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Review 2 of 2
Price Paid:
$399.00
from eBay/Barney's Electr Summary:
This is a DVD Recorder that records on DVD+R and DVD+RW discs, and plays all DVD formats (except DVD-RAM). It's easy to use and is way faster than dragging video onto your PC and re-encoding it.
The video quality is superb thanks to hardware VBR compression, especially in 1-hour mode and since it uses full D1 at full bps, it is identical to the source. The 2-hour mode is quite good. On my 53" big screen I can see only slight compression artifacts around fast-moving figures, but no more than DirecTV at times. The 2.5-hour mode is pixellated like High on ReplayTV or TiVo. Still, it's usable if you have something that long, but it may tempt you to edit out commercials and get it down to 2. There is a monitor pass-through which will actually show you what the quality would look like if you recorded at the current "speed". You can mix speeds on one disc.
The 3-hour mode is not noticeably pixellated, but because the resolution on the 3-6 hour modes is reduced to 1/2 D1, it looks blurry by comparison. The 4 and 6 hour modes are virtually worthless, but that shouldn't be surprising.
It is a very convenient machine for legally format-transferring your VHS tapes. The unit is very sensitive to Macrovision and CGMS-A, although you can get around it with this product: www.facetvideo.com. Still, the whites are overly bright at times, but only when you hit Record (when using the monitor pass-through, they're not). It helps if you can find an all-white screen or the Disney castle super-bright shine to "start" your recording on. It's worse if you start on an all-black screen (like you would want to). Because I am dumping a lot of Disney tapes (no DVDs yet), I could really go for a 1.5-hour mode to get the increased picture quality. A mode to enter a # of minutes and shrink to fit would be nice. You can limit recordings to 30 minute intervals by pressing Record repeatedly.
When using +RW discs (up to $5 in stores, as little as $1.80 online), you have fantastic editing capabilities. Mess up? Erase the disc. Also, you can watch something, hit Pause, go to the monitor screen and hit Record to do a completely seamless edit. Pausing while recording is very nice as well. Also, you can watch, press Stop and then Record to create a new title at the current location. You can chapter manually while watching by hitting the scissors button or use 5 minute auto-chaptering or both (auto-chaptering starts 5 minutes after your last chapter—these methods also work on +R) or you can go back and set chapters using an overlay menu (only on the +RW discs will these show up on other players). You can also mark chapters as hidden (+RW), causing them not to show up on other players at all (although there is a slight playback pause like a DVD layer change). With this feature, you can edit out commercials or unwanted scenes (teachers and youth pastors—this is for you). You can also split chapters into titles, although I have yet to find a reason to do this. If you mess up a title, you can delete it (+R), and it won't show up on normal players. You can label the titles after the fact (+R/+RW) and select a new index picture for a title by pausing the movie and bringing up a menu (+R/+RW).
You do have to finalize +R discs, which takes 2-5 minutes. You don’t have to finalize +RW discs, they just work, but you may have to change the compatibility bitsettings to 2. To do this, just open the tray and hold down 2 on the remote. I need to do this so the +RW discs work on my old Toshiba SD-1600 and my IBM laptop DVD/CD-RW drive. They work in my other player either way, so I just do it. All this really does is lie and tell the player it’s a pressed disc. You can still make edits after setting this.
I gave this unit 5 stars, not because it’s 100% perfect, but because with +RW discs it’s a true VCR replacement and 80% (B-) seemed like too low of a grade. Realistically, I would give it about a 92 (A-). There’s room for improvement, but it’s very good. Strengths:
Video quality is outstanding on 1 and 2 hour modes, easy to use, can do seamless edits and edit out commercials or questionable content (+RW), can choose picture and title after recording (+R and +RW), auto-chaptering, true VCR replacement, reasonable cost, discs $1.20 (+R) - $1.80 (+RW) online for quality discs Weaknesses:
2.5 hour mode is pixellated, 3-6 hour modes are blurry like VHS (reduced resolution), remote is a little hard to use, inputs are limited (can do Component and choice of S-Video or Composite on back, second choice of S/Composite and firewire on front), could really use 1.5 hour or enter # minutes shrink-to-fit mode, very sensitive to Macrovision and CGMS-A, whites overly bright (but only when you press Record), "&" would be a nice character to have for labels limited to 15 characters Similar Products Used:
None
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