OT: Who has a stand alone dvd recorder?

[D Charles]

Hi, I've been trying to research these and it seems like all the highly recommended models are already out of production. Maybe you could tell me a brand or model to check out that's reliable and easy to use?

 

I want to record tv programs so skipping over ads is important. Don't care about any hi-def considerations as I'm not there yet. Might want to dub some video so front mounted video and audio jacks might come in handy.

 

Thanks for any thoughts/advice.

[aliengroover]

I've had a Panasonic DMR-E50 for at least a year and a half, IIRC (time is flying by). I can't tell you how much I love it, the recorder and DVD recording in general. It uses DVD-R and DVDRAM discs, with the latter allowing you to utilize "Time Slip", a DVR-type function that will let you rewind a program while you're recording it, even going back and watching it from the beginning while it records the rest. Another cool thing with Time Slip is being able to watch something you recorded yesterday while recording something else in the present. Oh, and there is a "commercial skip" that advances the DVD a good 30 seconds or a minute (honestly have never paid attention to exactly how long it is, lol...maybe I'll look today).

 

The quality is very good. My 2 VCRs only come on when I need to transfer someone's home video off of VHS-C to DVD (I'll hook the camcorder right up to the recorder for other formats). Again, I love the recorder. Probably the only thing I don't like is that I can't create my own chapters on the regular DVDRs (you can, though, with the DVDRAM discs). Not a problem after it finalizes the disc, as it creates its own chapters, but when you do that you can't utilize commercial skip. I've only wish it had it one or two times, but though I don't really mind it, it may be something others may want. It's also not a problem if you're authoring on the comp.

 

I don't know what the current model is, but I can attest that the Panasonics are definitely worth looking into.

Peace

[aliengroover]

And PS: it does have front mounted A/V jacks, including S-video. No DV input, though, which I have seen on some recorders.

Peace

[blue2blue]

I have a Panasonic DMR-ES20 (it was around $160 last year).

 

I bought it because it was just a tenth of a point (5 pt ratings) under the top user-rated DVD recorder on Circuit City's user review ratings (a $385 Sony... and since I was somewhat disappointed by my relatively expensive Sony VCR which replaced a once-great, 13 year old Panasonic VCR, there was really no question.)

 

 

I was about to say it doesn't have commercial skip -- but then I thought, WTH, let's check that remote and I note that, yes, indeedy, there IS a button marked "CM Skip" and I now recall reading that section in the manual. I think it skips in 30 second increments -- it's not a "smart skip" though.

 

I mostly record old movies and don't use it for time-shifting programs because I have a cable DVR box (the cable co answer to TiVo). In fact, I haven't used the timed record more than a couple of times, for that reason, but it worked fine when I did.

 

One thing, there are a number of hookup capabilities -- use the best one, if you can. I'm able to use S-VHS for critical recordings [but it's normally hooked to the cable box RCA "VCR outputs" so I can dump stuff onto the DVD-recorder while I'm watching something else... the cable co's DVR uses a bit of data compression so the VCR outs are fine for that. My favorite movies, though, I'll record direct off the "air" via S-VHS hookup. It's only slightly noticeable on my old skool CRT-TV.

 

 

Anyhow, this Panasonic has done yeoman service, for the most part. I've recorded over 1000 (mostly obscure) old movies on it and it keeps on chugging.

 

The only recurring problem I've had is that sometimes when I've manually stopped the recorder in the middle of recording that the disc was not "finalizable" -- meaning it could play in the DVD recorder but not in my other DVD player or my computers. But that's rare -- even on the aborted recordings. Still, I've pretty much stopped doing that, because even if it's only one in ten interrupted recordings that goes bad (or so) after you've spent four or five hours recording two or three movies it's kind of a bummer to not have a fully usable disc. So, now, if I have an old movie that's 1 hour 15 on the DVR -- but the DVD-recorder only records in .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, and 4 hour increments -- I just set the DVD-rec to record for the 'full' 1-1/2 hours. Since I tend to buy bulk spindles of inexpensive brand name DVD-blanks, I'm throwing away maybe a penny or two's worth of space.

 

[And this intermittent issue does seem to be somewhat related to disc type/brand. One other thing, this unit can use DVD "plus" or "minus" -- but I found that DVD+R discs will only record as single program up to about 2:34 -- I have no idea why. So even though the -R discs take a little while longer for the DVD-rec to process before and after recording (mostly a matter of seconds) I tend to use them.]

 

One VERY nice feature is a "flexible record" thing that will allow you to type in a specific hh:mm time and it will fill the open part of the DVD with precisely that -- so, if I have, say, a 1.5 hr movie I'm so-so about but another I want as good a copy as possible -- I'll record that in "4 hr mode" and then use the "flexible record" to fill the other "2.5 hours" of space with the second movie. (And, of course, for top quality, I'll simply put one movie to a disc and let the flex record maximize the data usage for the one across the whole disc. No "wasted space" not devoted to getting the most data up on the screen.

 

 

Hmmm... I think you now know everything I know about the issue.

 

Except that, while discs are pretty cheap -- storage for them is not. The best I've come up with are floppy plastic envelopes... but they're like 7 cents a piece when you buy a couple hundred at a time. Not a good economy of scale, seems to me... And, of course, jewel or slim-jewel cases are as much or more than the discs themselves.

[aliengroover]

Oh yes...the flexible recording! Forgot to mention that. I, too, use that quite a bit. Dandy little feature, it is!

Peace

[soundcreations]

I have been using a Panasonic DMR-ES30v for quite some time and it has been great.

 

I have been able to transfer lots of VHS over to it and could not believe how much room I have now without all of those crazy tapes lying around.

 

Another thing I like to do is record a movie, then finalize the DVD, bring the DVD into the computer and edit out the commercials.

I use a really cool program called Video Re-Do

(http://www.videoredo.com/index.html) that works on the mpeg file itself without having to re-encode the video. I then burn the commercial free version to another DVD and voila!

[aliengroover]

 

Originally posted by soundcreations I use a really cool program called Video Re-Do ( http://www.videoredo.com/index.html ) that works on the mpeg file itself without having to re-encode the video. I then burn the commercial free version to another DVD and voila!

 

 

Cool! Never heard of it, so thanks for mentioning it! Just downloaded the demo, so I'll probably check it out later on.

Peace

[Hush]

I picked up one of these a few months ago Samsung R145. I think it has all the features you are looking for. DV input, time slip, front panel inputs. I use it mostly as a player. But have create about 4 disks. 3 movies played from my DVR to the recorder and one dubbing video from the camera. All worked fine. I haven't tried any fancy editing just basic hit play on source and record on the deck.

 

It accepts most media. And when you are ready to go HD it's got that too. I got mine for $208, looks like the price is a little lower now.

 

Marc

[Rabid]

I went through this last year and could not find anything I thought was acceptable. My guess at that time was DVD recorders were a year or two away. (I should have come here and asked.) Anyway, I ended up using a combination of Tivo for recording, then pulling anything I want to record across the network to the PC and using my DVD writer. It works okay but is a bit slow.

 

Robert

[Hard Truth]

I have a Pioneer that has a hard drive recorder and DVD burner. It is similar to the DVR-640H-S, but an older model. Having the hard drive is very useful for watching TV and then skipping the commercials. Also it allows more making multiple DVDs of the same content quickly (15 minutes or less) by copying the media files from the hard drive. I highly recommend that you get a device with a hard drive.

 

It does not have a TV program info service like the one that Tivo subscribers get, but that hasn't been a problem for me.

 

It does have some limitations that were probably imposed due to fear of lawsuits from the big copyright holders-you can not duplicate an existing DVD etc. I found a work around by buying a device that strips out the copyright protection from the video signal from an external DVD player. So I can still copy DVDs, but it takes the length of the content to do it.

[blue2blue]

Originally posted by Rabid I went through this last year and could not find anything I thought was acceptable. My guess at that time was DVD recorders were a year or two away. (I should have come here and asked.) Anyway, I ended up using a combination of Tivo for recording, then pulling anything I want to record across the network to the PC and using my DVD writer. It works okay but is a bit slow. Robert

 

My Panasonic feels like a solid, third generation product: well designed UI; sensible, desirable features; slim case and very quiet operation. You can burn DVD after DVD on it (so far, knock on wood ) and it just keeps rolling. As I said, I've burned just over a thousand movies (that's, I dunno, probably 500 discs. (Some are one to a disc; some two or three.) But, obviously something along the lines of 1200-1500 hours of burntime in, maybe 8 months. A workout.

 

For Fair Use/VCR Doctrine stuff, it's great. It won't copy even a VHS tape with DRM on it, though. (I figured it wouldn't copy a commercial DVD, but that kind of surprised me.)

 

But off the cable box (with its built in DVR) it's great. And because its Fair Use, IT doesn't have any DRM so I can import it into my video editor on my computer easily, edit, etc. All for personal use, of course, so all (except for trying to copy that VHS tape, of course) legal.

 

It's allowed me to put up a pretty cool collection of old movies, the overwhelming majority of them apparently far too obscure to ever make it to DVD release, let alone Netflix.

 

Wheeler and Woolsey festival, anyone? George Saunders as the Saint or the Falcon? Joan Blondell when she was really cute? Come on over.

[D Charles]

Hey guys, just wanted to thank you for all the great advice and experiences. I just typed a novel on the research I've done and such and Firefox caused and invalid page fault or something and shut down all of my browsers.

 

Crikey, maybe I'll recount tomorrow but right now I'm too tired and flabberghasted and all.

 

But thanks again for the stories! That's what makes the net so cool.

 

 

 

 

 

[blue2blue]

Yeah... FireFox shuts down on me from time to time, too. Not often but once is enough when you've just typed 1500 words... [of course, I do that every time I turn around and people are probably cheering FF right now as they read that. ]

 

I'd say try FF 2.x but that's got some bugs, too. Still, I think it's definitely better... for instance, the page search finally works in most html edit windows and their new built-in spellcheck is a heavensent for some of us typographically challenged types...

[D Charles]

Say blue2blue, just loaded in the newer Firefox and all seems stable now. I like how it'll remember all the windows I had open when I shut down and bring em all back although on dial up it takes a spell.

 

Well, I saw a consensus on the Panasonics so I ordered the newest version: DMR-ES15. The heavy accented Jersey guy on the phone said I could add a 2 year service contract for 50 bucks if I called him at his extension within the next couple of weeks and I just might (Especially since they had 6 cents shipping and the best price). Seems like all the cats that love these machines are followed by the ones who state; 'the thing just died on me after 57 days and 62 recordings..."

 

I don't normally fool with service contracts but they saved my backside on a DVD player purchase as well as my ancient DAT deck purchase. (basically owned a Sony consumer dat for 6 or 7 years for the price of the service contract as it finally died and Circuit City couldn't fix it or give me a working unit because they hadn't carried them in years so I got my full purchase price back)

 

I've got a bizzllion video tapes around not even mentioning a bunch of ADAT S-VHS tapes and they've all got to go pretty soon. I'm covered up!

 

Think I'll run off unreplaceable stuff like videos of band gigs, docs and really obscure movies and just forget about most of the ones that you can rent easily.

 

Hey, I just discovered this On Demand thingy on my Comcast remote control. We just might be covered just getting rid of most everything.

[D Charles]

Except that, while discs are pretty cheap -- storage for them is not. The best I've come up with are floppy plastic envelopes... but they're like 7 cents a piece when you buy a couple hundred at a time. Not a good economy of scale, seems to me... And, of course, jewel or slim-jewel cases are as much or more than the discs themselves.

 

 

What I use are the big wallets. You can get Chinese wallets that'll hold like 260 cds or dvds and they're like ten bucks if you get em from California. They have a 12" by 12" by 3" footprint. I figure I'll get a bunch of them and put all my CDs and DVDs in em and I type up a table of contents and number each right page so I can find stuff reasonably fast. I've got a couple full right now and it's a really quick and compact way to store and then find what you want.