DVD recorders

[Tom]

My VHS next-to-last machine has gone bye bye.
Now that I am down to my last one, I am looking at getting a DVD recorder.
Couple of questions, can you record "on demand" and then stop like I could on VHS? Say I want to record a race, then stop, then another race later on, or just the whole day's races, but not the in between stuff? With DVD, do you have to record the whole disc at one time?

[wilderness]

Tom,
I've a JVC DR-MV150B that is about three years old.
It records both VHS & DVD.

There is a pause button to control the stop and start of recording.
The harness Breeders Crown was on four TVG shows over 5.5 hours and with commercials.
I recorded to DVR and then went back and while burning to DVD used the pause to edit out all the commercials and the join the show segments.

There is a difference between the very old VHS and the newer machines (whether VHS or DVD) and that is that there is a security protection built in so that if the channel broadcasts the encryption your NOT able to record anything at all.

AT&T broadcasts do not allow recording of any kind. Most of the cable companies use a similar encryption that these new machines comply with.

There is a workaround, and it ain't cheap. PM me and I'll provide the details.

[wilderness]

BTW Tom,
Standard DVD's are only burn once.
No recording a race or two and then removing the thing and popping it back in tomorrow and adding more.

[DJofSD]

My VHS next-to-last machine has gone bye bye.
Now that I am down to my last one, I am looking at getting a DVD recorder.
Couple of questions, can you record "on demand" and then stop like I could on VHS? Say I want to record a race, then stop, then another race later on, or just the whole day's races, but not the in between stuff? With DVD, do you have to record the whole disc at one time?
Last question first - no.

Just like that old lead in, you control the horizontal and the vertical. All other considerations aside, if you want to record something then just press record at the correct moment. When you want to stop recording, press stop.

Now, it gets complicated. If you have recorded onto the so called "minus" media, DVD-R -- see that '-' between the "DVD" and the "R" then you have to finalize the entire disc before you can view it. Just used 15 minutes of a DVD-R and have room left? Oh well, you finalized it, you can not record anything more even though in theory you have room left.

However, if you used "plus" media, DVD+R, you can remove it from the recorder, mount it on a viewer, watch it then pop it back into the recorder and add to the volume.

I will not explain RW or double layer (DL).

As mentioned already, not all signal providers allow you to dub signals. And for those that do, not all channels can be recorded. So, as already mentioned, if you have AT&T U-verse, sorry, you are screwed. But, if you are a subscriber to TWC, good news, some/most channels you can dub -- I know because I am a TWC customer. (BTW this "little" wrinkle goes directly back to the 1996 telecommunications act, and, it's all out there on the internet to read about, but, the bottom line is this: even though certain channels are grandfathered and should not be blocked or copy protection, AT&T and other companies do so with impunity.)

I'll finish by telling you I have an older model Sony stand alone DVD recorder. It's called DVdirect and an older model of this: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VRDMC6-DVDirect-Compact-Recording/dp/B002EVP85K%3FSubscriptionId%3D06KMPSHEDSXXQMQVT482 %26tag%3Daskcom05-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165 953%26creativeASIN%3DB002EVP85K . I do not attempt to record anything real time, i.e. as I receive the signal. Programs are recorded to the DVR first then days later, I can burn a DVD at my leisure. And, be advised, the recording is done at the same rate it takes to watch the program. If the program is one hour long, to drop it onto a DVD, it will take one hour to do so. No magic.

I'll stop here.

[FantasticDan]

DVD recorders never really caught on, and they're quickly approaching being an obsolete technology anyway, just like VHS. Why not just a DVR?

[wilderness]

DVD recorders never really caught on, and they're quickly approaching being an obsolete technology anyway, just like VHS. Why not just a DVR?

Portability.

I recently added a Blu-Ray burner to my computer (because of the data capacity; 50GB for a dual layer) and locating a software that is compatable with XP was a nightmare. ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/) is a very nice tool.

[wilderness]

Programs are recorded to the DVR first then days later, I can burn a DVD at my leisure.

DJ,
I use the same procedure and it offers the most options when editing.

[Tom]

DVD recorders never really caught on, and they're quickly approaching being an obsolete technology anyway, just like VHS. Why not just a DVR?

I want to save the stuff I record forever. My DVR fills up too fast. Like, I have a tape full of recipes from cooking shows, several with music from TV shows (SNL as some great musical guests).
I have never had a problem recording off of TWC, so I guess I will be ok.
I want to record stuff to view later on my portable DVD player, too.

[vegasone]

Can always record seperate videos to a computer hard drive and then use DVD authoring software to create a full DVD with menus etc. Just a bit more complicated.

[fast4522]

You can get dvd recorders cheep enough, I will not comment on tv content.
But for racing content I would suggest recording races directly to MPEG on your computer with VLC player. We are talking free and easy that works with XP class computers. Just click on the red dot and it does the race to MPEG. Today having a directory for races in MPEG seems logical as opposed to burning disks because how long will any given MPEG stay relevant to your needs for replay? Perhaps the big races more so after 6 months and lesser races never so after 6 months.
A portable DVD player sounds cool but it is mechanical and the need to swap out disks could be cumbersome, a 10.1 inch tablet does MPEGS better than anything. Transfers to the tablets is easy and fun with Bluetooth, most accept 32 & 64 gig memory cards for extra storage. Anything on Youtube can be downloaded to your computer and then transferred to a tablet again with Bluetooth.

[wilderness]

I want to save the stuff I record forever. My DVR fills up too fast.

Tom,
Perhaps it was my own equipment that created this issue, perhaps not.
At one point I had about three dozen recordings on my DVR and as I began recording them to DVD the voice was out of sync to the video.

To resolve the issue, I had to record the DVD's from the DVR with the most recent first, then deleting that DVD recorded (after verification) show from the DVR before proceeding to the next most recent DVR recording and with the same procedure repeated.

I suspected that issue was related to the data on the DVR hard drive being fragmented.
After that I never allowed more than a few recordings to accumulate on the DVR before cleaning up the recordings to DVD.