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Musings on my new system (IDTV + DVD recorder)


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Old 20-09-2003, 18:16
tichtich
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This post is just some musings about the kit I've just bought, with a few problems I've encountered which might be more widely applicable.

First, some background. Until recently my TV system consisted of just a 14" TV. I've never even owned a VCR. But I finally decided it was time to get into the 21st century (or even the late 20th century!) with some more modern kit. First, I considered a VCR, since you can now get good ones for £100. But video tape is fast becoming old technology, and I don't want to end up with another collection of unused recordings (like my LP collection, which I can't bear to throw out, but never use any more). So I decided to skip a generation and go straight to DVD, with a DVD recorder. Those have come down to accessible prices now, and don't cost too much more than a good VCR plus DVD player (which was another option I considered). However, having decided to go for DVD, I thought I might as well get a decent widescreen TV so I could watch pre-recorded DVDs at their best. And then I thought I'd better have digital TV, so I could watch broadcast films and programmes in widescreen too. So I decided to buy a TV with integrated digital (Freeview) receiver. I thought this would be more convenient--and perhaps a little cheaper--than a separate set-top Freeview box.

In the end, I bought the following: a Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD recorder (£251 inc delivery and a free scart cable, from Digital Point) and a Panasonic TX-28DT30 28" IDTV (£544 inc delivery, from Robertsons Online). A little more than the £100 I originally planned to spend (on just a VCR), but what the hell! I chose the Panasonic recorder because it has a Timeslip feature--playback from a disc at the same time you're recording to it. This makes it a bit like a hard disk drive recorder, but cheaper. Actually, I seriously considered buying the Toshiba RDXS30 DVD recorder with integral HDD, for about £520, but balked at the idea of spending over £1000 in total! I chose the Panasonic TV because it got a very good review in "What Video" magazine. I was originally looking at slightly cheaper TVs, such as the Sony KD-28DX40. Incidentally, I found Dealtime (www.dealtime.co.uk) very useful for comparing prices.

Since the the DVD recorder arrived first, I had a few days of using it with my old TV. I found it great fun to play around with, trying out all the options. The Timeslip feature is great, and I tend to use it most of the time I watch TV. It means I can pause a programme to take snack breaks, answer the phone, etc, without missing anything, plus have an action replay anytime I like. I mostly recorded in Long Play mode, giving 4 hours per disc instead of 2. The picture quality seemed excellent even in this mode, though given the small TV and an eye problem I've had recently, I was hardly in a good position to judge!

I had no major problems, but a few minor irritations. First, it is very complicated to use. It uses several different formats of DVD (DVD-RAM, non-finalized DVD-R, finalized DVD-R, pre-recorded Video-DVD), and the options available depend on the format. Plus some controls perform differently (or not at all) depending on whether you're playing, recording or both at once. Much of the complexity is unavoidable, but I reckon a few of the controls could have been made simpler. The manual is pretty good as manuals go, but could have been better. Anyway, I quite like the challenge of managing this complexity, but I certainly wouldn't recommend the device to a technophobe.

Another problem (inherent in the available technology, I suppose) is having to choose between recording on DVD-RAMs (rewritable) and DVD-Rs (write once). Ideally, I would record everything on DVD-RAM, as this has far more flexibility. In particular, it allows Timeslip and editing, which DVD-R doesn't. But DVD-RAM has two drawbacks: it's incompatible with nearly all DVD players, and the disks are expensive. The first doesn't bother me too much, but the latter is significant at present. The DVD-RAMs I've bought so far cost about £6 each, though I've now found another source at under £4. DVD-Rs are available for under £1. So I'm currently using DVD-RAM for short-term recordings and DVD-R for long-term. The partial erase feature of the machine would, in principle, be great for editing out commercials and other unwanted dross. But it's not worth the effort if I'm only keeping the recording for a short time. And I can't use it for long-term recordings, as I'm putting those on DVD-R which doesn't have the feature. I'm hoping that DVD-RAMs will eventually become cheap enough to use for all recordings. Alternatively, I may buy a DVD writer for my PC (about £100 or so), so I can transfer material from DVD-RAM to DVD-R (as well as finally giving me a backup device for my PC).

My final irritation is that I sometimes find the recorder rather slow to respond to commands. Some of this is probably unavoidable, as it takes time to access the disc. But I think better design could have avoided some of these delays. For example, let's say the recorder is in standby mode with a disc in the drive. (I nearly always leave a DVD-RAM disc in the drive so I can start recording any time, e.g. if the phone rings and I want to use Timeslip while I answer.) If I want to insert a different disc, I press eject and then have to wait about 8 seconds while the recorder spins and reads the current disc before ejecting it! This would be less annoying if there was an "eject" button on the remote, so I could wait for the disc to eject before getting up to insert the new disc. Without such a button, I have to spend the 8 seconds waiting by the recorder.

Well, as I say, these are minor irritations. Overall, I'm very pleased with the recorder. I'm also pleased with the TV. The picture is excellent when playing digital TV, better than most of the TVs I've seen in shops. (Bear in mind, however, that I'm still having some eye trouble which reduces my vision.) It's not so good on analogue TV, but that's probably because of poor reception, though the reception seemed perfectly OK on my 14" TV. I suppose the better the TV the more you notice any flaws in the signal. In fact, I have started to notice some degradation in the picture when I record in Long Play mode (as opposed to Standard play).

Before receiving the TV, I thought I might need a new aerial, as this is what the freeview.co.uk website said for my area. So I was pleased to find I didn't need it. At least, I probably don't. I did see a couple of glitches on BBC News24 once, and I've had some problems with the Teletext channel, which may be due to reception. The Panasonic has a feature for telling you how good your signal is, and it rates the signal for each of the 5 major channels at 8 or 9 out of 10. I guess I'm alright as long as it doesn't fall any lower.

The sound also seems very good, though I'm really no authority. There is some of that booming quality (my own term!) that I associate with cinema (and home cinema) sound.

Now for minor irritations... I was disappointed with the stand, which is a flat-pack chipboard jobby. I expected something better with a TV at this price. It also has only one (glass) shelf, though I knew that before ordering.

I can't say much about the controls, as I have no other digital system to compare with. As people in some other threads have commented, it can be awkward selecting channels when you have so many to choose from. I expect the Panasonic is similar in this respect to other systems.

I think one thing could be improved, however. The TV allows you to create a list of favourite channels. This is potentially a useful feature, as there are many channels I'm never going to use and which only get in the way. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't make much use of this feature. In particular, I would like to be able to tell it to show only my favourites when I press the "Channel Up" and "Channel Down" keys, skipping any non-favourite channels. But there's no way to do this.

Another minor annoyance is that, among the analogue channels, the TV has assigned the second channel slot to a weak BBC2 signal, and put the best signal in the sixth slot. Also, for some reason, the analogue channels are numbered from 79 (BBC1) onwards. The channel numbers would be easier to remember if they were 81 for BBC1, 82 for BBC2, up to 85 for channel 5. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to renumber them, or even to retune the second slot so it uses the best BBC2 signal. Of course, this would hardly matter if I no longer needed the analogue channels. In practice, however, I use them quite often, as I'll explain below.

Like all the widescreen TVs I've seen, the Panasonic stretches non-widescreen pictures to fit the screen. Actually, it does a combination of shaving a bit off the top and bottom and then stretching the rest. It claims to have an advanced way of deciding how to do this "for optimum viewing pleasure", though I can't say if it's any better than other TVs. What you do notice though, is that it takes the TV some time to make up its mind, so the aspect ratio will sometimes change after you've been watching the channel a few seconds. Anyway, I dislike any stretching--it looks unnatural to me--so I've set the 4:3 apect ratio option, which seems to display all non-widescreen pictures in their original form (with black side-bars). I'm not yet sure if this will always perform as I wish.

Last edited by tichtich : 20-09-2003 at 18:54.
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Old 20-09-2003, 18:18
tichtich
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OK, that covers the two devices (TV and DVD recorder) individually. Now, what about putting them together? Since both devices are made by Panasonic, and both use Panasonic's Q-Link system for communication between DVDs and VCRs, they should work well together, and for the most part they do. I was worried that Timeslip wouldn't work, but it does. I think the TV sends a signal to the DVD (for recording) through the Scart cable while receiving a signal (for playback) through the RF (aerial) cable. Nevertheless, there are a few problems.

The problems arise when trying to record a digital channel. The DVD recorder (like any VCR) has only an analogue receiver of its own, so, if you want to record a digital channel (which I usually do), you have to record using the TV's receiver. This means that the IDTV must supply the signal to the recorder, something which doesn't arise in any other set-up. This is done via the Scart cable, attached to the TV's AV2 socket and the DVD recorder's AV1 socket.

If all you want to do is start recording the channel you're currently watching, then it's easy. Just press the "Direct TV Record" button (on _either_ remote control). If you want to set up a timed recording, however, you have a more difficult choice. The TV has its own system for setting up timed recordings. When the appropriate time is reached, it will wake itself up (if in standby mode), change to the right channel and also tell the recorder to wake up and start recording. This is the preferred method, but unfortunately it has three drawbacks: (1) the TV (unlike the DVD recorder) does not have Video+, so you have to enter all the details manually; (2) the TV does not have PDC (the DVD recorder has this, though I haven't yet managed to make it work); (3) you can't use the DVD recorder's "flexible recording" mode. (With the flexible recording mode, you tell the recorder how long the recording is going to be, so it can use the optimum rate of compression to fit the recording into the space available on the disc). The alternative is to use the DVD recorder's system for timed recordings, which avoids these drawbacks, but has some drawbacks of its own: (1) you have to leave the television switched on and set to the right channel (and so you can't record two programs from different channels); (2)

Note that, even if you are making an immediate (not timed) recording, you can't use the simple "Direct TV Record" method if you want to make a recording in "flexible recording" mode. Also, whenever recording from the TV, the recording will not be automatically given a title. When using its own receiver, the DVD recorder automatically labels a recording with the name of the programme. I'm not sure where it gets the programme name from--I suppose it must be from Teletext. It's no big deal, but I was really chuffed when I noticed the recorder was doing this, and it's a shame not to have it when I'm recording digital programmes.

Of course, the biggest problem with having only one digital receiver is that you can't watch one digital channel while recording from another. There's no problem watching digital while recording analogue--you just record from the recorder's own receiver as you would in an all-analogue system. You can also watch analogue while recording digital, using the TV's analogue _and_ digital receivers. But this has some drawbacks: (1) you can't look at any programme info or the TV guide while recording digital, and you can only select analogue channels by typing in the channel numbers from memory (hence my irritation at the awkward channel numbers which I mentioned earlier); (2) if you use the alternative recording method mentioned above (telling the recorder when to start recording, but not telling the television), there is nothing to stop you changing to another digital channel, displaying programme info or using the TV guide (unless you manually switch on and off a "lock" which prevents you doing these things), and accidentally doing them will spoil your recording.

The ideal solution to all these problems would, of course, be to give the recorder a digital receiver too. I'm sure this will happen eventually, as digital TV increasingly replaces analogue. Until then, the question arises whether it's better to buy an IDTV or a separate Freeview box.

I don't know how set-top boxes work. But my DVD recorder manual has a diagram showing it in a system with a satellite box, and the satellite box is connected to both the recorder and the TV. Does this mean it can provide two different channels, so you can watch one satellite channel while recording another? And does a Freeview box work the same way? If so, it's probably better to buy one of those than an IDTV. Oh well, maybe I'll buy a Freeview box as well, once the price comes down below £50.
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Old 21-09-2003, 17:22
redarrow
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I have an idtv downstairs and a set top box upstairs, i find the idtv is a good bit of kit but only if you can find one for not much more than a normal widescreen tv .Its so much easier to use the remote and switch between different devices.You could always add a set top box for the dvd recorder ar a later stage.
The downside of owning an idtv is set top boxes tend to get software updates more often while the idtv is forgotten about.
just my experience anyway. Also does your dvd recorder have an i link to link a camcorder just out of interest.
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Old 23-09-2003, 18:11
tichtich
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Originally posted by redarrow
Also does your dvd recorder have an i link to link a camcorder just out of interest.
I don't know what i-link is, and I can't see it mentioned in the manual. One of the AV sockets has Q-link, which is Panasonic's system for TV and VCR to control each other. I have my DVD recorder connected to that.

By the way I've managed to work out now how to retune my analogue channels, so that's one irritation gone.
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Old 23-09-2003, 19:29
kev
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Originally posted by tichtich
I don't know how set-top boxes work. But my DVD recorder manual has a diagram showing it in a system with a satellite box, and the satellite box is connected to both the recorder and the TV. Does this mean it can provide two different channels, so you can watch one satellite channel while recording another? And does a Freeview box work the same way? If so, it's probably better to buy one of those than an IDTV. Oh well, maybe I'll buy a Freeview box as well, once the price comes down below £50.
No, it allows you to watch the same channel one Sky that you are recording.

If you want to record Digital and watch another channel, it would be an idea to get a STB for the DVD Recorder to exclusivly use (i have two for the same job and it works fine. Also, the EXT LNK on Panasonic VCR's works with the STB, just set it to record when a video signal can be detected (read the manual of the recorder), so getting a STB with a timer would save you the hassle of manually channel changing!
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Old 23-09-2003, 19:36
redarrow
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Is there any sign of a dvd recorder recorder from panasonic that has got a digital tuner built in to it
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Old 23-09-2003, 22:15
tichtich
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Originally posted by kev
If you want to record Digital and watch another channel, it would be an idea to get a STB for the DVD Recorder to exclusivly use (i have two for the same job and it works fine. Also, the EXT LNK on Panasonic VCR's works with the STB, just set it to record when a video signal can be detected (read the manual of the recorder), so getting a STB with a timer would save you the hassle of manually channel changing!
Thanks, I hadn't read about the EXT LINK. Well, I won't be buying an STB for now. Besides the cost, another thing that puts me off is that I'll then have to deal with THREE remote controls. Two is bad enough! I guess one digital tuner will do me.

BTW I don't have to change manually when recording from the iDTV. The "direct TV record" button starts recording whatever the TV is currently showing.
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