Whats Inside a Samsung recorder?

[Joakim_A]

My 2 year old DVD recorder the Samsung DVD-R119 has died and I have ordered a new Samsung or rather a refurbished unit the HR-738 with a 250GB HDD unit that I hope will be good.

I had a little fun with my old unit and took a look inside to see what chip it had.

Here are some photos:

The unit is in the center:



Inside:



Inside Of The Tray:



The Tray:





And finally lets have a look at teh most exciting part the Encoder Chip:



Close Up:



So it was a Panasonic I was recording on all this time! Interesting (The DVD-R121, 122 and 125 had the same chip also since it is same generation only the DVD-R120 which was a slightly older model and different chassi had an LSI chip)

EDIT: I just remembered that the DVD-R 121, 122 and 125 had DivX support unlike my DVD-R119 so perhaps they did have LSI chip in them or did Pansonic make chips in 2005 with DivX support?.

I wonder if the new one I have ordered will also have a Panasonic chip or if it is LSI?


I was happy with the recording quality on my old unit in SP and XP mode and it was ok in LP(4 hrs) mode on my 28" CRT TV, but rather useless on my 51" sony Rear projector. But SP recordings looked decent on that one aswell.

So I hope they/Samsung did not make it worse in lather generations.



The analogue tuner in my unit was made from Samsung I wonder if that is still the case in the new ones.

[lordsmurf]

Samsung re-branded a number of crappy grade Panasonics (E50-55 models). There were only a few Samsung LSI machines, which seem to be based on another brand that I forget at the moment.

[Joakim_A]

Samsung re-branded a number of crappy grade Panasonics (E50-55 models). There were only a few Samsung LSI machines, which seem to be based on another brand that I forget at the moment.

But I was happy with my DVD-R119 and did not consider it to be crappy!

Regarding that other brand that had the LSI chip in them, was it not the Toshiba?

I heard somewhere that Samsung and Toshiba where in many aspects identical machines!

[Seeker47]

Samsung re-branded a number of crappy grade Panasonics (E50-55 models). There were only a few Samsung LSI machines, which seem to be based on another brand that I forget at the moment.

What about the Euro-model Samsung Mats was telling us about, in an earlier thread ? That seemed like a real contender -- now that there is not much left in this market except for that Phillips -- but unfortunately there does not seem to be any model Samsung sells here that is at all comparable.