Can someone help me get these dvd files back onto my dvr hdd?? - Page 2

Man, now I'm going to have to scour Craigslist for a used Pio w/HDD. IMO that would be a real handy feature and I especially like that it will do commercial ROM(not CPd) discs. Because as Kjbawc said not nearly all commercial discs have CP. I know because first I try them with out my Sima and maybe 2 times out of 8 they will work. This is down from a few years ago when 3 or 4 out of 10 would work. No I'm not talking about Disney movies, there pretty much 100% CPd, I don't even bother without the Sima for those anymore
It's mostly small independent labels that have a chance of no CP but as mentioned even they are getting MV encoders.

Or just use your PC.

The one you used to post the post I'm quoting. It's a lot easier and pretty much ubiquitous.

The disc copy feature on the Pio was one that I never quite understood. It was offering a feature that hundreds of millions of PCs already offered. Kind of like sticking a bottle opener on a barbecue. Makes sense I guess but is it really a plus? I guess but to me its no big deal. It is a gimped feature. The content is not even playable. Let alone editable.

That being said I'd rather have the feature than not but I wish Pio would have allowed the user to do more.

Sadly the computer I do most of my work on only has a DVD player/CD burner, not DVD burner. My kids computer has a DVD burner but only the stock Vista Home Premium software so I don't know if it would be able to do a DVD disc copy.
As funny as it sounds I really prefer standalone devices for DVD burning and use the computer for mainly internet and the occasional word processing. That being said a friend gave me a copy of a CD copying program called Clone CD. It really works cool for CD copying. Just a few mouse clicks and I can easily make copies of my kids CDs. It's saved money several times when the kids scratch or lose the copy. I just make another from the master and they're good to go. I do the same for there DVDs but do the copying realtime with my Panny DVDRs. I lose the menu's but it's mainly the movie they're interested in anyway.
For my simple uses the Pio disc copy would probably be ideal(except for the CP'd discs anyway).

Its sort of hard to explain why some of us would find the Pio "disc dup" feature handy- I wouldn't say its a crucial feature, but I would miss it if it weren't there. While its true it makes more sense to use a PC for the task, there are many occasions when the PC is turned off and you're already using your DVD/HDD machine: its nice to not leave the room and boot up the stupid PC just to make a copy of a disc you just watched with a friend who asks if they can borrow it: just run off a quick dupe intead! Also, there have been a surprising number of times when I need to make multiple copies of different DVDs in a short period of time: by running this disc dupe feature of my three Pios and my PC simultaneously, it saves a LOT of time. Handy.

Unfortunately the Pios will only duplicate burned discs, they of course will not duplicate commercial pressed discs because that would incur vengeance from the ghost of Jack Valenti. Here and there I run across a pressed disc sans copy protection that the Pio will dupe, but its pretty rare. Consider it a feature that applies only to your burned discs. For anything with CP, or anything more involved than a simple dupe, the PC is certainly the more sensible and useful option.

BTW, to turn this question on its head, remember that despite its fabulous PQ and authoring abilities, the general public's reaction to the XS Toshibas was "WTF???? How the hell do I even turn this on???" and "Authoring on this thing is so freakin convoluted, I'd rather do it on my PC". There is no perfect all-purpose tool that will satisfy everyone, so its sad we now live in an age that can't sustain "minority" solutions like ordinary DVD/HDD recorders, much less the sophisticated Toshibas: the majority rules, sometimes very ineptly.

I agree. I use it a couple of times a month and I just find it dead simple to use - easier than diving into programs and going through menus and worrying about whether something else I'm doing at the same time on my PC might mess things up.

I've been using and programming computers for almost 40 years, so it's not like I'm a computer-phobe. But I do like to keep things simple, stupid...

What if the original were on a DL disc? Many commercially pressed discs (even non CP'd ones) are often times on DL discs. I'm going to guess they wouldn't work using the Pio disc backup? Also I didn't think commercial discs were + or - what disc type would you choose for those.
True 99.9% of my burned discs are SL -R discs but a number of those were realtime copied from DL discs. I probably couldn't have used a Pio to avoid that first backup, could I? For those I would probably have to do what Nextoo suggested and that's use a computer and DL discs.

jjeff, you misunderstand me. What I said above is that some -R and +R burnt discs have copy protection, and these will not copy in Pio's "Disc Backup" mode. You cannot copy ANY commercially pressed discs with Disc backup, even if they have no copy protection. If they have no copy protection, the Pio will let you do a real-time dub to its HDD, and then burn that to disc. This will preserve an anamorphic picture, but you will lose the DD 5.1 audio.




Sadly, no, the Pio won't make a dub of a DL +R or -R disc using Disc Backup. If you have recorded something on the HDD that you want on a DL disc, it will dub that in HS, losslessly. If you want to save it in a HS dubbable form, but get it off your HDD, you can split it into two titles, and dub it to two VR mode discs. If you want more DL copies later, you dub the two discs to the HDD, recombine them into one title in the copy list, then dub to DL at HS.

I find the Disc Backup feature very useful. I often make multiple copies of things to give to friends, and Disc Backup is faster than using the original HDD version repeatedly. You don't have to enter titles, select thumbnails, and title pages repeatedly. It's very handy to have when a friend expresses interest in having a copy of something you just watched, too.

No, the Toshiba XS "wunderkind" machines are long gone, they were pulled off the market in 2006. Most of the discussions regarding them here on AVS are sort of academic: they were amazing pieces of gear, but they were not without flaws, and used ones are a very risky purchase- very. For those who were lucky enough to buy them when they were current, and take care of them to keep them running, they are a very satisfying long term value. Anyone else should consider them an urban legend and spend their money elsewhere. Of course, with Pioneer now actively telling consumers they are "out of the recorder business and there will be no x70 models for Canada", discussion of Pioneers will soon become academic as well.

There's more than one type of copy protection on a commercial disk. The Sima eliminates the scrambled analog signal that Macrovision copy protection creates, but that really has nothing to do with whether the Pioneer will make a back up or not. The backup feature depends on the disk not using the "CSS" (Content Scrambling System), a digital copy protection feature of almost all commercial discs.

So the long and short of it is: being able to copy something with the Sima doesn't tell you anything about whether you can make a backup with the Pioneer. The chances of being able to back up a commercial disc with the Pioneer are pretty slim, even if you can make an analog copy with the Sima.

I repeat: The Pioneer absolutely will not "Disc Backup" copy ANY commercial (pressed) discs.

It will only "Disc Backup" copy SL -R and +R discs, w/o copy protection.

Thats part of it, but the Pioneers also detect the disc "type": pressed commercial DVDs identify themselves as "DVD-ROM" which the Pio backup system will refuse to duplicate. Once or twice I came across what I'd swear were unprotected pressed discs that my Pio did duplicate, but they were probably just -R discs with a less obvious dye layer that passed for "pressed" to my naked eye. Put another way, if I duplicate a pressed commercial disc in my PC using AnyDVD/CloneDVD, then put that bit-for-bit perfect copy into my Pioneer, it will happily duplicate the copy, no matter how complex its authoring and menus might be. But it will not duplicate the original disc. On the plus side, it doesn't discriminate against any burned media: it will duplicate burned discs from other recorder brands or any PC without hesitation, it isn't limited to just its own discs like many other recorders sometimes are.

Really. If that is the case then the common practice of bitsetting DVD+R to appear as DVD-ROM to improve compatibility with players, should cause problems with the Pioneers duplication functionality. It should reject a bitset DVD+R.

I don't have any hardware compatible with creating the +R bitsetting option, so I can't say. It might work, or it might not: depends on how detailed that "bitsetting" flag really is. Perhaps it tricks relatively "dumb" DVD players into believing they're loading a pressed disc, but further indicate the disc as "burned" media to a computer or recorder equipped to detect such data. Or maybe the recorder simply senses a reflectance value to indicate burned vs pressed? For completeness sake, since we're so far along in this thread anyway, someone with a bit-set DVD+R and a Pioneer recorder should see if "Disc Backup" applies to that type of disc, and report back on it?

Thanks for clarifying this, yes I misunderstood you. The Philips 3575/6 acted similar to the Pio. It wouldn't let me copy a commercial pressed disc from it's DVD side to it's HDD. This disc I knew didn't have CP because it said right on the disc to copy it and pass it on. It was about environmental issues and the makers of the disc wanted people to share the message. Long story short the disc was ROM and the Philips and it sounds like the Pio would not copy such a disc. Not a big deal but it's just nice to know it's limitations. I can still think of many cases where the Pio backup would be handy.

Sean Nelson-you're probably right about CSS. Just because some discs will copy without the analog Sima doesn't mean they're not CP'd. I was assuming wrong. It sounds like a disc can have a CP that might copy analog DVD player to DVD recorder but might not copy bit for bit in a computer.
For the heck of it I tried making a copy of my environmental disc in my kids computer using DVD Suite Deluxe. It worked just fine. Then I took another commercial disc that would copy DVD player to DVD recorder without my Sima but it would not copy in the computer. That disc must have had the CSS that your spoke of.

Thanks guys for the education on various CP schemes. I was only really familiar with the Macrovision analog CP, sounds like there are other types including CSS that one would have to contend with if using a bit for bit device like a computer.
Good point by Kelson though, if bit setting a + disc to make it seem like a ROM disc it may very well not copy with the Pio or even something like a Philips I really don't use + discs and wouldn't have a clue how to bit set something so I wouldn't know the answer.

1. Since you have a Pioneer I would really suggest the -RW discs, in fact for most recorders other than Funai made ones I'd suggest - discs over the + discs.
2. I really prefer S-video cables instead of composite but then again I'm watching things on a 32 or even 46" HDTV. If you have a SD tube TV you'll probably not notice a big(if any) difference between the two. If you have a sharper TV you should see slightly better color and lack of dot crawl if using S-video compared to composite.
3. I don't know
4. I don't know

1. The alphabet soup of DVD media gives me a frigging headache, I can't be bothered with all these formats. The HDD usually eliminates the need for R/W of any kind unless you are one of those anal people who always transfers their Pio recordings to a PC for final re-authoring: in that case you'd want eraseable media. I prefer using -R for everything I keep, and whenever I need a VR backup for the hard drive I format a dirt-cheap -R as VR, since the Pio does give the option. I've never used +R or +R/W, apparently the +R/W is always VR (according to the Pio manual) but can be "finalized" for play on regular players. Beats the hell out of me: back when certain recorders would use ONLY + or -, buying + over - made sense, but today its silly to use anything but - unless your machine distinctly prefers +. Stick to - on a Pioneer except in rare cases like when you need to use dual-layer media: the Verbatim + DL is the only dual layer that works reliably.

2. The advantage of S-video cables over dimestore RCA cables will be debated until we're all in the ground: there is no "final answer" that applies to everyone. In theory, the S connection should be vastly better, in reality its often worse: it depends on your hardware and the cables used. Even in the best circumstances, S connections can look "noisier" as well as sharper: personal visual taste enters here.

3. Lately there has been a spike in complaints on AVS from users complaining their new Pioneer outputs "weird" color. I can't figure where this experience stems from: I've used/owned every Pioneer recorder model from 2003 until the current models, connected to ancient tube TVs, modern LCDs and even a couple of corporate projectors, and I've never seen bizarro color. If you're unlucky enough to encounter this problem, you might search the threads related to it and see if any new answers arise.

4. You are going "blind" watching your recordings because LP sucks, its barely usable for timeshifting and thats about it. (The Panasonic fanciers insist their machines have LP that looks as good as SP, but I don't agree: bitrate is bitrate, and LP is starved for it on every current recorder.) You can't do anything to improve recordings already made in LP, but in future you can make your eyes happier by sticking to SP or one of the manual speeds between 120-180 mins (discussed previously). Using the "old-school" slow VCR speeds on digital media negates the advantage of digital: blank media costs pennies per disc, and you can store fifty DVD-Rs in the space taken up by three VHS tapes. There is no financial or space-saving reason to use crappy LP or SLP speeds on DVD media, unless you need to record a marathon and your machine lacks a hard drive. Its difficult to make direct comparisons to DiVX or AVI files without seeing the files: some of these are expertly coded and look fantastic, others look terrible. Try recording your favorite show or movie using the SP speed on your Pioneer: if it still looks crummy, burn a DVD copy of it and bring it to a friends house to see if it looks better on their TV. If not, something could be off in your system: the Pio itself, the TV, your signal source, or any wiring hooking them together. Tough to say.

...except for long-term timeshifting or other situations where you want to offload the HDD. For example I sometimes record but don't watch an entire season of a series - when I've got them all I then sit down over a few days and watch them all at once. That's too much stuff to keep on the HDD, so I burn them to unfinalized VR-mode -RW DVDs.

Intellectually, I totally get your line of reasoning Sean, and I'm sure most users do the same thing you do. But my gut reaction to this practice is a puzzled, "why bother with R/W"? I suppose to some extent it depends on your interest in shows that aren't "keepers". As barren as the TV landscape is these days, in any given week I'm stockpiling a dozen or more series: some old nostalgia reruns, some new and current. In every case this is stuff I more-or-less will keep long term, so when I clear it off the HDD at 3 or 5 episodes per disc, I use TY DVD-R media. If its a series that gives me momentary entertainment that I'll never want to see again, I just timeshift it on the HDD and it never gets offloaded. Every now and then I bump up against the 80GB capacity of my HDD, because I also record a ton of movies from TCM, but generally its manageable.

R/W media is more expensive, and I don't use the eraseable feature often enough to justify it. (There have also been a lot more complaints on AVS about R/W glitches than ordinary -R.) The only times I've really needed R/W was to make VR backups of titles I knew I'd want to return to the HDD later for re-editing, but once I realized the Pios would let me format a cheap -R disc as VR, I stopped buying R/W. Besides being cheaper, the virtue of -R is you can pass the discs to anyone and they'll be able to play them: there are one or two series on F/X or HBO that I watch on archived -R then hand off to friends/relatives who pass them around in ever widening circles.

It probably pays to take a look at our viewing/archiving habits after a year of owning a DVD/HDD recorder, and consider whether a change in media usage would be beneficial. Offloading to R/W is the easiest solution to HDD overload, but you lose a big advantage of the HDD: not wasting burner hours for watch-and-erase timeshift recordings. Especially now that new DVD/HDD machines are no longer available, anything I can do to prolong burner life, I do religiously. If I'm gonna use up precious laser life, it's gonna be on -R that I keep in my library or pass around for others to enjoy: R/W is a luxury I'm not willing to risk anymore.

Of course, personal background also affects my opinions on media: I'm one of those nuts who have thousands of VHS and Beta tapes, enough to build a guest house out of (if I had any land to build on). Coming from the tape era, I'm still floored by the ability to store two entire seasons of a show in the space taken up by a single VHS that holds at best four episodes. The freedom to keep entire seasons at no cost in storage space still makes my eyes glaze over. If I live long enough to see SD cards with 6-hour hi-def capacity become dominant, I might have to be medicated to keep me away from the recorder.

I do that every season, especially with the highly serialized shows like "24". Much better to watch a couple per night and get the full story in one shot rather than put up with the way they drag out a season. I used to put them on RAM and broke myself of the habit of editing out the commercials -- it was a waste of my time, I could skip through them while viewing in 1/10th the time it would take me to edit them out.

"Timeshifting" is a catch-all term we use to describe any sort of "convenience" record/playback that generally doesn't involve keeping the recording permanently. The specific function you described could be considered "timeshifting" in the sense you aren't sticking to the broadcast schedule, but most members would use the term "chase play" (because you're "chasing" or catching up with a recording still in progress).

I leave all the A/V adjustments on all my Pioneers at the factory default settings, it keeps things consistent and I haven't yet experienced a problem that required changing them. Most of the users who see problems are connected to large LCD displays via HDMI: that connection when used with recorders often looks funky for unexplained reasons, and recorders usually don't allow adjustments when connected via HDMI: you're stuck with it. My own recorders are all connected to a CRT Sony Trinitron, my big flatscreen is fed by a dedicated Panasonic player. Since you say you are also using a CRT television, you should be getting a nice picture as well.

Your problem could be the LP recording speed, or it could be something else. Have you tried bringing the recorder to a friends house to see if it plays better on their TV? Reset all the adjustments to their original defaults (tuner for the inputs and TV for the outputs) and see what happens. Or limit your experiments to the playback Hue (tint), Gamma/Black Level (brightness), and Chroma (color) sliders, using one of the "Memory" spaces (you can't adjust the spaces marked "Tuner", "VCR" etc). The Black Setup button alternates between 0 and 7.5 IRE, you could see if toggling that helps. Note that Pioneers have separate memories for "input" and "output" adjustments: if you make changes while the recorder is stopped, they affect the inputs (or how it records), if you make changes while playing the HDD or a DVD, they affect the outputs (how the machine plays). If you didn't know this, you might have accidentally made compounded adjustments that look awful. Start over, and make separate adjustments for record and play (I would leave the record/input adjustments set at the automatic "Tuner" default, and just make changes using "Memory 1" while the unit is playing your favorite show from its hard drive at the SP speed).

If you do a complete factory reset (by pressing the front panel power button while holding down the stop button), all the video adjustments will return to default settings. But you would then need to reset the clock and channels, and turn on the Manual Recording option (to set in-between speeds).

Don't worry about the recording mode on the hard drive: leave it set at the default "video mode". The hard drive itself always records in VR mode, but when set to "Video Mode" it locks out a couple of extremely slow (awful-looking) recording speeds that can only be copied to DVDs formatted as VR, and allows only the two dozen speeds that can be copied from HDD to DVD in standard dvd-player-compatible video mode. This saves a tiny bit of confusion (the recorder- not my explanation). The VR Mode/Video Mode choices are important for formatting discs but are meaningless to the hard drive.

Two reasons - a sense of waste at recording something temporary on a -R disk and then simply throwing it out, and to save money over the long haul. I stockpiled a bunch of them back in 2005/2006 when I first got my DVD recorders and I've been using the same ones repeatedly. I've accumulated over a dozen re-recordings on some sets of the discs, so I figure it's not cost me any more money - and the more I use them the better the equation gets.

I've actually found them to be very reliable - I've never had a problem with any of the recordings I made. In fact I have one disc I use to transfer stuff recorded on my machine to my wife's machine that's been erased over 50 times, and it still records flawlessly.

The titling entry screen is all but unreadable on a tube TV: this has nothing to do with the sharpness of the Pio per se, its caused by the lousy font they use and the fact it is "anti aliased" for clear display on an LCD TV, making it blurry on a tube TV. Nothing we can do about that- just gotta live with it. Its better you adjust the settings based on how you want the video to look, and just get used to the blurry title entry mode. If you don't see much difference between SP and LP, you're certainly free to use LP, but it isn't the ideal speed for archiving or giving to other people. And when you finally get forced into using a big LCD television, the LP will look horrible compared to SP: beware of getting too dependent on your old tube TV, they conceal a lot of flaws and fool you into thinking a recording looks better than it really does. Big flatscreens are merciless, thats why we recommend using SP or a manual in-between speed no longer than 160mins.


I'm sorry if I confused you with that, I was joking about a future format the studios are working on for home video: it doesn't exist yet. Forget SD cards for now.


Correct, you can edit on the hard drive in Video Mode and it has no effect on making either VR Mode or Video Mode dvd copies. There is a minor effect if you do it the other way around: edits made on the hard drive in VR Mode will drift slightly when you make Video Mode dvds. Thats why its usually less confusing to leave the hard drive set to the default Video Mode and do your editing in that mode, until you get more comfortable with working the various settings and modes: then you can overrride them.

All DVDRs (except the infamous XS series Toshibas) work that way. Only with the Toshibas can you have a thumbnail for the chapters. All other DVDRs only give you a thumbnail for titles.


This should?? be a menu setting on your Pio when you finalize the disc. It is on Panasonic DVDRs, you can choose either auto play first title or display menu when the disc is first played.
I don't buy a lot of DVDs but I almost always buy concert or music DVDs. Reason being I also like thumbnails for each song as well as 5.1 which you don't get by copying the DVD in a DVDR.