Bluie

Does anyone have any experience of the above.

Are they all standard or is there the same problem that was had with VHS/Betamax a few years ago.

Is now a good time to buy, or are the prices likely to come down.

Any help would be appreciated

Nick

Chris_S199

www.vcdhelp.com should be able to answer most of your questions. Really, it depends what you want to use it for. If you want to record programmes off the TV, I would suggest sticking with VHS as the quality won't be significantly better and the cost will be significantly more. I recently bought a DVD+RW computer DVD writer which only writes to the +R/+RW DVD's but I haven't come across a modern player which won't read them. The unit cost me just over 100 quid and I use it for burning movies and authoring DVDs and can't fault it.

Chris

south-star

Personally dont see the point of getting a dvd recorder.I just have a DVD player and a vhs recorder.Nothing is broadcast in 5.1.
Hardly ever tape anything anyway.

As for a dvd player,get a decent make,pay about £200+, and make sure it plays vcd's and dvdr(if you want to play copies).
Multi region(or hackable) if you want to import films.

uksti

Sky broadcast in 5.1. The DVD recordable market has yet to settle on a single standard (like the SACD vs DVD-A debate). It also has a limited recording time (2 hrs approx.) at max quality.
Also think about the other bits - decoder/per-amp, sub etc. - can be almost as expensive as buying an STI7.

Personally I've got a multi-region DVD player as I sometimes buy DVD from the US. Of course a PS2 would suffice if you stick to Euro DVD (and allow you to play GT3 !)

Baz

south-star

Just films on sky or other progs as well?........i didnt know that.

basal_lobe

DVD burner is great for archiving movies etc downloaded using file sharing clients.
Even the biggest HDD's fill up fast when you are getting stacks of the latest movies for free.

JonDBM

I have a Philips DVDR880 that records in DVD+RW format. Even on its 4 hours per disc format it is still superior to VHS. To say DVD Recording is no better than VHS is not correct in my opinion. The added benefit of transmission quality recording actually makes me want to record whereas b4 with VHS I very rarely did. Also the menu system makes navigation very easy - and you can get DVD+RW discs for about £2 these days on the web - so not expensive either.

The DVD+RW standard is I think the one to go for as it is most compatible with the other two without having toburn to a write once disc - so you can give to friends etc and then re-use like a VHS tape!

As far as I'm aware, you cannot record in 5.1 sound on any presently available DVD Recordable format - only 2.0 stereo - this is a limitation of the standards. Nore can you reord to a dual layer disc - so this is why the record time is less than a commercially available disc.

Jon.

Funkii Munkii

I've had my eye on one of these for a while
Panny

Bluie

Guys

Thanks for your input on this it's been very useful

Cheers

Nick