DVD Recorder Buying Guide

 

With their sophisticated technology and many functions, DVD recorders have long been a good alternative to old video recorders. In terms of price, the times when good DVD recorders cost 500 euros are long gone. The more expensive models usually only justify their price with larger hard drives and additional features.

But the many functions and modern connections also leave many consumers groping in the dark: EPG, HDMI, TimeShift, High Speeddubbing, etc. - just this small excerpt from the variety of technical terms can be confusing. Therefore, I would like to explain to you here what you should pay attention to when buying a DVD recorder.

Differences

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At the beginning of the DVD recorder era, two of the main differentiators were compatibility with as many blank formats as possible and recording quality.
Today, the decision criteria are constantly expanding, such as an existing USB and DVConnection or an integrated SD card slot!

Those extra ports come in handy when you're taking photos of a CD or your camera directly to a photo printer or hand over the management of your music collection to your device. Other features would be slide show playback of stored photos, digital photo album, etc. As you can see, a DVD recorder can do more than its name suggests. 99,9% of all devices can play normal audio CDs, VCDs, SVCDs, etc.

Starting price of 130€

You have to reckon with a starting price of 130 euros for a DVD recorder. However, these entry-level models offer less convenience and are usually not equipped with a hard drive - the recording would be copied directly to the blank.

This could result in a disadvantage: the storage capacity of a blank DVD is limited to 4,7 GB (singleLayer, in double-layer mode this increases to 8,5 GB) so that the quality could possibly suffer with longer recordings. On average, however, two to three hours of recording are possible.

In addition, the Stiftung Warentest, for example, complained that some inexpensive devices only had an analogue tuner installed instead of a digital tuner. Nevertheless, even inexpensive DVD recorders should offer all the necessary connections; You can find out what these are in the shopping checklist. With a second SCARTsocket on the device can alsoReceiver connected to the DVD recorder. The otherwise necessary double timer programming on the recorder and satellite receiver is no longer necessary.

Good product from €170

For almost 170 euros more you get a very good product. A hard drive with 80 to 160 gigabytes, an HDMI interface for high-resolution and lossless transmission of images and Ton as well as the convenient electronic TV guide EPG for the simplest recording control are a matter of course for products from 300 euros. One of the many advantages of a built-in hard drive is e.g. For example, you can record to hard drive first and then decide whether to burn the movie to DVD. These devices should definitely provide USB and DV connections.

In most cases, however, there is one small thing to note: Those who would like to edit recorded films on the PC and think they can export the film material using the USB connection are often wrong. These connections are usually only inputs for external storage media, but no outputs! Also make sure that "TimeShift" (sometimes called "ChasePlay") is supported!

This feature is also known as 'Time Shift TV' meaning if you miss ten minutes of a program you are watching and recording due to an unannounced visit from your neighbour, you can rewind to and from where you last watched continue looking at normal.

The recording continues in real time in the background. You also hardly need to worry about advertising in the recordings, because many devices already include a cutting function to remove advertising blocks from the recording. But what would modern technology be if this process could not be automated? For this reason, functions such as "Intelligent Scene Chaptering" were developed that automatically remove commercial blocks.

DVB-T tuner

If you go one class higher in price, you will have an integrated one in your device DVB-T-Tuner Discover that enables digital television via the house antenna. Combination devices for those who want to digitize their old VHS cassettes are often only available in this price range. Digitizing old VHS cassettes is also possible if the device has a S-Video-Exit has. Dubbing existing DVD films onto the hard drive is also offered by some.

But how do DVD recorders that leave the three-digit price range justify themselves? This is exactly what many manufacturers have asked themselves. The most important functions are already included in the devices in the lower price ranges, and the workmanship is not a decisive criterion either. However, anyone who already owns an HD-capable flat-screen television and a top-class surround system should not skimp on the DVD recorder.

That's why there is luxury! Examples are e.g. B. a 500 gigabyte hard drive, which offers storage space for 1000 hours of film material in rather low quality (highest quality approx. 100 hours) or the installation of the finest materials for damping, an optimized power supply or the possibility of CDs directly as MP3 converted and saved to disk.

Speaking of the 100 hours of recording time: This sounds like very little at first, but when you consider that only four to six hours of film material fit on VHS cassettes of not nearly as good quality, that's a surprising amount .

 

And finally ...

There is a large selection of DVD recorders. Therefore, you have to choose your device based on the intended use and preferences. The investment in an expensive recorder is almost exclusively dependent on the additional features.
All devices, apart from those in the absolute cheap segment, offer excellent recording and playback quality. You can even decide for yourself in which quality you want to record!

So DVD recorders are ready to take over from VCRs!

In a nutshell “What should I look out for when buying a DVD recorder?

• • Is TimeShift supported?

  • Is "EPG" supported?

  • Is it possible to automatically cut out commercials (e.g. through "Intelligent Scene Chaptering" or a built-in editing function)?

  • In which formats can it be recorded (e.g. already MPEG4, DivX)?

  • What is the storage capacity of the hard drive?

  • Device volume?

  • How is the menu navigation?

  • Is multi-channel audio recording supported?

  • Is a digital tuner installed?

  • Are the following connections available?

    • SCARTRGB

 

• • • CVBS/Composite

 

• • • component or YUV-Output with progressive scan

 

• • • HDMI

 

• • • Analog stereo output

 

• • • Digital audio output (S / PDIF, either coaxial or optical)

 

• • • USB

 

• • • DV (also iLink or Firewire)

 

• Is the device compatible with DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and DVD-RW?

• Is an automatic channel search with

• Integrated program slot allocation?

 

Additional features, such as a digital photo album or the direct conversion of a CD into MP3 format, are not listed here because they are not relevant to the purchase. Here you decide what you need.