On 7/21 I ordered a Sony DVDirect DVD recorder. I had it shipped to my office, and it arrived this morning! So, of course, I left work early to come home and play with it.
You guys, this is the coolest thing ever. I hooked it up to my VCR in a matter of minutes (I already had the AV cable), and successfully burned a DVD on my first try – it took me two tries to figure out how to finalize the disc, though. :o I got some blank DVD+R and DVD-R discs, and so far both of the DVD-Rs I’ve burned work just fine in my standalone DVD player. I’m taking one of the burned DVD-Rs to work to see if it will play in my laptop’s DVD drive, and here at home I’ll try one of the blank DVD+R discs next.
Oh, and that one guy who reviewed the older model on Amazon.com was right: Memorex DVD-Rs don’t work in this machine (I had some extras from a couple of years ago). I’m using Verbatim discs.
I am so excited about this! I have a buttload of home videos that I want to transfer to DVD (today I copied two of my old band’s shows), and then I’m gonna hook it up to my computer and make some DVD slideshows with the pictures from my digital camera. A glance through the manual makes me think that I’ll be able to use it to access DVDs on my desktop, too, but I’ll have to see how it goes when the time comes: I want to use it to back up my hard drive, but not if I won’t be able to read the discs when I need them (my computer only has CD drives).
I am sooo tempted to take tomorrow off and stay home with this thing again! Heck, I could bring it to work: it’s very small (15" x 5" x 9"), and weighs about a pound. But I’ll go back to being a responsible employee.
That’s much cooler than the DVD+R recorder I got*****, but even with my basic unit it is great to have random access to old videos. I have stuff taped going back 25ish years and being able to skip through them on DVD means I’m finding fun things that I’d either forgotton or lost.
Oops, I knew there was something else I was meaning to do.
***** it was an impulse buy, I was going to get a plain DVD player (yes I’m behind the times) but it was just £99.95 and I couldn’t resist.
Update: the DVD+R discs work just fine in my standalone DVD player, but not in my laptop’s DVD drive. So I’ll stick with DVD-R discs for the most part.
Technically it was outside of mine, as well: I ordered it shortly before taking a hard look at my finances and getting my credit reports/scores. So, this will be my last toy in this price range for quite some time … but what a way to go!
Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing some of my old taped stuff as I transfer it. It’s going to take forever, though, because there’s no high-speed dubbing or anything: if something is 30 minutes long, it takes 30 minutes to record.
Until I learned about this recorder I’d been dreaming of getting a combo VCR/DVD recorder – which are quite expensive. One good thing about having this recorder is that now, when I’m ready to replace my DVD player I can look for a combo VCR/DVD player. They’re still pricey, but not as bad as the recorder combos … and, hopefully, by the time I’m ready to get one their prices will have come down a bit!
Bad idea. Better to get a cheap VCR and cheap DVD player and hook them up together. Same with the TV/VCR/DVD combos…those things are just asking for trouble, and once one component breaks down, the functionality is gone. Plus, you can easily get better quality, for less money, if you buy them separately.
But congrats on your new toy! I got a DVD burner last November and I have been burning films like crazy…I have an entire folder full, and it is great for the nights/weekends when absolutely nothing is on regular television. Plus, I can send DVD’s to friends in birthday cards as a little surprise gift - and much easier than sending the old clunky tapes.
Well, I can see that a lot of trial and error is in my future: I spent 4 hours tonight copying material in SLP mode, and the quality is pretty bad (I can’t watch the DVD until it’s finalized, but once it’s finalized I can’t add anything to it, so I figured I’d burn the whole thing and then look). I didn’t think it would be noticeable, as I’ve never really noticed a difference on tapes between LP and SLP, but it’s really bad on the DVD … which sucks, because now if I want any kind of decent quality I’m limited to 2 hours per disc. I have one big project (138 hours on 23 tapes) that I’ve been dying to put on DVD, and at 2 hours per disc I’m looking at needing around 70 DVDs. :eek: I’m sure I’ll still do it, and it won’t take any more time, it’ll just cost a lot more than I thought.
Well, that’s what I have now. But not hooked together: they’re each hooked up to the TV, and the DVD player is also hooked to the stereo. I like the idea of a combo because it will both save space and up the quality of the DVD player.
I know that combo electronics can be kind of iffy, so I plan to have my trusty Consumer Reports (CR) at my side when the time comes. I don’t recall seeing any strong recommendations against VCR/DVD combos in the recent CR article on them, but perhaps quality/dependability will increase as prices fall. As long as my crappy DVD player holds out, this is a purchase that I see as at least 3 years in the future.
What an excellent idea!
Man, there’s just so much I want to do with this thing: hundreds of hours of tape to transfer, and then tons of stuff I can do once it’s hooked up to my computer. I’m glad it came now, and not next month when school’s back in, because this month I can spend every weekend playing with it. Social life? What social life?