Hi all, I have the Pioneer DVR543HS. I couldn't find the answer to my question. basically this is what i want to do. i want to record an F1 race onto my HDD, then copy it to a blank DVD, bring it to work and watch it on my PC. Of course I'd want to reuse the same disc over and over again for each race. Which media, DVD-RW or DVD+RW is the best and easiest to use for this purpose? and what is the maximum speed of media the PVR will support?

thanks

In terms of the basic functionality you're asking about there isn't really any difference between DVD+RW and DVD-RW. Speeds of rewritable media are limited to around 4X (compared with up to 16X for write-once media). In practical terms, my Pioneer 640 can write a full DVD-RW in about 30 minutes. That means 30 minutes to copy 1 hour recorded at XP mode, or alternatively, 30 minutes to copy 4 hours recorded at LP mode. In other words, the number of hours on the disc is not relevant, only how full the disc is. This is determined by how many hours you record and what recording "speed' (ie, quality) you use.

hi thaks for your reply. what mode should i record in? VR or video?

The main advantage of VR mode is that it lets you do editing directly on the DVD disc. If you're just going to copy an entire program to the disc so you can take it somewhere, then later you're just going to erase the whole thing and start over, you don't really need editing capability. In that case you might as well use Video mode since it's more compatible with other players.

The main advantage of VR mode is that it lets you do editing directly on the DVD disc. If you're just going to copy an entire program to the disc so you can take it somewhere, then later you're just going to erase the whole thing and start over, you don't really need editing capability. In that case you might as well use Video mode since it's more compatible with other players.

..including a PC, right? I presume that computers generally can't read VR mode discs?
(Would they need special software and/or special drivers?)

I presume that computers generally can't read VR mode discs?It's a good question and one that I honestly can't answer. I can't play VR-mode discs on my computer (Windows XP SP2 with Roxio DVDMax Player 2.0), but that may just be because I don't finalize them.

..including a PC, right? I presume that computers generally can't read VR mode discs?
(Would they need special software and/or special drivers?)
DVD-RAM are VR-mode discs that computers can read (with a DVD-RAM drive, of course).

DVD-RAM are VR-mode discs that computers can read (with a DVD-RAM drive, of course).A computer can read the data from any finalized disc (and RAMs don't need to be finalized, of course), but are you saying that there are software players that will actually play movies on a disc recorded in VR-mode?

I'd be surprised if there wasn't, but I haven't had any actual confirmation of it so I'm curious.

I bet VLC would play it just fine. Give that a try.

I use Cyberlink PowerDVD to play movies on DVD-RAM disks. Because of the file structure or WinXP, it doesn't autoplay. I have to manually navigate to the folder and click on the VRO file in order to play it. The 1st time I had to instruct XP to always open VRO files with PowerDVD. The Cyberlink software came with the the DVD-RAM drive. I bought several so I'm unsure which one it came with but I believe it came with the LG drive.