My Mom is thinking of getting a DVD recorder for the TV, and she wants to know if you can record over stuff you previously recorded on them. Also, she would like to know about how many hours a DVD might hold. Thanks in advance. :thumbsup:
You mean a set-top box DVD recorder, not one for PC? If that is the case, then I'm not sure if there is one in the market that records TV onto a DVD disc on the fly. I'm sure such a device would be expensive. However, there are set-top DVD recorders that people use to simply transfer VHS tapes onto DVD with a push of a button. The quality will be the same as a VHS, since it is coming from VHS quality. Only one you can record over and over on is only on a DVD-RW. Those cost more than regular DVD-Rs (+ or -).
I had one of the set top dvd recorders. They are easy to use, allow pausing in recording so you can fast foward to cut out commercials or whatever. I had a huge collection of old anime fansubs on vhs and transfered about 200 tapes to DVD. I had no problems and the results were excellent. I would suggest that you look for one that allows you to do maximum bitrate across the dvd based on how long the video is. A 90 minute video to DVD at ep versus a 30 minute one at "superbit" Just don't buy sony, or any of the cheap brands like LG or God forbid, cyberhome.
Ok, I just did research on DVRs and they are expensive. Very expensive. I dont think my Mom wants a Video tape to DVD one, just for TV. Thanks for the help.
Actually I have a Cyberhome DVR 1600, it's really not a bad machine. Yeah it's cheap, but it was only $99 and it serves it's purposes. Thing about the cheap ones is that you have to use a better quality disc, like if you just get those spindles of a hundred you'll have lots of screwed up discs, but discs from say HP or Sony work quite nicely. I've done the same thing as you, got rid of all my VHS tapes. Well most, if you do get a cheap machine to do VHS transfer keep in mind a lot of old VHS tapes have macrovision protection, in which case it might be worth it to spend a little more and get a machine that has macrovision disabled. Problem is the only recorders that do that are from Asia and they don't really advertise it on the box. You could get a seperate macrovision decoder like I did, but those things cost as much as the dvd recorder will. Some DVD recorders have hacks to disable macrovision (sadly mine doesn't.) However if you're just recording from live TV you shouldn't have a problem. You can erase and record over stuff if you use DVD+R or DVD-R, but for some reason you can only erase something in the middle of a chapter (like say commercials from a TV show) if you use DVD-R, at least that's how the one I have works.
Samsung do some very good dvd recorders that are cheap here and i think are pretty cheap over there too. Thinking of getting myself one as some do 720p with normal dvds and the results arent bad.
