Questions about average recording times and qualities on DVDs.

DVDs recorded at 1 or 2 hours have excellent quality, at 4 hours very good to excellent, at 6-8 hours the quality is acceptable VCR like (my S VHS at 6 hours is better).

Using high quality DVDs the picture should not degrade with time.

Sounds like you have no need for a recorder with HDD and you should avoid DVD VCR combo units.

With blank DVD media costing so little now if you buy in bulk there is little reason to set a recording time of more than 4 hours.

First of all, DVD media is relatively inexpensive. $0.25/disc for write-once, under $1/disc for rewritable.

4 hours is about the most anyone who cares about the picture quality will put on a single-layer DVD. 6 hours is pretty much unwatchable. Especially if your display is any more than say 30" diagonal. 2 hours is more typical of what people will use for stuff they care about.

Rewritable discs do not show evidence of degradation after repeated use. They either work 100% or they start to fail in which case you need a new one because the failures are not graceful like analog magnetic tape. But they claim +/-RW's (rewritable DVDs) have 1000's of rewrite cycles before that happens. And DVD-RAM (expensive but worth it for some) is even more "durable" and 10,000-100,000 cycles.

Bottom line, compared to VHS tape (is it still around $2/tape?), a 100-pack at $25 gives you 200-400 hours of recording capacity, you'd need $100 of VHS tapes for that, DVDs are quite cost-effective in that comparison.

To the OP -

While this may or may not be true in your case, I thought I would highlight some of the advantages of dvd recorders with HDD to allow you to make an informed decision on whether you should get one based on your planned recording habits:

The hard disc drive (HDD) provides certain advantages such as: not having to have a disc in the recorder for every timed/manual recording (records to the HDD) (especially useful on back-back recording marathons), ability to edit HDD recorderings to remove excess material or commercials before you commit the final recording to disc, ability to manually set chapter stops before you record to disc, high speed dubbing between the HDD and disc, ability to re-dub material to disc in the event the disc "fails" during dubbing/recording or finalizing (very inconvenient it happens to a timeshifted recording for which you have no HDD backup), the ability to make exact duplicates of a hdd recording to multiple discs. You also get some of these features with DVD-RAM or DVD-RW rewriteable discs recorded in VR mode (which is an editing friendly video record mode that differs from straight VIDEO mode that allows you to on disc editing - but obviously you don't get the advantages of extended recordings beyond the 1 to 8 hours capacity on the discs).

As far as recording quality goes, similar to bobkart above, I consider SP/2 hour mode to be the sweet spot for archiving recorded feature length films and LP/4 hour mode acceptable for time shifting/archiving prime time TV shows. 6 to 8 hour mode is unwatchable IMO. Some recorders have intermediate manual recording quality modes such as 2.5, 3, and 3.5 hour modes that fill in the gaps between 2 and 4 hour modes. Others have flex record modes that simply pick the bitrate necessary to fill an entire disc based on the recording duration. Both of these approaches are useful compromises for those recordings that "just exceed" the standard modes (e.g., allows you to record a 2hr 15 minute move at slightly less than SP quality without having to step all the way down to LP mode) and each approach has slightly different arcane advantages and disadvantages.

The Samsung DVD-TR520 is a twin tray DVD recorder. One for playing. One for recording.

Manual is here:

http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...0_XAA_book.pdf

And I totally disagree with that.

I definitely think a DVR with HDD is the BEST way to go!
You never have to buy media unless you want to save a special program to copy.
You record to the hard drive, watch your program, then erase it.
You do not have to worry about how much room is on the disc, or like the VCR tape, to be enough for your program, be it 6 hours etc. etc.
You can do your recording at the best (XP) quality to view later.

That is what I have been doing and LOVE it for that!
You skip throught the commercials etc. etc. What more could you want?

Urlee

The Polaroid DVD recorder with hard drive is only about $200 at Wal****.

I have said this many times before, and I guess I'll repeat myself again, you might not THINK you would need a DVD recorder with a hard drive, but if the history of this group says anything, it says that you will soon want some/most/all of the features that you can only get through a model with a hard drive. I can't count the number of people who have said much of what you have, who bought a cheap non hard drive DVD recorder, then later kicked themselves for not taking the advice from members of this group, who told them to get one with the hard drive.

I am not aware of any models with two trays that allow continuous recording from the disk in tray one, to the disk in tray two. I'm not even aware of any that allow recording to both trays.

It would be debatable if the DVD four hour mode is as good as the best VCR quality. The recordings would have different artifacts from the different recording methods, so it is likely a matter of taste as to which is better. I certainly don't think it's so completely obvious that everyone would vote on the same side.

Both of these requirements point to using either a DVR from your cable company or a DVD Recorder with a hard drive. (A DVR is a hard-drive based recorder that doesn't play or record to removable optical disks.)

The fact that you don't want to keep shows means that you have no need for recording anything to a DVD. If you buy a DVR or DVD recorder with hard drive you can record everything to the hard drive and never have to worry about fiddling with discs.

The fact that you want to record long shows also points to the hard drive - you should be able to record up to about 8 hours in a single shot, and do it at the highest quality setting to boot.

On the Pio 640, max rec. time to the HDD is 12 hours for one title.

When it comes to sports, the longer modes on DVD are less forgiving than VHS-EP (6 hours) because of compression artifacts of fast paced action. I am not picky on picture quality, and I have a small TV, but I rarely use EP (6hours or longer). The only thing that works for me at the mode is South Park (or something similar). I even tried slow, turtle-motion programs at EP, such as CSPAN or old single-camera one-face programs, and they look rather cartoonish at that mode. But this is subjective, and a trade-off, so some people may be happy with it, others will barf for days

For sports, either a HDD-based recorder or a cable-company-DVR or Tivo is much more effective. I have a cable-company DVR as the primary time-shifting device, and the things I want to save go to the DVD, either overnight or as I watch them.

DVD recorder and sports = BARFING

HD Cable PVR and sports = "Can somebody please pass the shrimp?"

If you get a DVD recorder with a HDD (for anywhere between $200 and $350) you can have the DVR like functionality (i.e., long recording times for time shifting) without the subscription/rental fees and you can use it as a DVD player. Might be cheaper than a DVR/DVD player one time costs and even more savings if you count the subscription/rental fees.

If by "strong" you mean "can play for 10 hours without burning out", then I don't think you really have to worry about any of the machines out there. If, on the other hand, you mean "full-featured" then it's a different story. AFAIK, not that many DVD recorders have the same level of features as the stand-alone players.

There's been discussion here that some people prefer having a separate machine to play DVDs so as not to "wear out" the laser on the more expensive DVD/HDD recorder. I'm not sure how crumulent this attitude is, my expectation is that the laser in a DVD burner is a lot more robust because it has to be run at the much higher power levels required to burn a DVD, while the levels required for mere reading would be like a walk in the park for it.

Some of the missing "features" are really more arcane bells and whistles such as ability to zoom, sophisticated upscaling features (upscaling means artificially increasing the resolution of the output above the standard 480i lines of resolution for high resolution displays - just about all dvd players and recorders do 480p (p=progressive scan, i=interlaced fields) and some dvd players and dvd recorders will output higher resolution such as 720i/p and 1080i/p), use of sophisticated de-interlacing mpeg decoder chips, ability to play multiple formats such as VCD, SVCD, DIVX, XVID etc., ability to store data for multiple dvds, sophisticated "resume play" memories. These are either fringe bells and whistles or things that only true high-end videophiles might appreciate. I can't answer for your particular case, but I doubt you would likely miss them. Fact is, many DVD recorders include some of these higher end features and many dedicated dvd players don't have one or more of them so its hard to make a generalization that DVD recorder/plyaers are lacking in dedicated playback features. Fact is, they get more sophisticated every year (e.g., this year's Panny dvd recorders incorporate upscaling and hdmi ouputs) and they generally incorporate the features that matter to most viewers. I really think you can't go wrong with a HDD DVD recorder for your described viewing habits.

When I first set out to buy a DVR, I did a lot of research and one thought that ran through my mind was, what the heck do I want one with a HDD for? (me using a vcr all this time). Also, the thought of paying for features I thought I would have no need for!
I couldn't have been more wrong with those thoughts as I ended up buying the Pio640 and can't stress enough how important to have things that you end up using and would be lost without.
I LOVE the Pio640 and would recommend that machine to anyone who asks what to buy even if it's for just recording from the TV to watch later. That in itself is worth the $$ I paid for it.

Urlee

Yep, those are all very standard features for every DVD recorder (and player) I've seen. If those are your requirements then you'll be quite satisfied.

After buying my Pioneer 633 (last year's model), another feature I'd add to the list of "really nice to have" is the ability to play a title at slightly faster speed and still be able to hear the audio. The Pioneer does this at 1.5X speed (ie, a 30-minute show plays in 20 minutes) and adjusts the audio so that people don't sound like chipmunks. There are some shows for which I find this very handy.