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  1. I burned a 2 hour recording (in *2 Quality-- Basically a full disc) to an assortment of different media and every time it took 44 minutes.
    I tested the 8030N with Taiyo Yuden TYG02, X8 dvd-r and TDK X4, dvd-rw. A two hour, *2 burn took 36 minutes not including finalizing the TYG02. A 18 minute, *2 burn took five minutes, 28 seconds to the X4, dvd-rw. These speeds are about the same you are seeing.

    By comparison, a Pioneer 531H will burn a two hour, SP mode hdd recording to the same TYG02 in ten minutes also not including finalizing.
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  2. Lordsmurf, one other thing I forgot to ask was whether or not your RCA shows "Mono" on the info banner when you are recording? I'm using a satellite receiver as source and I know it's outputting stereo to the RCA, so I was wondering why it still showed "MONO" at the top. I've read in the AVS Forum thread that the Tuner on this RCA is MONO only. But since I'm using a satellite STB that shouldn't matter right? I've got my sat receiver hooked up via svideo into Input 1, and using rca cables for audio.

    Also, I was reading THIS POST by someone who liked the Polaroid model. He mentions the LSI Domino Chipset, and he seems to think it's superior to the Zoran chipset. I was wondering what your opinion is on that. Thought it might be helpful for others who are currently looking.
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  3. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    The first thing to remember about MONO and STEREO is the information you see on screen is 100% dependent on the broadcast. Cartoon Network and Boomerang, for example, broadcasts pretty much everything in mono. There is good reason for this: most of their content was created in mono. Thundercats, for example, is a well-known cartoon that originally was created with a mono soundtrack. Quite a few programs on quite a few channels are mono.

    You tend to get stereo on only paid channels, and on major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) during primetime hours. I have a tv in another room with no recorder, and it has audio source display, and many broadcasts are mono. Heck, even some DVDs out there are not stereo! I was watching an old B&W tv show, a DVD box set, a few days ago, and noticed it was a mono AC3 track.

    The RCA will record stereo when you give it stereo inputs. If your source is mono, the RCA will record the same track to both channels. If you use the tuner, you get mono audio too. (Trivia: some of the older Panasonic machines recorded mono only to one channel! So you only heard sound from one speaker! Ick!)

    The LSI Logic DoMiNo chipset is superior in concept, but only if used correctly. Polaroid and Panasonic use it pretty badly. The Polaroid encodes are extremely noisy, lots of mosquito noise and blocks. I had the Polaroid before I had the RCA, and I'm glad to be rid of it. The Polaroid had a lot of drive error problems, as well as other annoyances. It would be a downgrade. Inversely, the JVC DVD recorders make stunning use of the LSI chipsets, and LiteON does an admirable job (although I'd consider the RCA quality better than LiteOn quality).

    Don't read too much at AVS forum. It has some good information, but the DVD recorder forum is overrun by some real dipshits (mostly Panasonic worshipers, and now some Pioneer worshipers too). They prefer features over quality. On the other hand, I prefer quality of encode, and it sounds like you're wanting the same.
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  4. Member Seeker47's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Don't read too much at AVS forum. It has some good information, but the DVD recorder forum is overrun by some real dipshits (mostly Panasonic worshipers, and now some Pioneer worshipers too). They prefer features over quality. On the other hand, I prefer quality of encode, and it sounds like you're wanting the same.
    AVS has a lot of good info -- depending on where you look and who you listen to. LS, is this more of your cultivating outrageousness in order to be colorful (which is fine, up to a point), or are you trying to be obnoxious ?

    Personally, I will usually choose good results with good to very good features over better results with a relatively poor feature set or implementation of features that only gets in your way and becomes annoying.
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  5. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Seeker47
    -- depending on where you look and who you listen to.
    I refer only to the DVD recorder forum. When you read the posts there, it looks more like a Panasonic/Pioneer propaganda machine than it does a forum full of users talking about the realistic pros and cons of different machines.

    For many people, quality is king, features are secondary. If you want certain features, and are willing to take an image/audio quality hit for it, then there's nothing wrong with it, as long as you understand it. Some of the folks there on AVS simply do not comprehend the technical aspects of video, and they judge machines solely on features, and quality has to simply be "good enough" (which we all know can range from crap to decent). But that's a "toy" site, dedicated to televisions, receivers, players/recorders, etc. It's not a video tech site like this one.

    The person in this post on this site has shown interest in quality, not features. So he's getting the proper advice, which includes warnings about a site that does NOT value quality as much as it values features. If he'd wanted something that was feature-rich, I'd have suggested an appropriate machine. However, unlike many folks, I'll include a disclaimer about the image/audio quality taking a hit.
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    Originally Posted by gshelley61
    The latest higher contrast LCD panels are starting to look pretty good now. Comparable to plasma, even better really when you consider many LCD's are now 1920x1080 native resolution for less than what a 1366x768 plasma costs.

    Analog SD source material on large digital fixed pixel displays is a challenge, for sure. The video noise and relatively low bandwidth (resolution) of these types of sources, especially VHS, makes it hard to sample and process into an upscaled digital image that looks good...

    Some of my better VHS to DVD conversions look OK when played back with my upscaling DVD player on my Toshiba 62" 1920x1080 DLP... but you have to sit farther back from the screen than you would for a laserdisc to DVD conversion or a standard commercial DVD. With HD sources, you definitely can sit closer and the large detailed picture is wonderful, of course.
    gshelley61, I hope that you and davideck and some others here who have a major credibility in this area will critique some of these new displays for us as they come out (particularly in regard to this issue of displaying our archival SD material) . . . because, as time goes on, we don't really have too many other options. I know people who have a couple of the better Sony HD capable displays -- 34" to 40" CRTs, but different models. These are just a few years old, but now gone from the market ? Regardless of size ? One major problem with these, though, even if you could still find ones as good, is that when the time comes to move them, you pretty much need a forklift. Even adjusting cables for them inside a big cabinet becomes a major pain. They're just not all that practical, in today's terms.

    I've not been too impressed with the rear projection sets I've seen (or any of the compact projector type), but I haven't checked out the DLP ones. If the flat panels are what most of us will be watching, I hope that some of them will become good enough, for nearly all of the material we care to watch on them.
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  7. Originally Posted by Tekken
    The only area I give low marks to it is in burning to disc speed. It burns very slow. For example, when exporting a recording from HDD to DISC. I burned a 2 hour recording (in *2 Quality-- Basically a full disc) to an assortment of different media and every time it took 44 minutes. Some of the media I tried was: Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-R, Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+R, TDK 4X DVD+RW(MID-PHILIPS-041-00), Maxell DVD-RW(Optodisc MID I believe). Basically my 8030 seems to burn everything at 2.4x even tho the manual says it should be able to do 4x.
    That sounds like a pain. I record a lot of things and put them onto my computer for other uses (making clips to put on the internet, making better menus for DVDs, etc.).

    Does anyone know if this hard drive can be read by a computer. I have external hard drive kits (where you just have to put the hard drive in the case and hook up the cords).
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  8. I read in a thread (I think at AVSforum) that someone hooked up the hard drive and was able to look around. I remember they said there were some files with "zoran" in the file names.
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  9. Originally Posted by Tekken
    I read in a thread (I think at AVSforum) that someone hooked up the hard drive and was able to look around. I remember they said there were some files with "zoran" in the file names.
    That's great (that it can be read by Windows)! A little project for me to do whenever I buy mine.
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  10. That may be wishful thinking depending on whether the RCA implements CPRM encryption. Here are some comments about CPRM.

    you could still do whatever you want with the content while it's on your hard drive, he says. But once it's on the CPRM device and media, it may stop you from replicating it further
    If you try to back up CPRM content to an unsecure drive, you'd lose access to that content because your second drive can't read the CPRM encryption
    The Pioneer 531H definitely implements it and talks about it in the manual but the RCA manual provides much less technical detail.

    This is all that was found at AVS,

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kasitrol
    I would like to record on the RCA DRC 8030N Hard drive and then transfer the drive to a PC so that I can use VideoReDo to edit out commercials but when I attach the RCA DRC 8030N Hard drive to the PC, the PC bios recognizes the drive is in the system but Win XP Home (OS) does not display the drive letter or drive contents.

    I also tried to use Partition Commander to look at the drive and it sees the drive but shows the entire drive as free space with no partition.

    Does any one know how the drive is partitioned and what OS are they using??




    Many have tried this already. It's really not that hard to do a perfect editing job on the RCA. If you must do PC editing, you'll have to transfer to DVD first.
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  11. Actually a hard drive does not need to be partitioned to work. That comes down to what the software the uses it expects.

    Windows, Linux and such need partitions.

    A DVR could have software written that uses one size drive, and laways knows where to go for the data by sector. Thus it could use certain ranges of sectors for a FAT table and from there know where to go. Since it doesn't need a OS as such that will work. Avoid any chance of having to pay royalties and so on. And of course the Recorder doesn't need drive letters since it will never have more than one drive.

    The reason Linux and Windows and DOS have to have partition tables is to deal with the multitude of drive sizes and geomitries as well as one person may want one big drive and someone else may want to split it into 3 or 4 drive letters. .
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  12. Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    ....... If you find 352x480 to be blurry, your tv is larger than 40 inches, or you're looking too closely and trying to find flaws. Sit back and watch the show as normal. The recorded image is not much different than the source signal.
    Lordsmurf, while the 3 hour mode on the RCA looks very nice.(Even on my 53" Sony CRT Rear Projection SDTV), if a particular recording was something important that you planned on keeping for a long time... would you record it in *2 quality for the extra resolution (720x480)? Basically is *2 Quality record more future proof than *3. For example would the *2 quality record look much better than the *3 if played on a 720p or 1080p flat panel? I know neither are going to look flawless on the flat panel, but just trying to figure out which to use for certain things because I know my CRT isn't going to last forever.

    Something else I read in another forum and confirmed on my own was that the RCA does put the first recordings at the end of the menu and the last thing recorded on the disc on the first page of the menu... which is sorta strange.
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