Interesting article on DVD recorders (1 Viewer)

[Neil Brock]

I still have my Magnavox I bought a few years ago. It has recorded probably dozens upon dozens of hours of Hee Haw when I had satellite. It has recorded from VHS every unedited episode I have of The Beverly Hillbillies. It's recorded a lot of stuff. The only problem I have with it is it does not want to track anything well that was recorded in LP or SLP on the VHS side. I have two Grizzly Adams movies from Goodtimes that aren't copy protected, but they look terrible being in LP mode. I have some Memphis Wrestling stuff on VHS that was recorded on a top of the line VCR in the early 00's-it doesn't want to track it well due to it being in SLP mode.

Any of those dual DVD/VHS machines, the VHS player is a total piece of junk. For my transferring, I use JVC S-VHS players with a built in TBC. The difference in picture playback in night and day. You would pay a price to grab one on ebay but its well worth the cost.

 

[Regulus]

The Pay-TV networks are in trouble and they know it. Consumers are "Cutting the cord" in droves. Over 1,200,000 households have cancelled their subscription during the third quarter alone. People have gotten fed up with paying ever-rising subscription fees and the ever-declining quality of what's being shown. Have you noticed that these companies mention NOTHING about people quitting because of the insane amount of of advertising thrown at viewers? This was the reason I quit subscribing 11 years ago. Too much advertising, not to mention what's being shown on these commercials. It's cheaper to procure the programming on home video than to subscribe to a Pay-TV provider, not to mention once you finishing watching something, you get to keep it!

 

[Worth]

Any of those dual DVD/VHS machines, the VHS player is a total piece of junk. For my transferring, I use JVC S-VHS players with a built in TBC. The difference in picture playback in night and day. You would pay a price to grab one on ebay but its well worth the cost.

If you live in or near a decent sized city, you can find lots of industrial/pro VHS decks for $50 or less via local classifieds.

 

[DeWilson]

Yes, but try finding someone who can repair a VCR in this day in age!

A little proper maintenance (opening up the unit and manually cleaning and stuff) can only go so far.

I know there's at least a couple of techs/former techs that sell reconditioned units on eBay

The oddest "New,Old Stock" (c.2004) on eBay recently (last few months) have been these VHS JVC 4-head Mono units (HR-J4020UB) that play NTSC and PAL-M with menus in Portuguese. (Dual Voltage) Units are Quazi SVHS playback,too. Domestic Sellers,too, with quantity. If they were hifi, might be worth it.

The hard part isn't getting a DVD recorder, it's getting a reliable VCR to play tapes into it!

 

[Angelo Colombus]

Speaking of dvd recorders & Panasonic. It's really sad to see Panasonic today. I get their emails on sales and promotions and it's all rice cookers & razors and very little about 2k & 4k players or tv's.

 

[TJPC]

Wasn’t there a connection with the Philips brand sold in Europe and Canada? I remember buying Philips equipment in Canada, and seeing the identical product in the USA with “Panasonic” on the front.

 

[jcroy]

Wasn’t there a connection with the Philips brand sold in Europe and Canada? I remember buying Philips equipment in Canada, and seeing the identical product in the USA with “Panasonic” on the front.

Sounds like somebody licensing old beloved american/european/japanese brand names like Panasonic, Philips, etc ... and pasting the logo on the front panel of something manufactured in China.

 

[Worth]

Wasn’t there a connection with the Philips brand sold in Europe and Canada? I remember buying Philips equipment in Canada, and seeing the identical product in the USA with “Panasonic” on the front.

I don't know about Philips, but LG & Zenith were the same thing for a while, as were Mitsubishi & Electrohome, and Panasonic & Quasar.

 

[Tony Bensley]

I don't know about Philips, but LG & Zenith were the same thing for a while, as were Mitsubishi & Electrohome, and Panasonic & Quasar.

As I recall, Zenith and JVC were also the same for awhile. After we had purchased a Zenith VHS-C Camcorder in '96, I remember seeing a JVC Camcorder that was identical except for the brand name. I finally ditched the identical replacement Camcorder I picked up in the fall of '98 (Long story!) a few months ago. It was either that or our Toshiba VHS/DVD Player (The DVD portion no longer works!) combo, and the replacement Camcorder had an unfortunate tendency to eat VHS-C tapes unless I wound the tape past the 5 second lead in beforehand.

CHEERS!

 

[Elizabeth S]

I used to have several Magnavox recorders hooked up and used them to record everything I watch for later viewing. I hadn't done any burning to disc in a long time. It was just very time consuming, but I still have a lot of stuff on the hard drives. A couple of years ago, I got free DVR rental for a promo and swapped over to that as it could record the channels like Sundance, BBC America and others in the HD package. (I had been running a split coaxial to each of my Maggies.)

About 2 months ago, I was having telephone issues where I would lose the dial tone and calls couldn't go in or out. (I have phone, cable and internet from the same provider.) The technician who came over said it was because I was splitting the signal too much and it did indeed correct itself after changing to a 2-way splitter instead of the 6-way. He also said the analog signal would be totally dropped very soon (which would mean my old set up of coax straight to recorder would no longer work). That would also mean my bedroom TVs wouldn't work without a box.

So anyway, now I'm dependent on the DVR which just happened to have a failure this past weekend. It was filled 87% and I lost those shows. Now I'm catching up "on demand" with those which are available (and wasting my time watching commercials). Other shows I'll either have to buy on DVD/Blu or find some streaming method. Hopefully someday it will be stored in the cloud so something like this doesn't happen again. Such a PIA because I cannot re-program all my 50+ series unless there is a new episode within 2 weeks. Now I have to carefully watch for the return dates of all of those shows (and sometimes the smaller shows like "Hap and Leonard" are not going to be advertised widely -- and that's all I watch currently on Sundance since "Rectify" ended anyway. Until "Deutschland 83" (86) comes back.)

 

[jcroy]

He also said the analog signal would be totally dropped very soon

(On a huge offtopic tangent, possibly verboten).

Nowadays I have to laugh at my offline acquaintances who are still into stealing cable the old fashioned way (which will remain unstated). They'll be in for a rude awakening when the cable providers finally turn off the analog feeds.

Cracking the digital feeds is much more difficult, which the average "joe sixpack cable siphoner" is usually not capable of pulling off.

 

[TJPC]

All our channels went digital a few years ago. My two DVD recorders still work fine.

 

[jcroy]

(This may be verboten).

Nowadays I strongly suspect the folks who were hardcore into stealing cable in the past, have moved on into cracking satellite tv signals.

 

[John Karras]

One of the last few final nails in the coffin, was the best blank dvdr disc manufacturer (Taiyo Yuden) being sold to the worst manufacturer (CMC) around two years ago.

Without a good source of decent quality blank dvdr discs, such dvd recorders are largely pointless.

A real nail in the coffin that the article doesn't even discuss was the move from analog to digital broadcasting in 2009. DVD recorder sales by that time were really slowing, and most manufacturers weren't interested in adding additional cost the the device with mandatory digital tuners. Panasonic bit the bullet and tried, then dropped out-leaving the Funai-manufactured Magnavox units to have the field to themselves in North America.

 

[John Karras]

A question for anyone who still has a non-functioning dead dvd recorder.

Have you tried opening it up?

If so, are the drives a generic computer dvd drive? Or do they appear to be a custom designed dvd drive unit ?

The drives were customized with hardware-specific firmware that was tied to recorder model. That's why (back in the day), Panasonic could charge you $400 to replace a burned out drive.

 

[Mr. Handley]

Cut the cable about 5 years ago now. Wish I'd done it sooner.

My DVD/Blu collection will give me enough entertainment for the rest of my life.

 

[jcroy]

The drives were customized with hardware-specific firmware that was tied to recorder model. That's why (back in the day), Panasonic could charge you $400 to replace a burned out drive.

In principle, is it possible to find the same underlying generic dvd drive model and reflash the custom firmware to the generic drive, and still have a perfectly functioning dvd recorder?

(I imagine these older non-sata dvd drives would be difficult to find now).

IIRC, back in the day (circa early 2000s) LG manufactured computer dvd drives which used a chipset manufactured by Panasonic. (These Panasonic chipset LG dvd drives were actually very good drives for ripping audio cds which were either starting to "rot" away and/or were poorly manufactured).

 

[Radioman970]

Funny since I'm backing up on DVD and HD all my home movies I put on DVD years ago. Wonderful watching those funky old memories from when I got along with ALL my family (well, cept bitch sis but that's a gimme). Now we have family feuds that ain't funny. Survey says: "F*** U! ...NO F-U!!! No YOU!!!" Borrowed a VHS-DVD recorder 2008 but all the converted movies came out with a random fluttering flaw. I had to use one of my VHS players and that worked! HQ was 1 hour per DVD and looks darmn good. My camera was a 1989 Magnivox. I now have a second camera since my old dog Goldie chewed up the power supply/battery charger as a pup and I bought a used on ebay for 1/10th the price. I used to keep a big bag of stuff she chewed up, various Playstation games, sound track to Forrest Gump, satellite TV listing books that were delicous to her for some reason... etc etc. I wish she was still here chewing up all that stuff.

Anyway, I need to get another one before I can't then. THANKS for the warning.

 

[mayberry66guy]

I am on my third DVD recorder--obviously I was a frequent user! I used to burn lots of live music programs, classic music series like Hee Haw, Porter Wagoner, Pop Goes the Country, and older tv sitcoms that were actually aired uncut during special events. My cable receiver tends to scramble most channels when recorder, but I found a little go-around box that removes the scrambler from live tv and from hundreds of old VHS tapes I was converting to DVD-R since they were not likely to make their way to commercial DVD.

 

[Ron1973]

I am on my third DVD recorder--obviously I was a frequent user! I used to burn lots of live music programs, classic music series like Hee Haw, Porter Wagoner, Pop Goes the Country, and older tv sitcoms that were actually aired uncut during special events. My cable receiver tends to scramble most channels when recorder, but I found a little go-around box that removes the scrambler from live tv and from hundreds of old VHS tapes I was converting to DVD-R since they were not likely to make their way to commercial DVD.

RFD-TV is the only thing I miss about having satellite since I cut the cord.