Want to buy my first stand alone DVD recorder, have some quck questions

[jolo]

:P While I have burnt, captured and recorded on PCs for many years, and have had many stand alone DVD players, I have never purchased a stand alone recorder/player before. [list][*]Stupid question 1. I have a cable box that gives me digital TV stations and some premium stations.
Do I record directly from my cable box or from my output. I have no idea about complications like macrovision or copy protection when it comes to recording from a DVD recorder...[*]My Lite-on, Philips and Cyberhome DVD players will play NTSC and PAL. I am in the U.S. I would like my DVD player/recorder to handle playing seemlessly, bot NTSC and PAL video.[*]I play lots and lots of Divx video. I use the latest version 6.25, which is excellent. I would want my DVD player/recorder to be Divx certified and handle Divx playing well. If the record can record in Divx, that would be great as well.[*]I was recently looking at a Philips DVDR3400. Very competitive price, but I certainly am NOT married to Philips. I wonder how Lite-On is doing these days, especially with handling Divx input.[*]Last would be if a unit has some available hacks on it and if th e vendor is one that actually sends out firmware that fixes problems and adds functionality.

Thanks so much, any help would be graciously accepted. I think the big issue for me is my ignorance on recording TV shows and understanding if I record directly from my cable box or from my TV. If I would be recording from my TV, I have a HDMI port on my TV, so that would be an advantage on the DVD Recorder.

Thanks,

Jon




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[David K]

Addressing your main question --
All the DVD recorders I am aware of need an analog signal, so you would connect the way you would connect to an analog TV set.

[jolo]

That is interesting David, thank you.

I just looked at the User Guide for the Philips DVDR3400/37 DVD player/recirde I was considering.
Link to Philips DVDR 3400/37 support
Apparently the recommended connection would be to unplug the audio and video connect that I have going from my Cable Box to my TV. Then connect my Cable Box directly to the DVD Recorder, using the connections I had just unplugged from my TV, which are Composite video, and RCA audio.

Then the HDMI connection I believe is all I would then need. It is output only. So, I connect the HDMI cable I have between the DVD player/recorder to my TV. That would improve the playing part.

Jon

[David K]

I wasn't sure if you were asking whether the digital HDMI connection could be used for input to the DVD recorder (which it cannot).
Directly hacking the digital streams in your cable box is a whole other approach...

[jolo]

I'm just trying to figure out how the DVD recorders work before I purchase one.

I guess the cable coax goes directly to the box, then the cable box outputs to the DVD Recorders input.
Then the DVD player/recorder connects to the TV.

When I think about it, that is how my VCRs were connected.

One thing that appears to be true is not none of the stand alone DVD Recorder/Players seem to be complete. What I mean is that there seems to be a lot of mechanical problems, playing problems and a lot of work arounds to get people to really like their player recorders.

[RabidDog]

There are some non-analogue models starting to appear, (dvb /freeview) also some models can record from both analogue and digital terrestrial. All models will have some internal tuner so do NOT need your tele to record, its merely the display device. Some will record other inputs also eg composite, firewire for rcording from a movie camera.

[David K]

Yes there is a good deal of unhappiness out there regarding DVD recorders, as you will see if you browse the forum here.

I have been happy with my Philips DVDR 615. Philips has a bad reputation for reliability, but mine has worked fine, and it has a good chipset (not the usual Philips one). I only use it for capturing over the air broadcasts and for converting Digital-8 camcorder footage. No harddrive. I don't use any of the editing functions on the recorder. I rip the DVD files to the computer and edit out commercial with mpgVCR.

[jolo]

David K,

Thanks so much for your post. It sounds like your approach might be similar to mine.

A couple of points:

• When there are negative comments about hardware/software or an approach, I try to filter through them. I am aware that the human species tends to post problems rather post anything when something just works.
  
• I SOOOO much agree with you about editing on the DVD players. In general, I prefer to keep it simple and use “proven engineering practices”, as a mentor of mine used to say. I like to use the appropriate product, whose function is “native” to what I want to do. I cannot expect a $170 DVD recorder/player that plays lots of codecs to have anything but the most rudimentary of editing features. I know that I can tale a audio/video file, then move it into a stable digital format and edit to my hearts content. Plus it gives me all sorts of flexibility with doing whatever I want with what I recorded.
  
• What gets me nervous about a many of the negativity surrounding non-professional DVD recorders/players is when I read about issues with basic, core processing like playing, recording and listening. I think I might read about more issues with regard to playing back video than even recording issues.
  
• I want to use a DVD recorder for recording TV shows, for connecting up my old analogue VCR and record some all of my home movies to DVD. I would expect a scheduler that is workable, but it gets more complicated when connected to a cable box, usually that means double programming. I would expect and recording I do from TV to have very little loss from the highest quality setting, then get lower in quality as I go to lower quality settings, just link in VCR recording. I have the expectation that the lowest quality recording of 6 hours would be somewhat the same quality of the 2-hour setting when recording on a VCR.
  
• On Playback of standard DVD movies, Divx video, SVCD video, VCD video and audio to be of very high quality. I expect the playing to be as good as my TV set and connections allow for. If I am connected to my DVD player/recorder and playing back through HDMI, I expect the video to be as good as the high limit of the potential of my video source.
  

Jon

[xiaoming]

this player has problem picking up .sub or .srt file. don't know if anyone else has encountered the same. the only way to make it work is to convert .srt file to xsub which dvdr 3400 does support.

[lorac]

I just bought the 3400 and have checked out the Divx feature. This recorder/player does display srt file. Granted the files are small and there is an annoying grayish translucent band at the bottom of the screen (unlike the 642 that has it only behind the actual subtitles). It can display 2 lines of subs but no more, and cannot display special characters like italic and a6 tags used in some srt files. it does seem to honor line breaks.

I tried several Divx with srt files and the subs worked on all. I noticed that the avi maintains it correct aspect ratio...no cropping of edges. Many other Divx players have this as a flaw. The 3400 also played some files that will not play correctly on the 642, but it also refused to play two that the 642 cannot play either.

This is with an S-Video connection on a 20" Sony TV. I have no idea what they would look like on a larger TV.

Philips technincal support does not have a fix... matter of fact, I don't think the tech guy knew what a Divx with srt file was! I'm here in the forum looking for a hack to fix the subtitles... if anyone has a suggestion please let me know. Alternately, if you know of a good Divx DVD player that does not stretch the video and handles srt files well, let me know.

[normcar]

Philips has a bad reputation for reliability

Thats an understatement when you combine poor reliability with very, very bad customer service. Look on the Web. There are a lot of bad stories about trying to get any customer service from Philips. They are one of the worst companies for consumer electronics.

I believe that I read that Lite-on was going to get out of building DVD Recorders.

JVC is one of the best DVD Recorders available. However, do not expect any DVD Recorder to last more than 2 years. For some reason, DVD Recorders for every manufacture are just not very reliable. They seem to not be able to create long lasting products.

You will also need a macro copy protection remover for backing up your old VHS movies. Sima makes a cheaper model that Bestbuy carries. It is called something like DVD Copier.