I'm new to this and I've been looking into buying a dvd-recorder. What I want to do is record shows and sports, but I've heard from other customer reviews that people are having trouble with that and it's hit or miss. Is there anyone that can recommend a recorder that they aren't having problems with? What size HD is a good size to look for? Also, if you're on an HD channel and you record it, will it be recorded with that same HD quality? Lastly, I have Comcast's DV-R box right now and after getting a DVD-recorder, is it possible to record what I already have saved on my DV-R box? Any info or insight would be awesome, Thanks.
Yes, it is a hit-and-miss game, there's no real champion out there, just good ones, not one comes with all the features one wants, so you have to pick the one that meets your needs the closest. To some users just the issue of not having a particular feature or user error and they'll call that a problem. There's a learning curve and an adjustment when moving to dvd recorders. For a HDD size, the highest quality/speed you can record is at 1-hour, a blank dvd has 4.7 GB and that's just enough room to copy a recording at the 1-hour speed, the smallest HDD recorders are 80GB = (80/4.7 = about 16 hours). Viewing is also good at the 2-hour speed, gives you 32 hours/80GB. At the 3-hour speed, you're starting to sacrifice quality for space, still not bad, but a noticeable difference. HD recording, currently no recorders on the market that can record HD. Some models in Japan but they're in the thousands of $, no thank you. Current recorders record at 480i and will output at 480p. Only HD PVRs, for the moment, can record and playback HD content. You can record your saved file on the PVR, I do this all the time, I just send the S-Video and audio output to my recorder, adjust the speed I want, choose the right source for the S-Video input and it's as simple as pressing play on the PVR and pressing record on the recorder. This is where a HDD recorder comes in handy as afterwards, you can perform some editing to recordings on the HDD such as splitting and deleting parts of a recording. If you send a PVR HD recording to the recorder, the recorder will just simply record it at 480i. One model currently available is the Philips DVDR3575H/37, 160GB hardrive recorder which would fulfill a lot of your needs, I'm personaly at the point of getting my own, even though I have other recorders, this one has features I can't get anywhere else such as NTSC/ATSC SDTV tuner, for me the ATSC part is not so needed (Canada) but I'll have it if need be in the future, for you, if in the U.S., it's a must. SDTV will scan cable and program all analog AND digital channel and the upconverting playback (up to 1080p) of recordings and dvds features. They're other upconverting recorders, it's getting a recorder with a HDD which is getting harder to find in the U.S., never mind one that can also upconvert, that's why the Philips is viewed as a good option for the price ($300). Hope this helps. Cheers, CC
I bought the dvdr3575h last year and been pretty happy with it so far. My old Panasonic went out so I had to find another one, but Panasonic doesn't make one any more. (with a hard drive with a reasonable price) The remote is really a learning process, which I am still getting use to! The bad feature that I miss is the TV guide which it doesn't have. So you can't program the unit to record different shows using the guide. You have to tell the unit from what time to start and stop it, and what channel you want. My other Panasonic unit you could put the TV guide show number and it would know all the info, even the name would show up on your hard drive screen when you accessed it later. The best feature, which I just found out recently, is the DIVX. It will play your .AVI files you get from the internet, directly! All you have to do it drag them from you computer onto a blank DVD and the unit will recognize them, show a menu, and play them in order until finished. You can get 5-6 700 megs movies, or twice that many TV shows on 1 dvd. I mainly burn on dvd rw just to check them out, then I can erase them to re-burn other shows. Those portable USB hard drives are great for storing my .avi files, I bought 2 500 gig WD my books for about $110. each. Now I am thinking about updating an old computer with a video card to play from the computer to TV. Laterzzz Glew
I take it you're in the US then? Still lotsa hard drive recorders up here in Canada but then, we are not switching over to all digital anytime soon so we don't need those ATSC tuners. I'm actually looking at either of 2 units up here: Panasonic DMR-EH55: http://www.panasonic.ca/english/audiovideo/dvdvcr/recorder/DMREH55.asp Pioneer DVR-650H-K: http://www.pioneerelectronics.ca/PO...er+DVD+Players+&+Recorders/ci.DVR-650H-K.Kuro
