I am in the market for a DVD Recorder. Its primary use would be to archive programs that I want to keep from my HD DirecTivo. My current Pioneer 520 has served me well, but lacks some features I need. I was kind of surprised that all the hard drive based ones have disappeared from the market. I guess I will be looking to get something off eBay. Regardless, I still need help figuring out what make / model to get. I need something that:


Has a hard drive
Has good editing tools (i.e. lets me remove commercials as easily as possible from programs I want to archive)
Supports dual layer disks
Lets you manually set whether a recording is 16:9-Anamorphic or not
Creates edited disks that are compatible with normal players (I have heard that some models from Philips have issues with this)

Thanks,

--Galvin

Galvin, I don't think that the brainiacs at this forum are answering questions by newbies anymore. I guess it got to the point where they got tired of answering the same old questions. But I'm no expert and I'll confess that I don't even understand what a lot of the lingo means(time shifting? :confused:), however, one thing that I can tell in regards to what you're looking for, and that is that about the only DVDR out there right now that has a hard drive in it is the Philips DVDR3575H, and here is the super-duper, monumental, astronomically long thread on it:

Philips DVDR3575H 160G HDD DVD Recorder w/ ATSC tuner (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=830253)

Good luck.

The Philips DVDR3575:

YES - Has a hard drive
YES - Has good editing tools (i.e. lets me remove commercials as easily as possible from programs I want to archive)
NO - Supports dual layer disks
NO - Lets you manually set whether a recording is 16:9-Anamorphic or not
YES - Creates edited disks that are compatible with normal players (I have heard that some models from Philips have issues with this)

Also, Galvin, you have a private message from me. :)