Does firewire = Higher quality picture?

[linetest]

I am looking to buy a set top DVD recorder. I want to capture my DV Camcorder tapes right to that unit. I know firewire is handy when working with PC based capture software, but is there any advantage to firewire for real time direct dubbing? Is the picture quality any higher than using composite outputs right into the recorder?

[gshelley61]

The digital conversion from DV to MPEG2 via firewire using a DVD recorder with that feature generally does turn out better than doing it through analog inputs. If you send the s-video output from your DV camcorder to a DVD recorder, what is happening is the the digital video stream is being converted by the camcorder into an analog video signal, then sampled and converted back to a digital signal by the DVD recorder. It's an extra process that is unneccessary and can introduce some undesirable artifacts (loss of video quality).

Another thing is that if you shoot in widescreen mode (if your DV camcorder has that feature) some DVD recorders will automatically apply the 16:9 flag to the recording when using the firewire input. When you play back the recorded DVD, it will be in widescreen. Nice feature to have.

[linetest]

I was hoping that wasn't the case as it's not easy finding a DVD+ DVD recorder with firewire that works well (guess the iLo will be the winner). I'm sticking with DVD+ as I have 100% success in recording and playback on a variety of machine. Have had trouble with -R.
Thanks for the info.