DVD Recorder that plays PAL/NTSC

[danielmak]

I'm looking to buy my first DVD Recorder and have been reading various helpful posts in this forum, but none seem to bring together all of the features that I'm looking for (or so I think). It seems that JVC and Toshiba get the most praise here.

I'm a huge soccer fan and I live in the United States so the recorder would be NTSC. I would be using this recorder to: (A) record DVDs of matches from DirecTV (I have a DirecTV DVR so the matches would come from the DVR), (B) transfer a few VHS tapes (7 or 8 tapes so "a few" really is accurate), (C) watch PAL DVDs sent to me from people in Europe, and (D) since many of the matches sent from Europe are on DVD+R, I need a machine that plays DVD+R and DVD-R discs. Currently I have a cheap Cyberhome player and it works fine for my viewing needs in terms of PAL to NTSC conversion and easily switched to multi-region with a simple code input. So, given these uses, what brand and model would y'all recommend? (BTW I don't have a HDTV so that's not an issue for me and as you can tell from the purchase of the Cyberhome, I'm not looking for a super expensive machine.) Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Barnabas]

The Lite-On units do both NTSC and PAL great. About $150.00 or so cost.

[BobK]

I like Pioneer. I know the 420 and the 633 both play PAL disks. I also have a Pioneer player that plays PAL, so I would assume that their other models will too.