Life expectancy of DVD Recorder? (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

I know that a CDRW drive lasts a little under three years, or 4,000 burns, IIRC. But what's the life expectancy of a DVD Recording Drive?

Also, a set top DVD Recorder records stuff directly from the TV, like a VCR. Does a Computer version have this capability?

Thanks! I'm less than two weeks away from making my first purchase of one, and want to be informed.

 

[Ken Chan]

I know that CD-RW discs have a limited number of burns, but had not heard anything about the drives themselves. What's the reason?

Set-top recorders have tuners and hardware MPEG encoder chips. For computers, you can also get tuner cards and hardware or software encoders, but I don't know of any current packages that go the whole nine yards so that you can record directly onto DVD in real-time, at least not yet. Such a system would also be susceptible to delays; for example, don't play Quake or defrag your hard drive while it's trying to record.

//Ken

 

[Chris Bardon]

I beg to differ on CDRW drives having a finite lifespan. I've been using my HP 7200i since June of 1998 and it still works perfectly. Not sure about the 4000 burns, but I've made a LOT of discs with it. There's no reason that a DVD-R drive shouldn't last for just as long.