Pioneer 231s just died, advice needed on new recorder

[heman28]

Hello folks I just had a bad experience today with my diehard Pioneer 231s dvd recorder that I got at walmart a few years ago. I was going to make a disc with different setttings coming from my vhs tapes etc and I went to put a ritek g04 dvd-r disc in it and it just kept trying to spin it up and load and I was not able to get the recorder to eject the dvd. So I powered it down and tried to press the eject button and it just kept doing the same thing over and over again and finally I took it apart and well its in the trash now cause it would not give me back the dvd so its gone now So what I am looking for a new recorder that is about the same quality as what the pioneer I had was. The nice thing about it was it had noise reduction and most of the new dvd recorders does not have that but no biggy. I want one that recoords with a good encoder chip and does not leave me with a really blocky video. I used to use a panasonic dmr e55 but it was too blocky even in 2 hour mode. I went to the Pioneer and I loved the results I got with it and want something like it as much as I can get too it. I am looking for your guys help since you have all different recorders. I am looking at a Walmart SV2000 for a temporary thing but I don't know if its good for vhs to dvd transfer or not. Thanks for anyones help.

[wabjxo]

Check out the Philips DVDR3575H/37. I've got several, plus a Pio 640... love them all!

[orsetto]

As wajo is fond of reminding us , the Phillips DVDR3575/37 is pretty much the only halfway decent and versatile recorder still available new in the crazy USA retail market. Supposedly some of the newer Panasonics are also good, but I'm seeing way too many reports of flaky timer behavior to trust one yet.

Some users find the Phillips equal to the classic Pioneer units, some think its not so hot. If you really liked your Pioneer you may want to just stalk another new or demo Pio on eBay. Lately their pricing is totally haywire: I've seen them go up or down 100% in the course of a week and back again. If you're patient and wait for one of the momentary drops, you can pick up a really nice Pioneer 450 or 540 DVD recorder with hard drive for less than $250 from Canadian dealers. (These are no longer for sale in the US, Pioneer is only available in Canada.) I had two model 540s shipped from Canada this year for myself and several more for friends, we're all very pleased with them.

The advantage of the Pioneer is familiarity and reliability, plus the hard drive feature. The advantage of a new USA Panasonic or Phillips is they have the new digital ATSC tuner (only the Phillips has the hard drive.) Depends on your priorities and budget. If you need to save money, the SV2000 from Wal*Mart you mentioned is considered a reasonable bargain for the price. 50% of buyers love it, 50% return it in a day. At least with Wal*Mart you can return it no questions asked if you hate it, so maybe you should start there and see if it works for you?

[oldandinthe way]

The Funai SV2000 and its twin the Magnavox do just fine up to 2 hour mode. Neither has a Digital tuner. Walmart sells both units for $50 and stores have one or the other.

Generally the complaints relate to timer recording. Funai has always offered minimal front panel display even on their VCRs. If you are dubbing videos you will have few problems.

By the way when you have a stuck drawer on most optical drives, there is usually a manual eject hole which you place an unbent paperclip in to release the drawer and remove the disk. Often that is all that is needed to avoid the trash can.

[heman28]

Hello guys thanks for the feedback. Well I did try to find one of the sv2000 dvd recorders at walmart but they are no longer carrying it anymore. So I got a Magnavox dual deck that has all the same features that it did and its also got a vcr but I did not really need that part of it but for 100.00 thats all I could get. They also had the magnavox dvd recorder for 134.00 but it had a digital tuner and I don't need it for all that. I just like to take my vhs tapes and put them on dvd and if I want to do anything special menu wise I just copy it to my pc and use ulead or tmpg to make new menus. I had tried some different settting from my equipment and there is a difference in looks wise of the video quality since the magnavox does not have noise reduction so that does make somewhat of a difference. I use a avt8710 for time base correction and then run it through a signvideo image enhancer then a signvideo color corrector. The dvd's made from my pioneer where kind of on the soft side and I think that is why it seemed to not be so blocky and I am guessing its from the noise reduction feature it had. But overall the magnavox is the same as the sv2000 dual deck I have down stairs for how it works etc. They are the same thing made by funai corp. Well I am going to try to mess around a little more with my image enhancer because without the noise reduction with it on it make a little too much noise in the video now Well cheers.