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Mark67

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As you guys already know i have got myself a Tag AV32.
Having sold some of my surplus HIFI, I was looking at getting a Recordable DVD player. I know very little about Rec DVD players, so I wondered if you could give me some pointers.
I have looked at the Sony's and the Panasonics, they have different recording formats, now I am confused.

I would be mainly recording from the TV, buying the occasional DVD. But what about MPEG, DTS,THX,DTS-ES :confused: .

Could go up to £500.

I have posted this on AV Forums, but not had any replies, so how about a bit of help :) .
 
How come you're buying more kit Mark? I thought you sold that surplus to put dosh in the bank? None of my business however, just that i remember your previous thread....

Last week, you said that your hifi spending was damaging your relationship?

Have you found a job now?

:)
 
No job as of yet.
We have both been after a DVD player for some time and ourlass seems fine about it.

Anyhow back to the DVD, any ideas?

Cheers.
 
What the others said (save the cash) but I'll answer your question anyway.

There are three DVD recordable formats, DVD-RAM (mainly Panasonic machines), DVD-RW (Pioneer and Sony), and DVD+RW (Philips and Sony). +RW and -RW have matching write once formats (+R and -R). All Panasonic's DVD-RAM players also write to -R write once discs.

There are heated debates over which format is best but IMO it's either -RW or +RW and of those +RW is more compatible with existing players and there are hardly any -RW recorders around. There are no non-Panasonic machines that will read -RAM discs which is why, IMO, it's a dead duck as an "under the telly" (as opposed to PC recorder) format. That hasn't stopped a lot of Panasonic -RAM recorders being sold though.

My personal format preference is +RW. It's not officially supported by the DVD forum and is a "rogue" format created by Philips and Sony and supported by a number of PC drive manufacturers. It is however, IMO, the format that's easiest to use and most compatible with other players. I have a Philips DVD+RW recorder (DVDR 890) but it has been extremely unreliable and I'm not the only one who has had problems. There have been a huge number of reliability issues with the Philips machines. If I were buying a recorder now I'd get a Sony RDR-GX3 which supports both the +RW and -RW formats.

Other options are one of the Panasonic machines like the E100HEBS which, allthough they use the -RAM format, also have an 80Gb hard disk to record to. That means you can use that most of the time without needing discs and if you want to lend something to a friend you can always copy a recording from the hard disk to a DVD-R disc.

Check out this thread on AV forums and also take a look at the DVD+RW forums.

Also - another bit of advice: the DVD recorder scene is changing quite rapidly at the moment. If you can I'd hold of for another 6 months to see what happens. Prices are certain to tumble.

Michael.
 
Having said all that (well, Michael having said all that) it's worth noting that the cheapest of the Panasonic players (DMR-E50) is available in multi-region form for £260 from www.leconcepts.com which sounds like a damn good price.

Okay, so it doesn't do DVD-RW which is a shame but it has DVD-RAM for recording off the TV (and I think they now come in up to 9.6GB capacity) and DVD-R for archiving stuff you want to keep e.g. copying old video's etc.

Matt.
 
as said above, i'd hold out a bit and wait for the formats to settle down a bit. Prices are dropping steadily, but i'd be tempted (and I am) to wait a little longer yet.
 

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