The Top 5 DVD Recorders

[ejai]

I never used anything over SP, but the E20 recorded good in SP. I think the JVC is a little cleaner when looking at backgrounds though. It doesn't seem like the JVC gets that digitized look on dark scenes as bad as the Panasonic did either.

I agree that is why I decided to try the JVC, the JVC did a much better job of smoothing out dark areas. The Panasonic videos I like are well lite and has strong sharp areas. My E50 suffers from hard edges and very pixelated areas similar to the VCD days.

The JVC doesn't seem to have any of these problems.

[sagafoo]

i bought a philips dvdr75 and it worked for about a year..now it wont finalize...it does have the best features and disc compatibility out there and i did use it for everything...got about 1000 burns out of it, but still i feel cheated.

if they could only make a machine this good that would LAST!!!

THAT would be a great dvd recorder!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8)

[samijubal]

My Panasonic E20 stopped finalizing when it died too.

[tjdmobile]

Here's my experience:

LiteOn 5001 - Using stable firmware 1143, I have burned in excess of 500 disks now, and still not a single bad burn. I have to note for the record though, I dealt with the heat issue immediately after I took the machine out of the box in December. It has been the over-all top performer.

Pioneer DVR-220-s: This is the unit I use to record from TV (much better tuner than the LiteOn), and to record 4 hour mode. The picture is remarkably good in 3-4 hour modes on the Pioneer. I have to admit though, if using Video mode on -RW, I do get tired of finalizing the disks. I mostly use -VR mode, so I bought a Pioneer player which will play the unfinalized VR disks. Now it acts a lot more like a +VR recorder.

Since the drives tend to be the problem in most of these units, the LiteOn has the advantage of using a standard LiteOn OEM drive mech. I went out and purchased a LiteOn 411s drive for my PC (exact same unit as in the 5001, and the PC drive worked in it when I tested). Pioneer will make their internal drive available as a part replacement if the time ever comes, so I won't bother trying to purchase one of theirs.

For those who have drives going bad, have you tried to simply have your precious units repaired? Depot repair is usually under $100, which is better than buying a new unit if it works well for you.

Walmart now has the Pioneer for $248 on rollback. Pretty good deal!

TJD

[samijubal]

When the drive went on my E20 I took it in to be repaired, they told me replacing the drive would be $360. Fourtunately I bought a 5 year warranty on the E20 and ended up with a new JVC for free.

[FKrueger]

Another happy Philips DVDR75 here, approaching a year old(19 more days), approx. 300 dvds burned, mostly in the 4 hr mode. Only problems I've had have been resolved by firmware updates, and they were with Arita and HP DVD+R's, Ritek, Memorex, and Khypermedia have always worked. Now up to FF15P. I am getting a 2nd philips DVDR75 because I want one on the 2nd TV.

[tjdmobile]

When the drive went on my E20 I took it in to be repaired, they told me replacing the drive would be $360. Fourtunately I bought a 5 year warranty on the E20 and ended up with a new JVC for free.

Panasonic....what were you thinking!!!! I have never heard of such a thing!

Looks like you got what you needed in the end though!

TJD

[vdngo2003]

JVC
Pioneer
then LiteOn, never have any problems with JVC or Pioneer but the LiteOn 5005 always craps out on my @ 3rd or 4th disc. Also, just returned 5 LiteOn PC burners for repair as they produce very consistent and beautiful DVD coasters I'd recommend the Pioneer (both standalone & PC burner) since I've had both for a while and haven't had any problems with them.

[oldfart13]

"I don't know anybody that recorded VHS in SP mode"

5,000+ VHS recorded over the years with more than 90% recorded in SP, including my old RCA VK250 tapes that cost me $30 a pop!

[samijubal]

I did the bulk of my VHS in SP too, hundreds of them. Ep was very hard to watch when I was used to watching a satellite.

[oldfart13]

And all these Panny bashers! Ai Yi Yi! My E80H is my workhorse machine with only the (VERY) rare hiccup. I can tell you from observation that things like pixellation happen because of the high compression rate on some sources, especially the various DBS services. This is why I currently record Stargate Atlantis from the Canadian TMN rather than the US Sci-Fi Channel: macroblocking from Dishnetwork is terrible. Dark scenes are moving by themselves! The Bell Expressvu sat on the other hand is much cleaner, showing much less artifacting, which results in a cleaner encode. This could be because there are fewer channels available on the Canadian sats vs. the US ones. Audio compression defects abound. I can hear definite "warbling" of voices in commercials, especially on many of the more popular Superstations. Terrible. And they are also using that damn video speed adjustment to fit more commercials in. Pure crap. So, it may not be the recorder at all, but the source.

The JVC looks like an okay machine but I haven't seen them at all in my town. I'm looking forward to the spec on the 160 Gig Sony due out this October. The Sony had the best of the encoders and now being able to do a 2 pass encode from HDD to disc should prove to be the cats a$$!

[tommyoz]

One that won't make the cut: Sony, Panasonic, Cyberhome, Memorex, Polaroid.

Lordsmurf, please don't put Sony in that class At least let's put Sony in it's own (not sure yet) category. They've only really had 2 recorders out before the newest RDR-GX300. I'm not trying to push Sony cause I never really liked Sony products. I always thought that they were to much into themselves. But I like this RDR-GX300.

[DVD_Ripper]

I didn't see one mention of the MPEG encoding chips built into these machines and which one gives the best, non-artifacting, results. Any feedback on that?

[gshelley61]

The LSI chip is supposed to be very good... the encoding chip is not the only factor, however. Pre-encoding video processing (enhancement, noise reduction, Y/C separation, etc.) definitely has some influence on how good the MPEG2 will look, too.

[delrio]

I didn't see one mention of the MPEG encoding chips built into these machines and which one gives the best, non-artifacting, results. Any feedback on that?

I have the same problem with this. There hasn't been much in the way of quantitative analysis of the encoded DVDs produced by these devices. What encoding chips are being used, and are they all of similar quality? Look at the results of the "DVD shootout" at hometheaterhifi.com and ask yourself: "do I believe that encoders are more uniformly well designed than decoders?"

Del Rio

[DVD_Ripper]

Went up to that site (hometheaterhifi.com) and there is no reference to DVD Recorders in the various online reviews

[sunderland]

stay away from the liteon i had mine for 5 days and after that it wouldnt even read original disks

[lordsmurf]

One that won't make the cut: Sony, Panasonic, Cyberhome, Memorex, Polaroid.

Lordsmurf, please don't put Sony in that class At least let's put Sony in it's own (not sure yet) category. They've only really had 2 recorders out before the newest RDR-GX300. I'm not trying to push Sony cause I never really liked Sony products. I always thought that they were to much into themselves. But I like this RDR-GX300.

Some of the newest units I'm ignoring for now, the GX300 included.

[rr6966]

I have the Pioneer DVR-220-s. It is awesome, going strong after 8 months, excellent picture quality. Also, plays DVD-RW's in VR mode in my Sony DVD player - no problems.

[handyguy]

Odd thing about this topic is that we have to use the machines for months to know if they are best, but by then you can't by them anymore.

[pepegot1]

JVC is a quality product, but it is a hot box too. If you go away for an extended time, the unit will be hot all the time. You must set "Timer mode" to record, and in this mode the unit is hot. After recording, it still stays in "Timer mode", so it remains hot. Mine is set to "power save," which is the cool mode. I just switch to "Timer mode prior to recording.
This is a design flaw. Can't they made a unit that works like the DVD players & VCRs, and don't have this flaw. I have 14 days to try this out.
Can anyone teel me if Liteon 5005 has a similar problem? In record mode, is it HOT!

[delrio]

Went up to that site (hometheaterhifi.com) and there is no reference to DVD Recorders in the various online reviews

They don't cover DVD recorders yet. The point I was making is that given the wildly varying quality of DVD playback chipsets , and player units, can anyone seriously believe that most DVD encoding chipsets are any better?

Btw, the HT & HiFi folks have said that they are planning to start covering DVD recorders, but not when...

Del Rio

[luvvbuzz]

i have owned a philips dvdr70 recorder for almost 2 years now, the only problem i had with it was once i put a dvd+r in to record and the machine froze. all i did was turn it off at the plug socket for 5 seconds and turn it back on, just put it down to a cheap disc i was using. i would say a pc is more unreliable than my dvdr70, i have to admit tho that i only play my dvds on my cyberhome ch400 player so maybe thats helped save the wear and tear on the recorder? if my recorder broke down it would probably work out cheaper to replace it now rather than fix it seeing as you can get them for £149.99 here in the uk.

[leebo]

I bought a Pioneer DVR-7000 for $1300 about two and a half years ago or so. Started having a problem in video recording mode: every :30 seconds, the pic slows down but the audio stays at the right speed (when played back on other players). Then the pic speeds up to catch up with the audio so it doesn't lose sync. Very annoying.

Finally took it in and Pioneer did a firmware upgrade. Didn't fix the problem. The unit is basically useless as a recorder.

[DaveS]

I've been using the RDR-GX7 (sony) for 9 months now (maybe a year?) and it's been very good to me.

The beefs people seem to have with it are more feature based than reliability issues. I did have one 'reliability' issue with my unit, sent it back and it came back in 3 days..a little bit of a hassle, but decent support was provided.

Many people have complained in this forum that the unit does not have a variable mode to specify the video length and let the unit pick a bitrate to fill the disk.

The reason I got it was the quality of the video encoding, which I have been very happy with. 90% of my use has been to encode VBR real time and then rip that to the PC for authoring - for this, it's been great. It provides some nice noise reduction (analog source), and although I've never taken this concretely anywhere based on any numeric analysis, I believe the 108 mhz 12 bit chip (set) helps provide a nice result. That said, I don't know who else uses the same chipset, if anyone (e.g. not sure if that chip is to sony's specs). So for me, it was a nice real time encoding board w/ it's own burner built in and a tuner for when / if I need it. Firewire input is nice to have (although there isn't 100% compatibility between the sony and my jvc minidv deck).

this is one of the few sony products I own b/c the premium generally seems too high to justify for the features.

Anyway, just 2 cents from one of the (few?) sony owners around here...

[lordsmurf]

I bought a Pioneer DVR-7000 for $1300 about two and a half years ago or so. Started having a problem in video recording mode: every :30 seconds, the pic slows down but the audio stays at the right speed (when played back on other players). Then the pic speeds up to catch up with the audio so it doesn't lose sync. Very annoying.

Finally took it in and Pioneer did a firmware upgrade. Didn't fix the problem. The unit is basically useless as a recorder.

I'VE SEEN THIS TOO! But on Panasonic-made discs. The fix is to extract the files with DVD Decrypter in IFO mode and then open them in Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Cut off a few frames and front/back, then let it make a new MP2 audio stream and correct the video stream. The muxing is bad. I've also seen it where the AC3's were corrupt (more common).

Give that a try.

[leebo]

Thanks, but I have actually copied a disc with this problem to my computer, then burned it to another disc (without doing anything to the files), and had the new disc play fine.

I've also seen the problem disappear depending on which PLAYER I've put it in.

I'm not sure, but I think the problem started after the FW update for 4X discs.

[roscoe999]

I have a Philips DVDR80/17 that died after 10 months and less than 50 DVD burnt. Two repairs by Philips: 1 It could not read what it just wrote, was returned with the same problem, 2 returned to have problem 1 repaired, it was sent back to me after the warranty expired not recording or monitoring ANY audio, new problem. But, I do have another good player that used to be a recorder not bad for over $500. Not many who have had Philips DVD Recorders have good stories to tell. But then IF you find a GOOD one that lasts please let me know what it is. Good luck on your quest for THE lasting quality DVD recorder.

[hech54]

But then IF you find a GOOD one that lasts please let me know what it is.

MY Philips DVDR985...MINE..

Still going strong after two years.