Looking to Buy a DVD Recorder Any Suggestions. (1 Viewer)

[Don]

as per Brand name what to look for. reliability etc. it will mainly be used for recording tv Shows.

 

[Elizabeth S]

I have 2 Pioneer 420s and a Toshiba XS-32. These are one generation old now and both have been great with no issues. Many of the present models have incorporated EPG, which depending on the model, seem to be a bit problemic and/or is noisy when downloading information.

This forum is a bit slow here, but you will find many users of all brands at avs forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...hp?forumid=106

The first issue you'd have to decide is whether you need a hard drive or not. It's great for editing recording for archiving, but may not be essential for you if you only plan to timeshift and erase.

 

[wally]

Elizabeth

You've been a great help to all the prospective DVRs here on HTF, but shouldn't you be out on the beach?

Don,

I've got the current Tosh (xs34) and like it alot. I don't do much TV recording, mostly archiving DV from a camcorder, but I've had good success when recording broadcast material and the DVD player is of good quality. I use it as my only player to a 55" Sony LCD.

 

[Elizabeth S]

What's this "beach"?

We actually have events called "Sunset on the Beach" where they show a movie on the screen at the beach. . . Never went, though, because it's always something 6 months old which I've seen. . . They did world premiere the 1st episode of season 2 of "Lost" there, though I didn't want to fight the crowd. . .but I digress. . .

 

[Ronn.W]

Don, what's your price range?

 

[Don]

My Price Range is Open Ron. I also Appreciate Elizabeths Help but wonder why she has to be on the Beach.

 

[wally]

I went to a movie on the beach down on Marco Island, FL several years ago. Actually it was a film festival. Bad indy film, but the experience was very nice

 

[Ruz-El]

I bit the bullet last night and bought that LG recorder with a 250Gig HD, and seems to play everything. I'm going to put it through it's paces this weekend (wont get a chance to hook it up till tomorrow night). I'll report back with what I find.

 

[Ruz-El]

Well I picked up the following and played with it on the weekend. Here's the specs from a retailers site
---------------------------------
LG 250GB HDD/DVD Recorder (LRH-539)

Record all your favourite TV shows with the LG LRH-539. This HDD/DVD Recorder Combo features 250GB built-in hard disk drive so that you don't have to keep switching discs to watch your recorded movies and shows. It is also equipped with an 8-in-2 multi memory card slot that enables you to enjoy music and photos from your portable devices. More Info

Mfr. Part Number: LRH-539
# Of Discs 1
Component Video Output 1
Digital Audio Decoder WMA, MP3
Digital Coaxial Output 1
Digital Optical Output 1
DTS Output Yes
Product Dimensions 43.0(W) x 4.9(H) x 35.0(D) cm
Progressive Scan Yes
RCA A/V Outputs 2
Remote Type Multi Brand Remote
S-Video Output 2
Virtual Surround Sound Yes
Zoom Feature Yes

More Information
FEATURES:
You can copy MP3 music, JPEG photos, and contents from your memory card into the hard drive.
The LG LRH-539 is DivX Certified which means it will let you easily take the digital video from your computer to CD and play it back on your TV at DVD Quality!
Multi Recording: +R/-R/+RW/-RW/Double Layer
Multi Playability: DivX/Xvid/MPEG4
DV Recording By IEEE1394

Media Playback: DivX, XviD, DVD-Video, Audio CD, CD-R/RW, MP3, WMA, VCD, JPEG
---------------------------
Pretty sweet huh?

So, my impressions: I haven't used it to record TV yet, as I don't have cable in the room that it is hooked up. I have a VCR hooked up to it to dub off tapes.

The Good:
Tapes recorded to the HDD at the HQ setting actually look better than the original tape (recorded at SLP). When transfering said video to DVD at LQ (mid quality, allows for approx 4hr), they don't look as good as the HG, but they still look clearer than the VHS. How this is, I don't know, but it's a good thing with 10-15 plus year old tapes.

The Bad:
Really limited editing. I copied 3 6 hr vhs tapes to the hard drive, broke them up into the seperate shows. From within the seperate titles, you can than go in and cut the commercials ("delete parts" as it's called). You can also combine titles so they play as one title. And that's it for what you can do on the hard dive. You can not add chapter stops or anything. Also, any content edited on the hard drive (as in deleting commercials, breaking up progams into mutiple parts.) can only be burned to DVD in real time (the video plays on your TV as it re-renders it) I don't know if this is the same on other players or not, but it is dissapointing. I haven't tried buring un-edited footage, so I don't know exactly how fast it is, the book says 1 hr of HQ video burns in 13mins. Now, according to the book, you can add chapter stops, change thumbnails, etc, if you burn to a DVD+RW, and than go into the dvd and add these things before finalizing. I'm burning to DVD-R, so I'm S.O.L. Another thing, you can't add a list of titles to burn. If you have 4 1 hour titles to transfer to DVD, you have to do them one at a time in order to be able to access them seperately on a menue, or combine them into one file to burn all at once, which means you have to fast forward through shows 1 and 2 to get to show 3, as you can't add chapter, just like a VHS tape.

I haven't tried a DIVX incoded disc yet. Other DVD's I burned onto DVD-R from my PC play fine. Commercial DVD's play fine as well, and look good on the meager 27" TV I have the recorder hooked up too. I haven't tried the progressive feature, as the TV doesn't have the inputs for it. The unit itself seems pretty solid for it's size. So, aside from my only real complaint on the way the titles burn to DVD in real time instead of accelerated (which it would probably do anyways, as I'm down converting HQ video to LQ) I'm actually pretty pleased.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Thanks for the comments on the LG, Russell!

Most hard drive recorders do allow you to do a high-speed burn to disc even though you have edited the content -- I always thought that was rather odd that the LG can only do realtime in that circumstance. And most recorders do allow you to make a list of what to burn to DVD as separate titles.

That model has a big hard drive, though, and the multi-format capability is good. Have fun with it!

 

[Ruz-El]

Thanks Elizabeth!

I just realized I made a mistake with the LG in my desccription, I guess I should of played around with it more before posting!

I was trying a disc I burned last night, and it does have chapter stops. The player has an option where you can have automatic chapter stops every 5 min, 10 min or 15 min. So while you can't seem to be able to preset chapter points on the hard drive, you can have chapter stops automatically burned into the disc. This actually makes that unavailability of the pre-selected stops much more palatable to me, and makes me very happy! On the disc, you don't seem to be able to select a specific chapter from a menue, but it is now much easier to skip through a disc to get to what you want. So again, I'm pretty pleased.

I have a sneaky feeling that you can hi speed burn other media other than DVD-R, as DVD-R isn't listed in the manual at all when discussing the features dvd+r and DVD+RW is listed mostly), other than to say that you can use it. Since I have about 150 blank DVD-R's, I won't be able to confirm this for awhile.

I plan to put it through it's paces more this week, so I;ll report anything funky.

 

[Ruz-El]

Despite having this huge drive, I couldn't imagine having it jam packed with content to sort through. I'm basically dumping tapes to it 3-4 at a time, than burning it off. Another point, you loose editing functions when you have 60 titles, according to the manual.

 

[Ruz-El]

I've been using the LG pretty for about a month now, and have encountered a problem.

Every so often, if you record over 3hrs of video, the audio goes out of sync. The manual says you can record 12 hours at a time. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it happening, I have recorded 6hour chunks with no problems. I dumping VHS tapes to the hard drive, so if there is a problem, I can always redo it, but it would be pretty crappy if you were recording live TV.

Has anyone experianced this with other brands, when copying larger chinks of programing to the harddrive? If not, I might return it.