Do NOT, under any circumstances, buy any brand of DVD/HDD recorder if your primary goal is to load its hard drive with computer video files and use it as a DiVX/Xvid jukebox. You will be bitterly, bitterly disappointed. This used to be clearly understood by most buyers until a year or so ago, when folks suddenly got it into their head that DVD/HDD recorders would "of course" be perfect for this. Well, no, they aren't: the stupid DiVX/Xvid/pc file trading flavor of the month formats change constantly and a lot of stuff circulates in PAL, which DVD/HDD recorders cannot play unless connected to a PAL capable television or converter box. You want to play heavily with DiVX or Xvid or AVI, connect your PC to your television: you'll avoid a lot of tedious intermediate converting and file transfers and aggravation. Or buy a cheap dedicated DVD player that claims to be fully-compatible with DiVX/Xvid: many players are equipped with PAL>NTSC conversion circuits that are NEVER included in the much more expensive DVD/HDD machines.
If MOST of your files are playing B/W and scrolling too quickly to see, you have a hell of a lot of file converting ahead of you to make them compatible with your DVD/HDD recorder. Personally I wouldn't bother, there are better things you can do with your time. If you insist on loading them to your recorder hard drive, the simplest solution is to buy a PAL>NTSC converter box to connect between your recorder and your TV: it will unscramble the files and make them playable without you having to change them in the PC beforehand. This is an extra expense, to be sure, but what is your time worth? If you have 50 or 100 or more of these "problem" Xvids, you could be looking at a LOT of file conversion time on the PC. Go with the outboard box that converts on the fly as you watch the TV.
