Brad Newton

Panasonic E55 & ram?

When using this type of dvd for recording, do it basically work like a vhs tape - I mean if I record something today & then record something tomorrow, does it start the 2nd recording at the end of the 1st or does it record over top of the 1st recording?

May God Guide and Guard the USA!

Phil Tomaskovic

Think of it like a hard drive (or large floppy). The recordings will be in sequence, but you can access them randomly. Nothing will be recorded over until you delete it.

Brad Newton

Will it have to finalized before it can be played on other players? Can it be un-finalized to delete & reuse?

May God Guide and Guard the USA!

ChuckSolo

I don't know about DVD-RAM, but DVD-/+ RW discs do not need to be finalized to play in players other than the recorder, however, DVD+R/-R discs do. I have played the DVD+RW discs I create on my Gateway DVDR on various players with no problems, as long as the player is capable of playing +RW/+R discs. When I first got the recorder, I finalized a +RW disc and then erased it and recorded on it again. I have never recorded over a disc unless I erased it first though. Erasing the disc takes only a few seconds on my Gateway. Recording is basically exactly like on a VCR as the recorder formats the blank disc as soon as the disc tray is closed.

Bill Will

The nice thing also about DVD Recorders is that if you just happened to be scanning the channels & you see something you want to record you can just hit the record button & you never have to worry about recording over something because the recorder will automatically find the blank spaces on a disc to record on so no more Rewinding/Forwarding to find a spot to record on like a VCR. I find myself more & more watching TV through the recorder on my Panny E55 so if I get a phone call all I have to do push the record button & then answer the phone & after the phone call is over I can pick up where I answered the phone & the recorder keeps recording the rest of the program while I'm watching what it recorded before. As for DVD-RAM it does not have to be finalized to play on another DVD Player but the DVD Player must be able to play RAM Discs (Newer Panny's & only a few others will play them) DVD-R Discs MUST BE Finalized to play in other DVD Players. DVD-RAM discs can be erased & reused up to 100,000 times where the DVD-R's can only be recorded on Once but they can be erased on the Panny but any erasing you do on the DVD-R's you lose the time. Example: If you recorded 1 1/2 hours on a DVD-R at the 2 hour speed & you decided to erase a 1/2 hour program the 1 hour program would still be there but you would only have a 1/2 left of recording time on the disc because you do not get the time back that you erased. This info is based on just using the Panasonic for recording & etc & not using a computer for editing & etc. You can also think of them as a VCR with better Picture Quality & more usefull tricks but if you din't want to use any of the tricks you can use them Exactly like a VCR & they pretty much Hookup the same way that a VCR does & if you wanted to manually cut the commercials out it works the same way as a VCR does. On the Panny you press Pause before the commercial comes on & then you press pause again to start recording again when the program returns. Hope this helps you out & that I din't confuse you.

Phil Tomaskovic

RAM discs have no concept of finalizing. You can just record and delete programs (or reformat the whole disc). With regard to other players, they have to support dvd-ram (only some brands do).