Ah ok. I never really bothered to look into it, I figure the quality would be so bad there wouldn't be much point and considering you can buy disks fairly cheap and they don't take up much space, you'd be better splitting the 24 hours worth of recordings onto 3 or 4 disks, whereby each one has somewhat better picture than 1 disk with it all squashed onto where its really difficult to watch... but anyway I guess its just something that sounds cool to help sell it *shrug* thanks for the info. though

I also ordered it from Amazon but my delivery estimate is between 12 Feb 2008 and 28 Feb 2008 which I think is ridiculous considering I ordered with first class delivery.

I would have thought it's pretty obvious that it isn't in stock?, it doesn't matter if you paid first class or not, they can't deliver what they don't have.

If you look at the page, Amazon do state "Usually dispatched within 1 to 2 months". If you want it faster, cancel and pay your delivery charge to Hughes Direct - same £80 base price.

If you're happy to pay a little bit more (89.99) you can buy it from any John Lewis store and the price includes two years of cover - pretty good!

Ouch, I must have been lucky. I'd cancel that if I were you and buy it elsewhere.

BTW, I've tried a few more DivX files (well, and a few XviDs) on it and they seem to work fine. It was only two of the first few I tried that didn't play, but I'm suspecting that the files weren't following the standards or were corrupted in some way (their resolution aren't beyond the player's specs). I didn't buy it for DivX playback, but it's a nice feature that's handy (obviously, connecting your computer to the TV does make this all moot, though ).

Tried to cancel but I can't because it says its dispatching soon, even though the delivery estimate is the same. Maybe I should email them about this as Hughes Direct does seem like the better option.


Good info on DivX and XviD compatibility, Amazon didn't go into any detail about that

Got mine from our local sainsburys this morning for £79 very pleased with got it mainly for the upscaling which also looks impressive.

hi,

I have a sony kdl-32v2000u lcd tv and am trying to connect a gx350 dvd recorder.

I was wondering if it is possible to record the digital signal from the freeview inbuilt tuner in the tv.
I have connected the two via hdmi and also tried via scart. I haven't been able to figure it out. I have managed to get the analogue signals.

I also have a sky box which i have been able to record from.

I apologise if the issue has already been dealt with but I still can't figure it out.

Thank you

You can record the analogue output of the digital tuner in the TV via the SCART socket (probably only ONE of them though), but you can't record it digitally.

It's also a very clumsy method, and means you can only record the programme you're watching - buy a £20 FreeView box to use as a tuner for the recorder instead. But why buy an analogue recorder if you can get FreeView?.

I got this DVD recorder for Christmas, but theres one thing I can't seem to do.

I'm using a DVD-RW to record a programme through Sky. I set my Sky Box up to 16:9 format, but when I record to the DVD, it records it in 4:3 format with a stretched 16:9 picture. It seems that the WSS (Widescreen Switching Signal) is not recording properly.

Does anyone know how to fix this (if it's possible)?

I recently bought a new DVD recorder, a supermarket own brand, and am very pleased with it for my limited purposes. At least it works, which is more than can be said for the previous useless thing.

But I find that I cannot get some of my old +RW discs to format. Even the ones that I have succeeded with I had to put into Nero on my PC and have copied onto it a formatted but empty disc, which would then format on the recorder. I have no idea why some worked and some did not, except that the winners were verbatim and the losers imation.

All I really want to know is a rather pointless academic matter. If I had bought the Sony as originally intended, would it have always formatted any RW disc, regardless of its history, e.g. another DVD recorder, or used on a PC? I am just curious, it does not matter in practice.

Just to follow up from my original problem, I've managed to fix this problem and thought I would share it just incase anyone else has the same problem.

On the Sky Digital box, I needed to set "Scart Control" to "ON". You can find this in the "Picture Settings", which is part of the "System Setup".

I can now get it to record in Widescreen when I format a DVD-RW disc in "Video Recording (VR)" mode. I'm still working to see if I can also record in Widescreen in Video Mode and will let you know if I have any luck.

Thanks for that update - it will be very useful to a lot of people. I'm pretty sure it will record WS in video mode too but I look forward to your findings.

Hi ,

This is a very basic problem that i can't solve - i have backed up / copied all my home movies and have now moved onto my judo collection - It wont allow as 'content is copyrighted'

how the heck does the machine know ?

and how can i get round it ?

I own the originals and was hoping to be able to put them onto a dvd with no fuss.

my system is set up - sky > video > sony recorder > tv

I havnt had any trouble with anything else ,love the machine for 90 quid - a steal (no pun intended) !!

many many thanks for any advice.

jonny
Last edited by jonny winandall : 11-07-2008 at 18:27

Presumably your judo tapes are commercial products, rather than amateur recordings? If so they will have been encoded with 'macrovision', which is designed to defeat copying.

If you have access to an old VCR (pre 1995 at a guess) chances are it will be okay because macrovision works by overriding the AGC (automatic gain control) on the VCR and older machines didn't have AGC.

There are also boxes and special leads you can buy to defeat macrovision but you'd better google them because I'm sure this forum would take a dim view of detailed discussion of such things!

many many thanks !!

I was wondering how it knew !

{shakes fist in macrovisions general direction}

I'll look into it , thanks again

jonny

My previous DVD recorder - Sony RDR GX210 broke in less than 2 years so it put me off Sony but now im looking for a new dvd recorder, after hearing all the positive response i might buy the Sony RDR-GX350 today.

All VCR's have AGC, they wouldn't work otherwise.

But if you're playing back that's not a concern, it's the recorders AGC that Macrovision messes up.

The RDRGX210's were a disaster, bought-in from LG, and the mechs died with great regularity - a shame because they were a high spec machine.

The GX350's though have been exceptionally reliable, I don't think I've seen a faulty one, and we've sold hundreds.

I bought it yesterday from Argos. Very impressed so far. Its slimmer than the GX210, it loads faster and its completely silent in standby - unlike the GX210 which made a high pitched buzzing sound.

Ive only recorded one programme so far - the EastEnders ombinus, havent played it back yet but will do later this evening.

I'm hoping someone can help me.

I'm looking to purchase this model, but just need to check what the connections would be.

Currently I have:

TV -> HDMI cable -> Sky HD box
TV -> HDMI cable -> DVD player

If I want to transfer a programme from my Sky HD box to a disc using the DVD recorder, what would the connections be?

I presume that the Sky HD box would need to be connected to the DVD recorder, and my assumption would be to use a HDMI lead to do this, but the Sky HD box only has one HDMI port, which is already being used, connecting the Sky HD box to the TV.

The only other way I can think to do this is to connect the Sky HD box to the DVD recorder by scart lead - can anyone confirm if this would have to be the case, and if so would I be able to transfer programmes recorded in HD to a disc? Would the quality deteriorate because I'm not using HDMI?

Therefore, what I'm proposing is:

TV -> HDMI cable -> Sky HD box
TV -> HDMI cable -> DVD recorder
Sky HD box -> scart -> DVD recorder (to allow transfer of programmes from Sky HD box to a disk using the DVD recorder)

I hope I've made this clear enough for someone to understand!

The way you suggest is correct, although you'd need to check when you set up the DVD recorder that the input is set to RGB. This would transfer recordings from the Sky box to DVD at a good standard definition quality.

As you guessed, this will not be HD quality. There are currently no HD disc recorders around. When they arrive they'll be using the Blue Ray standard, this is because HD involves massive file sizes and a standard DVD wouldn't cope.

If and when you buy a blue ray recorder you'd connect the Sky box via HDMI to the recorder and then connect the recorder via HDMI to the TV.

NB there is a massive proviso here - chances are that Sky would cripple any capacity to record from the box to another disc recorder at HD quality. This is because you'd end up with what is a essentially a High Definition master on disc, which would leave that programme wide open to piracy.