Can someone recommend a cheap and cheerful DVD recorder to use with the Humax?

I'm wanting to connect it to the VCR SCART via a SCART smart switch, so I need one that can record and playback from a single SCART.

I guess record will be from composite and playback will be RGB?

Ian

I'm sure you will find lots of machines that will do the job, the Humax will work with anything. I suggest asking in the general PVR section or Sony/Panasonic/Pioneer sections, here you'll only get the advice of Humax owners.

I have a sony HX510 HDD/DVD recorder and it works fine.

How cheap?

I guess around £100

We don't play DVDs very often and would archive to DVD even less often.

Oh, but we need multi-region.

Ian

if you can stretch to £150 you could get a HDD/DVD recorder. As long as the HDD allowed editing it would be an improvment over the Humax when archiving and taking out ads. The Humax editing is rough and the software updates on the way look to make it worse almost useless.

What makes you say that?

I don't recall any changes to editing being mentioned.

I don't think it was mentioned in the origianl list of improvments because on first look it was just a different method of entry.

The old edit function has been replaced by a trim function. The control function is less precise (no frame by frame advance and select) and you have to allow 10 seconds either side of what you want to keep to allow for bad sound and picture.

You could just about remove the start and end of a recording to reduces size, I don't think it would be useable to remove ads.

I did give feedback on this issue in the beta testing forum so it might be improved (crosses fingers)
Last edited by redrob2 : 30-11-2006 at 15:46

Just my 2 pence worth,

The best quality route would be to simply get a DVD writer for your PC - that way your going digital to digital (so no/less loss) - with an AV DVD recorder for use with home cinema, you're likely to be connecting via scart - so you'll be going from the digital signal from the humax, to an analogue output, then re-encoded as digital. Also it will be a real time recording.

I have a panasonic DVD recorder (had it long before the humax) - and DVD-R's are in 4:3, for 16:9 it has to be a DVD-RAM (no idea why!!!), not sure if this is specific to the recorder I have / panasonics (its in the manual, not a user error). With the PC based solution, it will be in 16:9 or 4:3 depending on content.

Also, £25 for a DVD Drive for a PC plus around £40 for software, you'll make a saving aswell as a quality improvement.

I'm close to ditching the AV DVD Recorder in favour of a media PC, it might be SLIGHTLY more effort to start the software up, but if something is worth archiving, surelly its worth the extra effort?

archiving that sounds like making a collection which is breaking copyright law.

I only make temporary timeshift recordings

You are a stickler!

That's the advantage of VCRs. You can always "forget" to erase old tapes that contain something you want to keep.

oh no, wouldn't dream of breaking copyright law! I'm all up for discs that destroy themselves in a mission impossible style once they've been watched

I have done that so far but it's quite time consuming. And the Humax USB sucks and blows. Guess I should have the IDE USB lead for direct downloads.

Ian

how old is your box?

only reason I ask is my girlfriend s dad got a 9200t and we spent a night trying different usb cables, drivers, pc etc - and the transfer would fail at around 256mb.

he took the box back for replacement and the new one works great; mine has been perfect from day one but he went through 2 before getting one that works.

maybe there is a faulty chip in a batch or something?

My downloads don't often fail, but -
1) They take ages
2) And need doing 2-3 times to get a merged copy that is clean of download errors.

Clean downloads first time would be great, This and true USB2 speeds would be perfection.

Ian

You do get true USB2 download speeds ... the 9200T is a FULL speed device and complies with that aspect of the standard.

When error checking is introduced it will mean download times will increase from the current version of eLinker.

Can't you play the files you extract from the 9200T first time?

I'm about to buy a cheapy Philips DVD player just to play CDs and DVDs as presently I'm not bothered about recording on DVD. I'm also quite new to CDs/DVDs so don't know much about connections etc. Does anyone know if the picture quality still be optimum if I connect to the second scart on the humax which I understand is not RGB? I know the Philips player has a optimum search device of some sort which finds the best connection. I've got a VCR connected to it at the moment which I hardly ever use. Ideally, I'd like to have both VCR and DVD player connected but I expect to have to lose the VCR. My TV RGB slot is being used by the Humax and there's one scart left but this is not RGB. Anybody have any experience on these things?
Last edited by stevgillamos : 11-12-2006 at 11:43

The second SCART does not output RGB but you can pass RGB in through it, so you will get RGB on your TV if you connect your DVD to it.

Thanks for that. I've connected everything up and it all seems o.k.

I'm involved in designing chips with USB and products that use said chips for a living. The decision to allow devices that only support the USB 1.0 and USB 1.1 12 Mbps mode as "USB2 compliant" was entirely a marketing move, it annoyed those actually designing the gear, and confused the hell out of consumers.

I sell a product that can't handle high speed mode and I put "USB 1.1" in the marketing materials and manual. No way could I describe it as USB 2 with a clear conscience. Hell, the chip was even designed before the USB 2 spec was ratified!

I guess I'm just not a marketing person!

Ian

No need to spend £100 on a DVD recorder.

The Funai at Argos here is a great bit of kit. I bought 2 (one for a relative) and they've been great machines.

Like all good recorders they stick with DVD-R (happy with my Verbatim 16x) and DVD-RW (max 4x and new non-PC used ones) and keep away from nasty +R media. I've tried a couple of other budget (and not so budget) machines and they just aren't up to the Funai for reliabilty. Yes, the Funai has limited functions (no component eg) but if you just want a DVD recorder which actually works that's where to look.

There are 2 Funais at Argos and you'll not know which one you get until they bring it out. I've uploaded all the info I could find on both models here (several PDFs = 13mb).

The USB 2 standard defines specific speeds... just because you and others choose not to use the correct terminology i.e. Hi-SPEED ... is what leads to the widespread misunderstanding of what USB 2 is.

USB 1.0 and USB 1.1 are standards that were superseded by USB 2.

There are different logos for the different speeds ... its all very simple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb