DVD recorders for TV. Does anyone here have one? If so how do you like it? I am thinking about getting one and would like to hear people’s opinions on them.
I have two Panasonic DMR-E50s. I like them quite a bit. They make a model with a 40Gb harddrive, but it it was just as cheap to buy two of these. It offers 4 record speeds:
XP - the highest quality but only 1 hour’s worth per disc
SP - similar to a pre-recorded DVD - 2 hours
LP - pretty decent, certainly as good as standard VHS, IMHO, 4 hours
EP - fair quality - 6 hours
Once you’ve committed something to a DVD-R, you can’t go back so make sure you’re good with the pause button. You can also use DVD-RAM discs which are re-writtable, but cost more ($10/disc vs $1.75-$3.00.DVD-R).
I use one player to record my favorite TV shows onto a RAM disc. The player comes with a neat editing feature. I experimented by recording a ep of MST3K. I was able to edit the commercials out in about 15 minutes. Once I’ve got the show the way I want it, I copy it to the other player on a DVD-R.
I’ve also been transferring my old VHS tapes and laserdiscs. My biggest project is transeferring my MST3K collection. With nearly 200 eps, it’s gonna take a while.
You can’t set your own chapter stops. They are automatically set every five minutes or so. You can give individual titles to each recorded section and a title for the disc. When completed, you’ll see the title on the screen and a simple list of each item you’ve recorded. Once you finalize the disc (which takes about four minutes), it can be played on the majority of set top players and DVD drives.
I have a Philips that supports both rewritable formats that aren’t DVD-RAM. It works great. Of course, I only got it a month ago, but the quality is excellant.