Kind of weird question, recorders & increments you can record in

For OTR 30 minutes is the standard. That is whatever speed you are using pushing the OTR will increment the recording duration 30 minutes.
OTR is not to be confused with the recording speed. DVDRs like Panasonic and similarly Pioneer have incremental recording speeds. That is on a Panasonic you can set the recording speed anywhere from 60 minutes up to 8hrs/SL DVD. After recording for the duration you've set FR for you will have a full SL DVD containing a title the length you've set FR for. Using FR you can't really have multiple titles on the DVD unless you already had titles on the DVD before setting FR or you manually pushed STOP before the FR duration. FR always wants to fill up the DVD for the duration you've set it for.

If I understand you question it probably has more to due with duration than recording speed and in that case I personally don't know of any machine other than your JVC that had settings other than 30 minutes.
Note if you get a DVDR(like one of the Magnavoxes talked about in the sticky thread) and first record to it's HDD, you can use OTR and over record your program and after the recording it only takes seconds to trim off the extra before finally burning the title to DVD. It's so much handier to always first record to HDD and only after burn to DVD, just another though.

Can you set a timer for 1:17:00 or thereabouts to start in next minute or two, then press PLAY on the DVR when the recorder kicks on?

Until you posted this question, berigan, I'd never heard of ANY recorder that would do OTR in less than 30 minute increments. That your JVC allows 10 minute increments is rather unique, even among JVCs: I owned several JVC combos and they all used 30 min OTR steps. Perhaps the newer JVC models (now actually made by LG) use LG software, and LG allows 10 min OTR. If you can find a shop that sells LG recorders, you could perhaps take a look, or download their instruction manuals to check.

You are expecting an ultimate degree of flexibility and convenience that is usually not possible without an HDD in the recorder. Your JVC is unusual, typically recording direct-to-DVD means you have be there to supervise a manual OTR or set the full timer in advance of the show or movie. If you tend to discover a movie is coming on two minutes before you leave for work, that you want to fit on a DVD with two other movies already on it, direct-to-DVD won't cut it (unless you dump the Toshibas on eBay and buy another JVC).

Should you decide to go for another recorder, give serious thought to the Magnavox 513 mentioned by jjeff. At only $169 (when available from J&R), it includes a 320GB HDD, a capacity that can hold 100 times the content of a single DVD. This means you can let many TCM movies accumulate on the HDD, until you have several with running times that will fit nicely on a DVD. You can quickly trim the beginning and end of each movie, and burn a DVD in about 16 mins. The same flexibility would require multiple JVC recorders, the problem you are now dealing with. The capacity and editing flexibility of HDD means one recorder can take the place of many.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest. It sounds like the real solution to his problem is to use the exact program durations, and to use timer settings to achieve that. No where near as convenient, but much more precise than thirty, or ten minute incements.

Of course, my best recommendation is to follow CitiBear's advice. Get a machine with an HDD.

Here is one of those JVC combos withy the 10-minute ITR feature.
http://www.220-electronics.com/dvdre...RegionFree.htm


If the OP needs a new recorder, I have to agree with the others – get a unit with a HDD built in.

I have a JVC, player only, that is region free, not mentioned in the manual that it is, but it is, AND, (also not mentioned in the manual) it will playback PAL disks, but output NTSC. The PAL to NTSC conversion is not mentioned anywhere, but it works, and works very well!

J&R is out of stock, but Amazon has them for $20 more then J&R here, and Walmart has some 515s available here (the followup to the 513) for $330. I wouldn't take too much time in deciding as these are getting VERY hard to find, and some members of this forum have been predicting that they will soon be gone completely. A few, here and there, keep popping up, but there are times when none are available outside of eBay.