Canopus ADVC-100 vs. Panasonic DMR-E50

[dukehtran]

I am trying to decide to buy either Canopus ADVC-100 or Panasonic DMR-E50 to do some dvd recording.

Please give pro & cons. between the two beside money.

The Panasonic DMR-E50 can record off the air easier but I do not know if the dvd can be copy to PC for playback.

Thanks

[Bodysurf]

I am trying to decide to buy either Canopus ADVC-100 or Panasonic DMR-E50 to do some dvd recording.

Please give pro & cons. between the two beside money.

The Panasonic DMR-E50 can record off the air easier but I do not know if the dvd can be copy to PC for playback.

Thanks

The basic PRO of the Canopus ADVC-100 is flexibility. The flexibility to edit the source material and encode it exactly as you wish. The flexibility and power to author it with the only limitations being that of the DVD-Video specification.

The basic CON of the Canopus is it is more time consuming and requires more steps and more knowledge.

The basic PRO of the DMR-E50 is its speed and simplicity. You can capture and burn stuff in realtime by just hooking it up, inserting a DVD-R, and pressing a "Record" button.

The basic CON of the DMR-E50 is its inflexibility.

HTH[/list]

[chirsnorton]

I can't speak for the Canopus, but I used to own a Panny E50. It does the job as far as recording any TV show and can be set up almost Tivo like, but my main problem was the quality. Even in the best quality, 1 hr. per 4.7 disc, I would get many artifacts and some streaking if you will. I took it back. Maybe in a year or so the technology will improve, but I was quite unhappy with the Panny.

[FulciLives]

The quality of the DMR-E50 is actually pretty good. You really cannot go wrong with the XP (1 hour mode) and even the SP (2 hour mode) will yield "good enough" quality for most.

The benefit however of doing a capture with a device such as the CANOPUS ADVC-100 is that it is VERY easy to edit the capture as far as trimming the start and end points or even cutting out commercials etc.

Then when you encode to MPEG-2 DVD you can do a 2-pass or multi-pass VBR encode which will maximize the quality when you are trying to fit more than 1 hour per disc. You can also apply various filters while doing the MPEG-2 conversion that can help clean up the image which is really important with less than steller footage (i.e., VHS video).

However the software MPEG-2 step can take a long time even on a very fast computer. No way around it if you truely want to get the best quality possible (shy of putting only 1 hour per DVD and even then no filters with the stand alone).

So I think it boils down to how much time you have or how much you will be recording to DVD. If you have a lot of VHS videos I think the computer route is the best method but does take longer but then again they are on VHS and ain't going nowhere so you might as well take the time to do it "right".

However if you are addicted to recording a lot of stuff from TV then the computer method might very well end up being too slow for you. In which case the stand alone is better because of the speed issue.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dukehtran]

Thanks for replying.

I am also concern about the picture quality between the two. Which is better?

Also anyone knows the Panasonic video format? Is this in DVD format?