DVD recorders - can you advise please?

[Speicher]

Is it possible to translate Gbs on the HD into hours of recording? or does it depend on the quality of the signal you receive?

Thank you Night Train for pointing out about digital readiness.

 

[Steve Austin]

'Is it possible to translate Gbs on the HD into hours of recording?'

yes it is. on low quality you get lots more capacity. My player on low quality can record over 200 hours, on top quality it records about 20 i think.
low quality is fine for watching the 'rubbish' you may want to record. I record films on mid to high quality, but then i delete straight after watching so they don't take up too much space for too long.

 

[marinyork]

'Is it possible to translate Gbs on the HD into hours of recording?'

yes it is. on low quality you get lots more capacity. My player on low quality can record over 200 hours, on top quality it records about 20 i think.
low quality is fine for watching the 'rubbish' you may want to record. I record films on mid to high quality, but then i delete straight after watching so they don't take up too much space for too long.

Look up the bitrates. For example on satellite and cable poor channels use 2Mbs and higher quality ones like BBC1, Five or Sky Sports use 4-5Mbs. Obviously you can work out almost exactly how much space they are going to use...

Anyway Speicher, I think you are overcomplicating things. Why not get a Humax 9300T500 or one of the lower models? Get a cheap DVD recorder as well. Problem solved. Ah I see you have sky, that's more complicated. Just get a cheap sky+ box and put a terabyte hard drive in it .

P.S. You can't get swiss railway journeys on dvd so you'll have to transfer some stuff.

 

[Speicher]

I am on the look out for foreign railway journeys on DVD, found some for Chile and Peru. Swiss Railway Journeys are on one of the Travel Channels.


Why is it more complicated because I have Sky. I can record from Sky now onto a video cassette, so coudn't the DVD recorder replace the Video Recorder in the vast array of cables at the back of the TV (now neatly in one of those twirly wrap things)?

Good idea, look out for a cheap Sky Plus box and a terabyte hard drive.
and save up the necessary coinage.

 

[TVC]

I just got myself one of these, having got fed up with my old dvd recorder. HDD is geting to be good value now.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-RDR-HX...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1230488872&sr=1-1

 

[marinyork]

Yes, I know. My dad is a swiss railway journeys obsessive. The true series as was broadcast on travel a few years ago isn't available, otherwise I'd have bought the lot for my dad . He has them on tape, I mean it has degraded. However you have to transfer them to be readily watchable .

Also if you record terestrial as well as sky... perhaps a freeview PVR isn't such a crazy idea. After all ds9, enterprise etc are on terestrial on Virgin1. The PVR I mentioned can do about 300hrs of stuff and has USB in the back for your PC.

With star trek virgin 1 isn't the best channel in the world for picture quality. Although they'll be better than a degraded vhs they won't be great. A certain well known popular retailer tends to sell star trek box sets for 12.99-15.99 on a semi permanent basis and favourite seasons could be collected in the fullness of time .

Sky+ boxes are cheap speicher. Very cheap. Freeview PVRs are more but you have so much more to play around with.

 

[Speicher]

If I up-grade to a Sky plus box, do I have to pay an increased subscription each month. I am very sorry to ask so many questions, and you are all being very very helpful. Thank you.

 

[marinyork]

No you don't if you have any sky subs. If you are on freesat from sky I think you still have to pay a monthly fee for sky+ still though.

To answer your earlier question it is more complicated with sky because you cannot transfer some stuff to the HD on a PC and have a play around with it.

 

[Speicher]

No you don't if you have any sky subs. If you are on freesat from sky I think you still have to pay a monthly fee for sky+ still though.

To answer your earlier question it is more complicated with sky because you cannot transfer some stuff to the HD on a PC and have a play around with it.

So I could not do what someone suggested earlier about taking out the adverts and unwanted bits, then?

 

[marinyork]

So I could not do what someone suggested earlier about taking out the adverts and unwanted bits, then?

I used to edit adverts out and things like that on the PC when I had freeview PVR. Some PVRs have editing features that I believe would let you edit on that although I wouldn't know what they were like to use thesedays. There are always ways round things like transfering your tapes, but I'm talking without drops in quality.

 

[peanut]

this is the best place on the net to go and ask. Everything you need to know about DVD recorders and recording.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php
A couple of things to watch out for.
Make sure the DVD recorder has a 'one touch' record feature so you can press a button for instant record without faffing around with settings (most do)
make sure you get the right DVD blanks they are usually either DVD-R or DVD+R
I always get the re-recordable disks DVD+RW because you can reuse them and the disk doesn't require a special process after each recording called 'finalising' in order to play in any equipment like PC's and other DVD players
oops didn't notice the other 2x pages sorry this post is a bit redundant

 

[fossyant]

I've just bought a Topfield 500GB PVR (dual Freeview tuners) and it is one serious bit of kit.

Not even used all it's features yet.

You can connect it to your PC and download the programmes for burning to DVD, or copy to a USB memory stick. There is lso a User Forum for the things, and it also runs lots of software - i.e. additional programmes to make life easier (but I've not touched that).

They are about £270 on line or in a Super-Fi shop, or £350 from Currys (rip off).

 

[Cranky]

A word of warning about archiving programmes to recordable DVD. I've had a DVD recorder for around 5 or 6 years now and have archived a lot of material in that time. I've found that the discs can deteriorate over time, causing certain sections to skip or jam up, or otherwise fail altogether. Admittedly my DVD recorder can only use DVD-R, so DVD+R may be more reliable for all I know. I've now transferred all my remaining DVD-R recordings to my computer on which the hard drive is backed up on a regular basis.

 

[peanut]

Its a good point cranky.
I've lost access to several important CD and DVD backup disks over the years. Last one was the movie 'World's fastest Indian' grrr

Makes you wonder what is a safe storage /backup medium really.
No wonder some Local Authorities still use paper

I have CD's, DVD's, hard drives,zip drive media, SD memory cards and several USB pen drives all fail in the past year or so.
What is a safe storage medium I wonder ?

A word of warning about archiving programmes to recordable DVD. I've had a DVD recorder for around 5 or 6 years now and have archived a lot of material in that time. I've found that the discs can deteriorate over time, causing certain sections to skip or jam up, or otherwise fail altogether. Admittedly my DVD recorder can only use DVD-R, so DVD+R may be more reliable for all I know. I've now transferred all my remaining DVD-R recordings to my computer on which the hard drive is backed up on a regular basis.

 

[fossyant]

Safe storage - RAID system on your PC - saved my bacon twice in last 3 years (two HD drive failures, swap out the broken one, it fixes itself....

You need a RAID compatible motherboard, and two hard drives !