus.

You can play write once DVD+R on most other DVD players, but the DVD+RW, which is re-recordable, is a bit picky about what it plays back on. You can't just lend your friends DVDs you record like tape - but I just make copys on my computer and lend those instaed. Discs are about a quid each and I have 30 in the space about 10 Video tapes took up.

It was £250 from Comet in November.

Regards

Stephen

Whooa..Stephen...hang on.
Why can't you lend your mates DVD's to play if they are compatible with other DVD players?
Have you tried copying old VHS tapes to DVD with it?
This sounds very tempting.
I know there are some new machines that are DVDR & HD combined.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rasher:
Whooa..Stephen...hang on.
Why can't you lend your mates DVD's to play if they are compatible with other DVD players?
Have you tried copying old VHS tapes to DVD with it?
This sounds very tempting.
I know there are some new machines that are DVDR & HD combined.

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DVD+R can play on most other modern DVD players and computers. These are one off recordings though - not the usual method of replacing a video, right?

DVD+RW are re-writable, but can only be played on DVD+RW compatible computers and DVD+RW compatible players - ie not all of them!

You can indeed do Video to DVD copies.

I'm really happy with it.

Regards

Stephen

Bugger...that means I need to have one! Thanks Stephen.

I think it's worth waiting a bit longer for the machines with built-in HDs to come down in price. Unless you want to do a lot of longterm archival rather than time-shifting, they seem to make more sense and (according to WHICH?) have recording times of 8-14 hours in best-quality mode.

David

I would normally agree David, but when widescreen TV's first appeared about 7 years ago, I bought one and waited for the transmitted broadcasts to catch up, channel 4 were 16:9, BBC were mainly 4:3. It was interesting. Then we considered plasma and after taliking to a mate, he told us that it was worth waiting until they were £2000 and had a contrast ratio of at least 700:1. So we waited for that, whereupon talk was beginning of LCD. Then LCD is now undergoing a new technology and it's worth waiting again until later in the year when prices will drop, screen sizes increase, and the quality gets better. Then with DVD recorderes....well, we could wait forever if we don't just plug in at some time. I have seen the Philips DVDR70 at Richer Sounds, multi region for £229. At least I can copy all those VHS tapes and get a few shelves back. If it's obselete in 18 months, then it's not the end of the world. £229 is cheap enough not to worry.

I'm with Rasher on this - if it's REALLY that cheap at Richers, I'll wait until my summer bonus (if we get one!) and buy a machine then.

Got a lot of good movies and BBC2 stuff such as the Love Bites series that need backing up - oh, and Portishead's performance on the 1995 Mercury Music Prize...

__________________________
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

Yes..it really is that cheap at Richer Sounds.

I went for the Toshiba RD-XS30 which has a 60GB hard disk and DVD-RAM/DVD-R drive. About 500 quid off the web. Very impressed so far - the dual drive makes it very flexible. You can record to HD and watch DVD which was good while i was copying all my old videos.

john

i have a panny as well very nice and trouble free
a word of warning if you see a cheap philips 880-890 stay away most of them are bug ridden

Prices of HD players are being kept artificially high and are bound to come down a lot before too long. How much does an 80Gb HDD cost? So where's the rest of the money going?

Cheers

Harry

Hmm, well I'm humble enough to admit when I'm wrong - I think some further investigation may be in order.

Although, for me, it looks as though a digital tuner card and lots HDD space on my PC may be the better route for me.

Chris

Thanks folks....my main concern is over the reliability of re-writable discs as a replacement for VHS tapes for time shifting.
With tapes, although the quality deteriorates, at least it is rare for them to become totally unreadable. My experience with CDRW has been unsettling

Laurie S

quote:

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Originally posted by Rasher:
Yes..it http://www.richersounds.com/index.php?f=itemdetl.php&p=301515

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BLEEDING HECK!!! Well - if I wasn't in the process of buying a CD5...

__________________________
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

Just my £0.02 worth, but how much stuff do you want to keep for posterity? If the bulk of what you want to do is time shifting then I think Sky+ is the way to go. If you want to archive stuff then you can always transcribe it to VHS or whatever.

Duncan