Excellent! Now I just have to decide between the 910 and the 710.

Thanks for the clarification

If anyone has asked this question before than I apologise. I just got deilvery of the 910 today and looking for urgent help in connecting my equipment up. I have a normal TV (2 scarts), 910 dvd recorder, sky stb, and vcr. I need to connect it up so I can record my old VHS to DVD recorder and also record sky channels to the DVD recorder also. many thanks.

To keep things simple, you could go Sky to VCR to 910 to TV.

So The SKY signal will pass through the VCR to the 910 for recording, as well as the VCR when playing will send a signal to the 910.

If the Sky has another Scart out, you could connect that directly to your TV's other Scart, so you could watch SKY while the VCR is sending a signal to the 910 when dubbing over.

Recording from Freeview is OK, as I said a couple of posts before, when in standby the 910 won't actually come on, so a signal from Sky or the VCR will still pass through to the TV.

I guess it depends on your needs really.

Hope this helps a bit

Vince

Is it just a Sony design that only allows progressive scan when connected with Component Out rather than a simple SCART connection?

Our TV (Loewe Aventos) doesn't have the Component stuff, just SCART x 3 plus s-video and audio out phono's as standard, so we cannot use the progressive scan facility.

I notice that Samsung and other all use the progressive scan in their ads - have they got this constraint too?

You cannot get progressive scan with scart sockets with any dvd player. Component or higher only. You will need to change your tv to get progressive. If and when you change your tv you should make sure it has a HDMI socket to fully utilise the HDMI facility on the sony recorder you bought. You will see a big jump in picture quality.

Thanks for the confirmation - appreciated

I've just got a Samsung LE23T51B 23" LCD. It has a DVI input. I'm looking to replace my Pace Twin as the ebay prices are still quite good. It makes sense to go for something like the Sony 710/910 but I'm unsure as to whether the HDMI link will acutally make any difference or now?
Any ideas - I don't need the extra disk space.
I'm assuming for the 910 I can plug a HDMI lead into the DVI socket of the Samsung?

I have had the 710 for a couple of months now and can confirm that it's an excellent machine.
I decided that I didn't need to pay £200 extra for an HDMI socket which is of no obvious benefit except to allow restrictions by broadcasters on access to certain copyright transmissions!
I would have paid a little extra for a larger disc, but £200 is taking the Michael!
Only disadvantage is the single digital tuner, but we've only just got that! so I suppose two tuners will be next year???
Editing takes practice but is ok.
High speed dubbing works very well with the only minor criticism being that although titles (the actual names) are copied accross to the title list, they are not copied onto the actual disc name and so have to be re-entered.
Finalising is an irritation, but that's common to all machines.
With Playlist there is a slight pause between each linked scene.
There are only occasional slight blockings in the TV reception, although my signal strength and quality both show maximum.
The signal is obviously not quite so robust as the Satellite one.
I've not noticed any problems with fan noise.
Hope that has helped with your decision.

I think I'll wait for prices to come down and twin tuners to be available. With the Pace Twin I've never really needed to archive off stuff, so the DVD is a nice-to-have rather than a must.
I thought the HDMI was just a form of DVI connection? Can anyone confirm I can connect a 910 with HDMI output to a DVI input on the Samsung?
The Samsung doesn't have HDCP (which I think is the DRM / copy protection stuff.)

I pulled this from page 17 of the D710/D910 user manual regarding HDMI/HDCP playback on none HDCP compliant equippment:

"You cannot connect the HDMI OUT jack to DVI jacks that are not HDCP compliant"

SO it sounds like if your Samsung doesn't have a DVI with HDCP compliant then the HDMI on the D910 won't work for you.

HDMI is a more advanced form of DVI, DVI is slowly being phased out and replace by HDMI, this will become more apparent when the next generation of laptops become available in the next 6 month that have HDMI only, instead of DVI or VGA. HDMI also as spart of the specification has HDCP content encrytion, basically a means of stopping you from copying HD content, HDCP is an optional extra on for DVI connections and isn't always supported especially on older equippment 6 months+ older as it never really existed then

I dont expect this is a new topic but have not yet mastered the forum use.

1) I cannot see in Manual how to connect RF leads when I have Sony DVDRecorder710, Panasonic VCR with only 2 SCART, Panasonic TV with one SCART and one S-VHS. Page 26 of Manual seems to ignore aerial/RF leads. Should RF loop through in sequence aerial/DVDRec/VCR/TV ?
VCR and DVDR are linked by SCART.
TV and DVDR are linked by S-VHS.
What is the best way of connecting this lot?

2) Also in order to watch one digital TV program while recording on DVDR another digital TV program, I would like to connect my Grundig GDT 1500T Freeview set top box which has 2 SCART. How can I connect this extra device?

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Connection for RF output via the ariel lead is a problem with the Sony boxes as they don't generate a signal from the RF out. It's solely a loop-through.
The way around this that I use is to buy an RF Modulator (from say Maplins) and connect the component output on the Sony box to the modulator and then connect the modulator on to whatever you want to supply with the RF signal from the Sony.
I use this method to distribute sigbals to other rooms in the house and it works fine. The only disadvantage is that you can only control the Sony unit at the box itself, so no luxury like the Sky Remote Eye functions.
I would try with connection like this to start - RF(Ariel)/Grundig/Sony/Modulator/VCR/TV.
It always sounds more complicated than it is!
As to Sony not providing an RF output, this has been discussed on this forum and it seems extremely cheapskate as the cost would have been minimal. It's also something that they don't tell you about and which most people expect to have as standard.
Hopefuly soemone at Sony will pick up on this and include it in future models -
along with two tuners!

The SONY web site contains many connection posssibilities.
Go to
http://www.sonydigital-link.com/tuto...nn.asp?l=en#c1
which should display all the common options, in both text and pix.
Unfortunately the one layout I wanted would require a new TV with more than one SCART!

What's the availability of the HXD-710 at the moment?

Also, what are the chances of a new DVB model from Sony in the near future? They seem to update their DVD recorders quite often.

Thanks - I've just checked some of forums and it actually says the Samsung is HDCP-DVI compliant so I guess I'm OK to go for the 910 after all
thanks

Has anyone else tried the 910 on an HDTV and can confirm/deny its upscaling abilities?

Does anyone know with these machines if I have a DVD (which I created - with pretty menus etc) will it make a "real" copy of it onto the HDD - ie with the nice menu so that I can make duplicates of the disk. If it does it would make the whole process of copying these disks much easier (they are promotional material for a pjoject I am working on).

Anyone got any ideas?

I have looked at the manual that is online and it is clear as mud (obvioulsy it it making sure people understand you can't copy commercial DVDs). But it doesn't really answer the question can you copy ones you have made yourself.

Well, after some experimenting, here are the connections which seem to work OK and let me watch one digital TV program while at the same time recording another digital TV program on DVDR HDD. There may be better ways to make these connections which I do not know about.
RF just loops through from aerial to, in turn, set top box / VCR / DVDR / TV. Some of the RF co-axial cables gave a poor picture, but when replaced with others, with tight end connections, picture was OK.
Because the TV is old it only has one SCART socket so I bought a 2-way SCART switch, manually switched from one input to the other by a button on the little black switch box. This is connected to SCART on TV, effectively making it a TV with 2 SCART sockets.
SCART connections are:
Set top box socket marked TV goes to SCART switch IN1.
VCR socket marked AV1 goes to SCART switch IN2.
SCART switch OUT lead goes to TV SCART socket A1.
VCR socket marked AV2 goes to SCART Line 3 IN socket on back of DVDR.
DVDR Line 2 OUT goes with S-video lead to S-video socket on TV.
All the TV options sem to work fine, viewing analogue TV, digital TV from set top box and digital TV from DVDR.
I have not yet tested recording from VCR tape to DVDR HDD, but I hope it will work OK.
I hope this may be of use to other beginners.

I am (almost) certain this is not possible because of how it works. You can transfer sections of video from DVD to hard-disc and vice-versa but there's no option to transfer anything else.

When you make a DVD it puts its own menu on with details of the programmes you have put on.

Surely the best way to do this would be to use something like Roxio DVD creator. As long as there are no copyright issues, this would allow you to do an exact disc copy and you could churn them out just as easily as if you were copying them from the HDD within a Sony HDD / DVD recorder. Probably easier.
If you originally created them on a computer (and if you have fancy menus etc, I expect you did) then you could probably copy them from your hard disc image of the DVD project in something less than 'real' time. Seems easier to me than trying to involve the Sony in the equation.
Good Luck,
tallboy

Last December I purchsed a new Sony LCD + Sony710 DVD Recorder. No problems apart from about 6 occassions when looking at the TV via the Recorder the colouring is not right especially red which comes out as a light purple.

When looking via the 'TV' tuner the colours are fine. When the problem occured last night I recorded a programme which I assumed would have the incorrect colouring. However on playback everything was fine.

The odd colouring which on one occasion was predomionately green' appears to clear itself after about 10 to 15 minutes after switching off everything,

I assume that this is a question for the manufacturers but someone else may be encountering the same problem.

Cheers
David

sorry to come very late to all this but can someone tell me why (apart from the extra hard disk capacity) I should spend well over £100 extra to buy a HXD710 with Freeview tuner rather than, say, a HX510 plus a standalone freeview box or even just record from my NTL cable box?

the major joy is that when you record multiple things you only have to set one timer rather than mess about getting two timers in synch

I purcharsed a HXD710 about 4 months ago and it's been brilliant. However, in the last few days, it's started to take 1 minute and 20 seconds to come out of stand by (it just shows the "Sony DVD" words). It didn't use to take that long.

Has anyone else experiences this?

I’ve had a 710 on order for three months from RGB Direct and just cancelled it as they are saying another month at least. They also said that Sony are discontinuing the 910 for reasons I am not sure about. I’ll phone the Sony Centre

So I am back to square one and need to do some more research. Anyone know what is in the pipeline or got any different recommendations ?