DVD recorders

[Guest]

Anyone here own one? Are they worth getting? Easy to use?

Thinking of buying one of them very soon -- I'm sick of still having to record programmes on shitty old VHS.

[hobbes]

DVD recorders

Get sky+ instead. It's mint.

[Guest]

DVD recorders

I won't have Sky in the house.

Anyway, this would be for recording things onto actual DVDs, not just for storing on a hard drive inside the TV.

[Mumpo]

DVD recorders

Had one, sent it back the next day - the fan was way too noisy, and it kept firing up and cutting off every couple of minutes. Mind you, it was a fairly cheap model, so perhaps sacrificing a bit more cash would have been in order.

[DCI Harry Batt]

DVD recorders

I have one, which I use maybe twice a year, for the odd programme I've recorded on my PVR which I want to send to someone else. I wouldn't pay for one now - in fact I didn't at the time, it was a gift - but it's nice to have.

Not the easiest to use thing ever, no. Well, easy enough to press record, but there's fiddling you can do which is, well, fiddly. I don't do it much.

Hope that helps.

[Mumpo]

DVD recorders

I guess, though, that if you're set on recording things onto actual DVDs, your only other option is to get the programmes from a hard drive recorder to a PC via a cable or a flash memory stick.

[DCI Harry Batt]

DVD recorders

Yeah. But it's all a bit fiddly really. I can't really be doing with having things on DVD anyway.

[boris]

DVD recorders

I have one. Quite a good one too - a Panasonic - that I got from ebay (of course). Only, I hardly ever use it because I haven't really sussed out how it works yet. Still, I've only had it about 2 years, so there's plenty of time yet.

It's okay for recording programmes that I'm actually watching, but I've not worked out how to a) set the timer, or b) record programmes that are on a different channel to whatever I'm watching. I blame the cable.

[DCI Harry Batt]

DVD recorders

So, Hieronymus, why do you want to make actual DVDs? We need to know.

[Amor de Cosmos]

DVD recorders

I've got the same model as Boris (probably) and use it all the time. It's fine. The main disadvantage is that you can't record two or more programs on the same disc if there's a time interruption between them (or at least I've never been able to figure out how.) Advantages include being able to watch a program from the beginning while it's still recording.

[My Name Is Ian]

DVD recorders

I download programmes off that there internet, and then either watch them on my laptop (for things like the football, which I'm not really allowed to watch in mixed company) or burn them onto DVD and put them on with a DivX compatible DVD player (about £35, off Amazon). I'm the opposite of TonTon - I have numerous cases full of DVDs of films and TV shows that I will almost certainly never get around to watching.

[Guest]

DVD recorders

TonTon wrote:

So, Hieronymus, why do you want to make actual DVDs? We need to know.

I just like the idea of having good documentaries/mini series/football matches stashed away and viewable again in five or six years' time. I'm a bit of a sad bastard in that regard.

When I get round to buying this thing, I'm going to have to get my brother to rig it up and make sure it works properly. I am worse than useless at installing anything remotely complicated. Some months ago, it took me the best part of an hour to get a PC external hard drive up and running, and those things are famously moron-proof.

[dalliance]

DVD recorders

I hadn't used my old VHS for years when I took the plunge and bought a Sony DVD Recorder nearly 2 years ago.

I was worried it was a faddy purchase and I wouldn't use it, but quite the opposite actually. It does pretty much all the stuff that Sky does, records series etc. You can burn to hard drive or to disc, then you can dub one to the another. This would mean that if someone loaned you a DVD with something other than non protected commercial content then you can dub it to your hard drive and work with it from there.

My hard drive is 160gb which is plenty, though the newer model is 250gb now. My unit is also a pretty good DVD player which will upscale DVDs too.

Couple of minor complaints I would have, it's a little slow to boot up from cold and menu access could be brisker too. Also, the freeview menus are not the best, though I'd imagine the newer models might be better.

[beak]

DVD recorders

go with the dogbeak ghetto solution: get your hands on an old chipped xbox with xbox media centre on it, and get it on a lan with your pc.

download anything you want and watch it straight from your hard disk in full technicolour glory.

honestly, dvd recorders? pfft. i don't ever want to change a disk again.

[Ek weet nie]

DVD recorders

I've got a similar thing to dalliance. Bear in mind that in Ireland you won't be able to access a lot of the high-faluting features designed for the UK market.

It's fine for setting up copying for the basic NTL cable - you just use old-fashione Videoplus+. Recording off the NTL digital box is a lot harder. You just have that connected to an external channel on the DVD Recorder but it means you cannot change what you are watching on the digibox.

There's no way to transfer directly from DVD hard drive to computer hard drive on mine either. You have to burn it to DVD - which is fine if you just play it on your own DVD player but I've had problems lending disks to others. Either it won't play full stop or it messes the aspect ratio.

If you go for one without a hard drive you have to be a lot more organised than with video recorders.

[Guest]

DVD recorders

Nil Arshavin wrote:

It's fine for setting up copying for the basic NTL cable - you just use old-fashione Videoplus+. Recording off the NTL digital box is a lot harder. You just have that connected to an external channel on the DVD Recorder but it means you cannot change what you are watching on the digibox.

Sounds simple enough as long as I don't change the channel?

I've never used VideoPlus in my life, as it happens.

[Ek weet nie]

DVD recorders

It is simple to do when you're watching in real time. The problems are setting a timer. You need to remember to set the channel to what it should be before you go out. Setting up weekly recording etc. is a pain as a result. The biggest trouble I've had is my girlfriend switching the channel before the recording starts but that can't be blamed on the recorder.

I just wish somebody would figure out how to make a DVD Recorder that can access the digital box channels itself.

[Ginger Yellow]

DVD recorders

Presumably if you get one of those combo Freeview box/PVR/DVD recorders, it can.

[Ek weet nie]

DVD recorders

Freeview doesn't work in Ireland and we have no equivalent. NTL are the largest digital supplier and they have a version of Sky+ but neither that nor Sky+ have a way of copying stuff from the hard drive that I know of.

[dalliance]

DVD recorders

I never had good experiences with Freeview in the past when it was introduced onto video recorders. I would find that too often the start or end of programmes would be severely chopped off, in a way that never seemed to happen if I programmed it as normal using the timer.

[loppy]

DVD recorders

I'd say it's good, if your prepared to pay for the quality. I bought a cheap one for £80 when they were still relativly new, and only recorded about two things in two years. Spent rest of time fightin wiv timer and remote which worked every five minutes but not inbetween. It's since been replaced by a top up tv box wiv a sky+ style record facility and is a million times better and easier to use.