Since My Pio 531 Failed, I had to buy an HDD E75 Panny at CC

HG,


DO NOT get the extended warranty. If you ever need an OUT OF WARANTY repair of a Panny DVD recorder it's typically $130 FLAT RATE using the Panny repair center and includes at least one way shipping (I think) based on previous posts here. In general, extended warranties are a loser. Why pay in advance for a repair until you actually have to. Besides, with high end electronics, by the time you need a repair, if its outside the original warranty, you can either buy an equivalent or better unit for about the same price you paid for the warranty or you'll want to upgrade to a better unit. Extended warranties are high profit margin items for retailers and you are generally just pissing money down the drain. As another data point, out of 10 Panny DVD recorders I've owned since 2002, only one needed to be sent in for repair (and that was an open box unit that was repaired UNDER WARRANTY). I've sold the older units to friends throughout the years as I've upgraded and with the exception of a HDD failure (and easy SELF REPLACEMENT) on an old 2002 vintage HS2, never have been informed of failures of these older units by their new owners.

Vic

But who really needs an ATSC tuner? 85% of the US population subscribes to either cable or satellite service. ATSC provides access to OTA and most people's viewing habits have expanded well beyond network television. I've never quite understood all of the hoopla or hysterics over an ATSC tuner. And I'll extend this to QAM tuners as well. But unfortunately there has been a significant amount of bad information including terms like "obsolete" when it comes to DVD recorders.


In my opinion there will never be a DVD recorder offered by Toshiba (for example) that will ever come close to the XS series (2004-2006) models. DVD recorders are currently passe'. Just look at the 2007 models. And this is not because of the ATSC tuner requirement. It is because of the market and market demand. I don't see DVD recorders rising from the ashes feature wise - they're getting dumbed down. Especially the SD technology. They're heading down to the $99 price point as well. I believe the greatest claim to fame for DVD recorders is that they will take market share away from DVD players.


HD perhaps? Maybe - but not anytime soon in the mass market channels.


disclaimer - everything I stated above is fact. I talked to a guy at Sears. He didn't work there - was just walking through. But he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. This disclaimer is for the benefit of the fact checker.

Your disclaimer was very funny nextoo, very funny. Made me laugh.


BTW, I agree with your perspective. That's more or less how I see it too. I don't know of anybody that doesn't have Satellite or Cable. Clearly, market penetration of those two services is very high and those companys' DVRs are of minimal to no initial acquisition cost, and sometimes, only around $6 a month for the programming/DVR fee. That does add up over the years, but considering how much the price of gas has gone up just over the last few years with no additional benefit, an extra $6 a month isn't all that much to pacify a video enthusiast with reliable guide data for quick, easily made recordings.


In fact, that's how I've been doing it for the last 2 years. I use a dual-tuner DirecTV Tivo to store the programs on its HDD and then a Sony non-HDD recorder to burn the video to DVD. And the recorders pause button works great to edit out the commercials. And their is no "freeze" at the edit points.


But, no doubt, that does leave those precious few who don't subscribe to Satellite or Cable with little to no good options.



nx211



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson /forum/post/0


This has been covered before. That 85% number does not represent exclusive use. The numbers that were cited before indicate somewhere between 40-60% of the viewing public gets some of their programming OTA

Click to expand...

They obviously don't live around me. I haven't seen rabbit ears in years. Not any. If those numbers include the portable beach and picnic OTA TVs then I guess the number could get higher but 60% of all households using OTA seems like a stretch. How many of those TVs are in spare bedrooms? And as it relates to this forum how many are hooked up to DVD recorders - probably not too many.


Here's some more data:


% of cable households that use OTA - 13%


% of satellite households that use OTA - 10%


% of satellite or cable households that use OTA - 23%


From here:

http://www.hearusnow.org/fileadmin/s...al_6-29-05.pdf


This survey skews the numbers higher than most others. For example government estimates are about half of the numbers represented in this survey. This survey says approximately 70 million televisions may be affected. Other surveys peg the number between 35 - 50 million. So this survey puts the Government rebate coat at $3.5 billion. The number is probably high but I chose this survey to represent a worst case scenario.


Either way with 85% of households subscribing to either satellite or cable service the number of households exclusively affected remain at about 15% (OTA users). This is the number that should be of concern as it relates to service interruptions. And all surveys say this number is falling because of cable and satellite growth in penetration rates.


Couple this with the bottom dropping out of the price of HD televisions and the number of people that will have digital tuners is increasing. I saw a 42" HD Plasma selling online recently for $469 (Geeks). For the new HD sets HD OTA programming will continue to be available. For those that choose not to purchase there will be low cost ATSC to NTSC converter boxes.


Will it be a hassle? Sure for some. But not for most. Not for me because I'm one of the 85% that subscribe to a service (cable in my case). And I'm one of the 87% of cable subscribers that do not use any OTA. Actually I've heard more grumbling about analog cable moving to digital than the OTA digital conversion.


15% of television households is still a significant number - but the 15% represents OTA television households. Not OTA DVD recorder households. I can only imagine how small the OTA DVD recorder household number is.


Thus my DVD recorder with an ATSC comment. How necessary is it? I would prefer to see a fully featured DVD recorder with HDD and no tuner than what I've seen in the 2007 ATSC models.