Looking for a new HDD DVD Recorder. Any suggestions?

[dagerousdave]

Hey there, I'm looking for a new HDD DVD Recorder. Basically i'm am tired of burning all my stuff to discs only to get scratched and become unplayable a few months down the line. I want to be able to store all my collections onto HDD so they can be stored long term with less risk of any damage. Also i dont like the clutter of DVDs in the house. I have hundreds of dvds lying around and it can be a pain in the a$$ trying to find what i'm looking for and then the chances of it being scratched are about 50/50.

I am just looking for something mid-range, 160GB minimum and reliable. I have been reading some reviews and even the top rated bestselling DVD Recorders have some fairly big flaws that are a bit off-putting. Also, i was wondering do all HDD DVD Recorders come with a USB Port as standard. This is very important as i will be using a USB flash drive to transfer videos from my Computer to the DVD Recorder.

Any help will be very appreciated.

Thanks.

[orsetto]

What you are looking for is the dream everyone had when DVD/HDD recorders were first introduced. But things didn't play out that way: the reality is not as useful. Don't get me wrong, I love my Pioneer DVD/HDD decks, but I've made peace with having to live with hundreds of DVDs and the possibility they might deteriorate. The fantasy goal of keeping all of one's library recordings on the hard drive is a bad idea, however, and not recommended for a number of reasons. For one thing, these are not hi-def recorders: they are far better than VHS, but they are really limited to perhaps the LP speed at most, any more compression and the recordings are unwatchably bad. For permanent storage, you really want to drop no further than a manual recording speed between SP and LP. On a 160GB typical recorder, this gives you a maximum capacity of about 100 hours: not a heck of a lot. Also, the USB connectivity is not all that useful: its intended for still images or little video clips at best, they almost never allow transfer of serious video files between PC and recorder.

Second, and most important, DVD/HDD recorders have very simplified operating systems that are not nearly as capable as that on a computer. Sooner or later, the HDD in a recorder develops a bad sector or other issue that will completely disable it. When this happens, the recorder has no way of repairing the drive, and your only option (if offered) is to reformat the drive and lose everything on it. You cannot remove the HDD and repair it using a PC, because it will be unreadable to the PC. So the dream of using the recorder's hard drive as a "video jukebox" doesn't work out reliably in practice: its much too risky. The HDD in these machines is primarily useful for timeshifting of disposable programs you expect to watch and erase within a reasonable time frame of a few weeks or couple months at best. Also, they are great for editing and basic authoring before burning programs to DVD for archiving: much more convenient than using a home theater PC.

If your goal is to eliminate the DVDs altogether and rely exclusively on hard drive storage, the only choice is to use a home theater PC. This allows a standardized, universal file format, easy expansion of capacity, easy swapping and reading of drives between hardware, availability of hard drive maintenance tools, and ability to back up entire drive full of recordings fairly easily.

[dagerousdave]

Thanks for the reply orsetto although i am disappointed to read that my DVD HDD would not be capable of permanently storing my video collections. If this is true, then why are they constantly bringing out HDD DVD Recorders with bigger HDDs? Surely 160gb or less would be enough to record a few programmes from T.V.? It is very misleading to the consumer.

[Zen of Encoding]

You may want to consider buying a gently used Pioneer HDD/DVD recorder and then swapping
out the hard drive with something more modern, perhaps as large as a 500 Gig or 1TB HDD.

The process of swapping the hard drive is a bit complicated, but every last detail has been
discussed to DEATH here in this thread:

(might take you a while to read it, one of the longest & deepest threads on videohelp.com)

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic253998.html

[lordsmurf]

Philips 3575 is the best machine you could get -- in the USA, not sure if the UK model is as good. I don't think it is, actually. But what you want to use it for may be impossible as orsetto has said, for the reasons he has stated. You'd do better to rip the DVDs as ISO, store on 1TB drives, and then set up a network storage to your tv through a computer media player. Skip the DVD recorder.

[dagerousdave]

I have ordered a Sony RDR-HXD995 250GB HDD DVD Recorder. Hopefully I will have some success with it in storing some of my most frequently watched programmes on it. My Dad has one and he has no bother keeping a dozen or so films on it, but he's never tried putting much more on it.

Got it for a bargain too i think @ £187.99 (inc. free p&p) from amazon.

[handyguy]

There are quite a few recorder topics on the board if you'd like to read them.

[jman98]

Thanks for the reply orsetto although i am disappointed to read that my DVD HDD would not be capable of permanently storing my video collections. If this is true, then why are they constantly bringing out HDD DVD Recorders with bigger HDDs?

They aren't in the USA, which is where a lot of forum members live. HDD DVD recorders are becoming more rare every day as our marketplace has little interest in them and prefers to buy Tivo type DVRs instead. It's the opposite in Europe where DVRs aren't popular and DVD recorders rule. At this time next year we're likely to only have 1 or 2 models of HDD DVD recorders available for sale in all of North America and perhaps between 5-10 DVD recorder (no HDD) models available as manufacturers are abandoning us in droves. Even Philips will no longer make DVD recorders for North America next year, although I wonder if their only HDD DVD recorder might continue to live on as a rebranded Magnavox recorder (it's being sold that way now in addition to being available from Philips).

People that are serious about storing movies on hard disks don't use HDD DVD recorders. They have dedicated PC servers with RAID.

[lordsmurf]

Note: the Sony makes grainy quality DVDs.

[orsetto]

Thanks for the reply orsetto although i am disappointed to read that my DVD HDD would not be capable of permanently storing my video collections. If this is true, then why are they constantly bringing out HDD DVD Recorders with bigger HDDs? Surely 160gb or less would be enough to record a few programmes from T.V.? It is very misleading to the consumer.

The main reason HDD capacity increases on the new models is availability of new higher-capacity yet cheaper hard drives. The standard hard drive in most DVD recorders doubled from 80Gb to 160Gb when the cost difference between 80Gb and 160Gb became negilgible (in fact, 80Gb drives pretty much disappeared from the market with 160Gb becoming the new low-end standard: this happens every 18 months). Over time, the smaller drive actually become more expensive for mfrs to use so they upgrade the machines to larger drives. It does seem misleading in a sense, but if you're willing to gamble, it is of course possible that you will be one of the lucky folks who never encounters a hard drive failure in your recorder. But it *is* a huge risk, with at least a 50/50 chance of drive failure within 18-24 months if you fill it to capacity and use it every day (as all the recorder mfrs note in their instruction manuals and in occasional on-screen alerts). The larger the drive, the more you have to lose. Understand, I'm not saying the drive itself becomes completely defective and useless: these are ordinary hard drives, after all. The problem is the recorders do not have the diagnostic and repair tools that easily solve a simple drive glitch on a PC. A minor problem that can be repaired in minutes on a PC with no data loss becomes a major disaster on a DVD/HDD recorder, whose only repair option is to erase the drive totally and reformat it. The file format of dvd recorders is proprietary and unreadable to a Windows or Mac computer, and only repairable on UNIX by use of a $500 software program that is extremely tedious to use (weeks or months to back up a drive).

Another point to consider is navigating all those recordings. DVD/HDD recorders have pretty terrible systems for browsing the recordings on a hard drive. Most are limited to scrolling up or down as a list. On an 80Gb recorder with 40-50 recordings, this is OK, on a 250 or 500Gb recorder you will pull your hair out while trying to find a particular recording. The nav screens do not offer a variety of presentations: typically you get 3-6 titles at one time listed on screen, in "icon view" format (a thumbnail image and text title). As you scroll, the machine has a time lag as it updates the thumbnails, and the whole process just becomes annoying. Again, this is fine for the intended use of temporary storage, time shifting, and editing but as a long-term library system it is horrible compared to using a home-theater AV computer setup.

[dagerousdave]

Thanks orsetto, that was very informative. You made a lot of good points which i will absolutely take into consideration. Thankyou.

[nic2k4]

This is what you want:

http://hantech.ca/product/product_detail.asp?cateid=00020004

Makes me wish I lived in Europe. I got the Eureka LX350HD and I love it. It will take up to a 1TB drive and has two USB Host ports to connect a DVD-ROM or more hard drives. It has 100Mb LAN port which is great for transfering movies and also allows streaming. It plays DVDs off the hard drive, to save space I'm gradually converting them to Xvid with Autogk.

[jerry62]

I agree the market for these recorders in the U.S. is probably not what manufacturers thought it would be a few years back.

The key word here for many of the recorders is "DVD" in a growing high definition world... you can't get true High Definition on a standard DVD compatible format disc (although technically one could write raw high definition video data to a DVD disc, not viewable on a DVD player). However, it does seem that you can get a TIVO or TV Guide type HDD recorders that will record and playback in true high definition. I believe Sony has a HD tuner in one model, but I don't believe it will store recorded shows in HD. I believe they made a model that does record HD feeds, but has other limitations (DHG-HDD500 or something like that).

I've only recently been re-investigating this market, now that I'm finally moving into the high definition world. I currently have a Pioneer 510H, that will record HD feeds, but not store them in a HD format (thus no HD playback, standard playback instead). I haven't used the DVD burner nearly as much as I thought I would when I bought it. The device still serves a purpose (mostly recording shows I'm not able to watch at the time), but not at the quality I'd like, since I can't playback recordings now in true HD.
For me, I'd prefer something similar that will record and playback in HD, and have wireless (wifi) and wired ethernet capabilities. If you have such a box on a network, I see no need for a disk burner, although I suppose a BD (BluRay) burner could potentially be a nice touch. But having the ability to read Divx or Xvid or other types of video files would be sweet, especially if reading from a usb device directly plugged in, or network drive, etc.
Those products at that Hantech site look interesting. It would be nice to see more devices like these in the U.S..