Long-Play DVD recorders?

Remember with good old VHS you could record twice as much on a tape by using long play? Would it be possible to do this with a DVD?

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  • CLL DodgeCLL Dodge Posts: 115,627
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    It's already so. XP (1 hour), SP (2 hours), LP (4 hours) EP (6 hours).
  • in_focusin_focus Posts: 307
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    All DVD recorders have ways to extend the disc recording time but they don' t adjust the speed of the disc as was done with tape.

    It's done by altering the amount of compression of the recorded data. For a 4.7 Gb disk you will usually find recording times are 1 hour (best quallity) down to 6 hours which when played will give very blocky picture quallity. I call it Leggovision.
  • hotdiggity1hotdiggity1 Posts: 1,448
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    Remember with good old VHS you could record twice as much on a tape by using long play? Would it be possible to do this with a DVD?

    DVD recorders have always offered varying levels of quality.
    One hour max to about 6 hours.

    SP is 2 hours and that pretty much retains the same quality as current broadcasts.

    Go over that and quality starts to suffer especially once you go over 2h20.

    3hours+ and you're not really benefiting much.

    4 hours and more is little better than vhs.

    There are dual layer blanks that hold 75% more but these are only available for write once discs and not rewritables

    As ever , if you want to record long programmes you should record them to hard drive and then copy to dvd only if you want to keep them and after you've edited ads and padding
  • bigaltbigalt Posts: 1,928
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    Got to agree. Went from a DVD recorder to one with a hard disk and it is just so easy and convenient. Once you get used to it you would not want to go back to just a DVD recorder.
  • bobmeadesbobmeades Posts: 1,522
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    bigalt wrote: »
    Got to agree. Went from a DVD recorder to one with a hard disk and it is just so easy and convenient. Once you get used to it you would not want to go back to just a DVD recorder.

    Great for skipping the plugs & adverts too.................
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 29
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    I've always found that even at 'VHS quality' DVDs look better than tape, I think mainly due to the DVD recorder's better handling of picture noise. Some of my recordings of old VHS tapes definitely look slightly better than the original!
    bobmeades wrote: »
    Great for skipping the plugs & adverts too.................

    Does anyone else find that with a HDD PVR they now watch no adverts at all? In an hour's program, I might sit through three two-minute breaks, as it once was, but not four five-minute-plus breaks. Better to use the PVR, start watching fifteen minutes later and skip. So the current overkill of adverts has had the opposite effect to the intended one!
  • hotdiggity1hotdiggity1 Posts: 1,448
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    I've barely watched anything live for nearly 25 years so have missed out on ads for a long time.

    The PVR's and other hard drive recorders made it even easier to skip ads especially if you have one of the newer breeds from the likes of Pioneer that adds it owns chapter stops when the picture changes significantly so it can actually spot ad breaks and you can literally skip them in one push of a button although depending on whats onscreen this is not 100% accurate all the time , but still very useful.

    The Humax recorders allow you to set a chapter skip time so I set mine for 2 minutes to make it easy to skip breaks and to get the correct point if it skips past one
  • pocatellopocatello Posts: 8,813
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    htpc solutions are the most convenient once you build and set them up.
    Not as easy as unboxing a dvdrecorder but thats just how it is. Dvd recorders are just an extremely poor solution, one of the reasons they look so horrible at higher compression is that they can't really do a 2 pass encode, they have to do it on the fly, so its all compromises.
    Its easier, but its vcr level convenience in a pvr era. Like playing with cassette tapes instead of an ipod.
  • hotdiggity1hotdiggity1 Posts: 1,448
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    I've only been using computers for 8 years but I've had enough experience to know I would never base my home cinema system around one.
    I've also had dvd recorders of varying formats and brands for 8 years and I've never had one freeze up on me or require restarting or any of the other numerous cock ups you find on a PC.
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