[bobinga]

What are the advantages of a DVD recorder w/harddrive over a separate DVD recorder and DVR such as ReplayTV and Tivo.


I can only think of hi speed dubbing. Any others.


God Bless

 

[sivartk]

can you edit out commercials on the ReplayTV or Tivo? I haven't used either, but that could be a difference.


Can you make chapter points or re-arrange the order that scenes play on ReplayTV or Tivo?


Can you record your precious home videos onto the ReplayTV or Tivo box as a capture device and then edit?


Just some that I could think of.

 

[TomCat]

HD's in PVR's are nice (nice and expensive).


If you are a PVR owner you will be sorely disappointed in the capture ability of a DVDR compared to a PVR. If you have neither, yet want both HD recording for capturing shows and DVD recording for archiving them, a DVDR with HD is a very poor second choice to a garden-variety DVDR coupled with a PVR, and if you play your cards right you can get both of those for the price of a DVDR/HD alone.


Editing on a DVDR is truly an ergonomic nightmare. Companies like Sony who have a history of providing thousands of slick editing systems to the broadcasting industry over the last 3 decades should be ashamed of their consumer offerings. Rumor is that the Panny, which excels in most categories, is trailing the pack on editing prowess.


But that's about ALL of the unvarnished bad news. If you have home video to edit or really, really want to spend more time editing out commercials beforehand than you would spend shuttling over them eventually anyway, a DVDR with HD might be something to consider.


You can indeed do rudimentary editing using the "pause and shuttle" method to remove commercials on the fly while archiving PVR recordings (a second monitor helps) on a simple DVDR. You do have to be there to do it, but if you can multitask it will take less aggregate time than editing beforehand. I regularly get 2 1/2 hours of programs archived onto a 79-cent blank (at SP or better) using this method.


If you record to DVD-RAM you can also rearrange scenes on playback. And pretty much any standalone PVR can accept video input, which means you could "camera-edit" scenes to transfer to DVDR, but that of course would not be as sophisticated as real frame-accurate editing, even though using playlists on DVD-RAM, the end product would be nearly identical.

 

[newsposter]

Quote:

Originally posted by sivartk can you edit out commercials on the ReplayTV or Tivo? I haven't used either, but that could be a difference. Can you make chapter points or re-arrange the order that scenes play on ReplayTV or Tivo? Can you record your precious home videos onto the ReplayTV or Tivo box as a capture device and then edit? Just some that I could think of.

what he said .....but OP what do you have or want as your source and what are your goals? I have DTivo plus the E80 and while I have no choice but to dump 'live' from tivo to the E80, that is a very minor thing for me. I am happy the way I can shorten segments (something tivo can't do) and also burn things in the order I wish. I am also thankful for the 80 gig drive. Also there are negatives to both the Dtivo and standalone tivo so your intended use is very important. to me, the 300 lifetime fee for standalone is a lot, especially w/o dual tuners.

 

[mattack]

Quote:

Originally posted by TomCat You can indeed do rudimentary editing using the "pause and shuttle" method to remove commercials on the fly while archiving PVR recordings (a second monitor helps) on a simple DVDR. You do have to be there to do it, but if you can multitask it will take less aggregate time than editing beforehand. I regularly get 2 1/2 hours of programs archived onto a 79-cent blank (at SP or better) using this method.

You're obviously against these hard drive/DVD recorders.


Yes, you *can* use the pause-and-fastforward method, but that's WAY more tedious than removing commercials beforehand, then unattended dubbing to DVD.


Plus, you don't get edits that are as good.. You probably have chunks of the commercials in your recordings, if you didn't happen to switch back to paying attention to this recording fast enough.

 

[SteveK2]

I have both a dvdr (panny e50) and an ultimatetv PVR (Directv). THe PVR doesn't accept any external video inputs (just the satellite input).


So, to me, I see the DVDR w/HD combo along with a PVR to be the real ultimate combination.


But if I didn't have the ultimatetv and had to choose, I would definately go with the DVDR w/HD.....I agree with the sivartk regarding the advantages. I disagree with most of TomCat's arguments....its a royal P-I-T-A to sit there and hit pause everytime a commercial comes up. I've got 30-second skip on my PVR and its still better to not even to have to deal with the commercials on an archived disk.


My next DVDR WILL have a hard disk....the unattended dubbing is worth the price IMHO.

 

[MaxH]

Quote:

Originally posted by SteveK2 I have both a dvdr (panny e50) and an ultimatetv PVR (Directv). THe PVR doesn't accept any external video inputs (just the satellite input). So, to me, I see the DVDR w/HD combo along with a PVR to be the real ultimate combination. But if I didn't have the ultimatetv and had to choose, I would definately go with the DVDR w/HD.....I agree with the sivartk regarding the advantages. I disagree with most of TomCat's arguments....its a royal P-I-T-A to sit there and hit pause everytime a commercial comes up. I've got 30-second skip on my PVR and its still better to not even to have to deal with the commercials on an archived disk. My next DVDR WILL have a hard disk....the unattended dubbing is worth the price IMHO.

Hey, I picked up an RCA UltimateTV IR keyboard for use with my ReplayTV, and now I'm looking at a standalone DVDR, but I'm really hoping I can use the IR keyboard to title my DVDs, since I've heard that it can be a real pain. Have you tried an UltimateTV keyboard with your Panny, or has anyone else found a DVDR that can use a WebTV-type IR keyboard?


Also, I don't think I'll be doing much editing, but I do hate commercials, and my Replay is only about 80% accurate in skipping commercials. Are DVDRs with their own HDs easier to edit on? I can't seem to find anything about why a combo would be more usable than the two separate components, although TomCat, you alluded that the combos have no advantages over separate components, am I right?