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  1. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    I saw the RCA 8030 at Wally worlds today for $218.00. Is it really worth buying or not? I have a PIONEER 220S but may want to buy the RCA 8030 as a backup. I sure wished PIONEER still made their standalone dvd recorders.
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    If you're going to be using someone else's system you need something low maintenance.

    Don't know anything about Pioneer products, but I've been using an LG DR1F9H for about six months now. Recording quality excellent as is the clock. I've used and returned nearly a dozen brands and models of DVD recorders because the clock didn't keep accurate time and timer recordings were affected, sometimes within just a few days.

    The LG doesn't auto-finalize discs though--you won't just be able to pop the disc out--finalization takes about 30-50 seconds. Hard drive's never been a necessity for me, but a model with a hard drive would probably solve that, if you want to pay the additional.

    Got the LG at Best Buy--substantially discounted.
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  3. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Tekken
    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    ....... My television, which isn't all that fancy, has a few color modes, and one of them cools the image. ...
    Lordsmurf, if you don't mind me asking... what type of TV do you use? From reading your site and your posts I gather you watch a lof of older animation... which I do also. And I know I've found out the hard way that many of the newer displays make older stuff look pretty bad.
    The televisions referred to in my post are:
    JVC 27" SDTV CRT
    Sharp 20" EDTV LCD

    They have a sharp picture, a few "picture mode" options, and component and s-video inputs.

    The only thing I'd watch on a HDTV is a commercial pressed DVD, a video game or a cable/satellite-fed HD broadcast. Everything else pretty much looks like shit on the larger HD LCD/plasma screens. It's really quite pathetic that HD technology is a half-step backwards.
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    [QUOTE="lordsmurf"][quote="Tekken"]
    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    .......

    The only thing I'd watch on a HDTV is a commercial pressed DVD, a video game or a cable/satellite-fed HD broadcast. Everything else pretty much looks like shit on the larger HD LCD/plasma screens. It's really quite pathetic that HD technology is a half-step backwards.
    If you live in an area with good on air reception you'll be amazed how sharp, detailed and brilliant on-air HD can be. I get 19 channels, including all five major networks and multiple PBS feeds. Had to persuade a neighbor to cut down a tree, but after I invited him over for some HD viewing and Heineken he cut down that tree and installed an antenna himself. Bow-tie antenna with 32 elements, 10-foot mast chimney mounted, no rotor, no amplifier, coax direct to ATSC/NTSC DVD recorder.

    Also, spent a couple months working a second job at a major retailer, where we did some unpaid critical comparison viewing after hours because the manager wanted us to be more knowledgeable--in other words he was upgrading his own system. Anyway, two brands not painful to watch non HD sources on: Samsung LCD and plasma and Olevia LCD. On LCD you don't get the saturated blacks you do on an old tube TV, but these were not horrible to watch and there were many that were.

    P.S.: DixX + upconverting DVD player + HDMI + HDTV = brilliant, just brilliant.
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  5. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    To get good reception on an antenna, you basically have to live in the metro area. The signals are much weaker than the traditional aerial signals. I'd have to mount a huge dish in my back yard to get a clear signal, cut down about a dozen trees, and I'm not really all that far away from the heart of the metro. But I'm far enough away to get nothing, even with an indoor antenna.
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  6. I ended up going with the RCA. I don't know why you can't find the RCA on Walmart's site by looking in the Electronics section, or even by searching for the exact model number? But in case any of you want to see it, doing a search on google yielded this link--> http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5030815

    The only thing I'd watch on a HDTV is a commercial pressed DVD, a video game or a cable/satellite-fed HD broadcast. Everything else pretty much looks like shit on the larger HD LCD/plasma screens. It's really quite pathetic that HD technology is a half-step backwards.
    Yeah if a person only watches brand new material on DVD or BluRay, etc.. then they are fine, but if you watch older stuff... they just don't do very well.
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  7. Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    It's really quite pathetic that HD technology is a half-step backwards.
    That's only true of crappy LCDs and plasmas. I have a Sony 34" widescereen CRT HDTV that looks awsome with DVDs recorded on a Toshiba recorder. Far better than any SDTV. I've got a top of the line SD CRT TV, it doesn't look like the HDTV. LCDs are crap, plasmas are better, but still don't compare to a good CRT HDTV. Unfortunalely all the good CRT HDTVs are gone. I got the last CRT TV Sony will ever make.
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  8. Originally Posted by samijubal
    That's only true of crappy LCDs and plasmas. I have a Sony 34" widescereen CRT HDTV that looks awsome with DVDs recorded on a Toshiba recorder. Far better than any SDTV. I've got a top of the line SD CRT TV, it doesn't look like the HDTV. LCDs are crap, plasmas are better, but still don't compare to a good CRT HDTV. Unfortunalely all the good CRT HDTVs are gone. I got the last CRT TV Sony will ever make.
    They quit making the displays with the better picture quality. It doesn't make much sense does it. I know the Hitachi CRT Rear Projection TV's were about the only "big screen" CRT HDTV's you could find, and even they are getting hard to find.
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  9. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by samijubal
    That's only true of crappy LCDs and plasmas. I have a Sony 34" widescereen CRT HDTV that looks awsome with DVDs recorded on a Toshiba recorder. Far better than any SDTV. I've got a top of the line SD CRT TV, it doesn't look like the HDTV. LCDs are crap, plasmas are better, but still don't compare to a good CRT HDTV. Unfortunalely all the good CRT HDTVs are gone. I got the last CRT TV Sony will ever make.
    If you have the Toshiba doing some NR on a really high quality signal, then maybe. I've heard many people tell me "my tv is not like that", only to visit their house and see a crappy picture on screen. "Isn't that clear, just like I told you?" .... "Nope." The technology itself is fundamentally flawed, and nothing can change that.
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  10. Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Originally Posted by samijubal
    That's only true of crappy LCDs and plasmas. I have a Sony 34" widescereen CRT HDTV that looks awsome with DVDs recorded on a Toshiba recorder. Far better than any SDTV. I've got a top of the line SD CRT TV, it doesn't look like the HDTV. LCDs are crap, plasmas are better, but still don't compare to a good CRT HDTV. Unfortunalely all the good CRT HDTVs are gone. I got the last CRT TV Sony will ever make.
    If you have the Toshiba doing some NR on a really high quality signal, then maybe. I've heard many people tell me "my tv is not like that", only to visit their house and see a crappy picture on screen. "Isn't that clear, just like I told you?" .... "Nope." The technology itself is fundamentally flawed, and nothing can change that.
    You're watching an LCD, of course it sucks. The Sony doesn't need an HD signal to look amazing. SD-DVDs are close to HD quality. My satellite to Tosiiba DVD recordings look better than a lot of pressed DVDs I've seen. You're not watching the right TVs. On the right TV, HD rocks, period.
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  11. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    I have a Hitachi CRT Rear Projection 51" 16x9 HDTV and I am very happy with the quality and the price paid even though it does not support 1080p (only 1080i).

    However SD material can still look rather shitty on it ... LaserDisc looks good but VHS looks like shit ... standard SD cable TV varies but most seem to look OK at best and the digital SD channels have way too digital junk from low bitrates.

    In short SD looks OK at best with LaserDisc looking the best of all the SD formats since it has a resolution not that much lower than DVD and isn't overly compressed since it is analog and not digital. True HDTV and DVD Videos do of course look rather damn impressive and I can't wait to get HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray but I'm waiting for that "war" to pick a side although I expect to buy either a Sony PS3 or Xbox 360 (with the HD-DVD add-on) at the end of the year so I'll have to buy at least one HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray to see for myself. I saw a HD-DVD of KING KONG on a store demo at BEST BUY and the quality was rather amazing!

    Anyways I wanted to chime in on the Pioneer. I have the DVR-531H-s model and I love it. The TV guide thing sucks but I don't use it and it is easy to avoid but I almost wish I had gotten a DVR-640H-s instead but hey it didn't exist when I bought my 531 so whatever 8)

    For those looking for Pioneer HDD equipped DVD recorders you can find some at websites that sell region free DVD players. These are European models and don't have ATSC/QAM tuners but they can do NTSC playback and record so if you use a cable box or satellite box I don't see the lack of a "modern" tuner being a big deal.

    Looking at 220-Electronics the Pioneer DVR-340H looks like a nice model and comparable to the 531 model in that it has a 80GB HDD but is newer and features PAL and NTSC recording (a PAL input records to PAL whereas a NTSC input records to NTSC). About the only thing missing is PAL to NTSC conversion but that can be done with a cheap Philips DVD player like the DVP-5140 etc.

    It is sad though that Pioneer is "dropping the ball" in the USA market but since they have SO many European models this leaves me with hope that they will eventually make a new USA model ... my guess is they are waiting so they can properly implement a good working ATSC/QAM tuner solution.

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  12. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by samijubal
    You're watching an LCD, of course it sucks..
    Your hatred of LCD is retarded. They can vary in contrast quality. That's why I bought a Sharp. Mine is also an EDTV, not HDTV, so it's pretty decent to watch. It took about two months of continual buy and return to find a set I was happy with. The only time you can tell the black is not perfect black is when the lights are turned off. Well, turning the lights off to watch television is not good for your eyes. And then even a CRT is like this.

    Plasma looks a bit better in a large size, but screen burn is a concern.
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  13. 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.
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  14. Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Originally Posted by samijubal
    You're watching an LCD, of course it sucks..
    Your hatred of LCD is retarded. They can vary in contrast quality. That's why I bought a Sharp. Mine is also an EDTV, not HDTV, so it's pretty decent to watch. It took about two months of continual buy and return to find a set I was happy with. The only time you can tell the black is not perfect black is when the lights are turned off. Well, turning the lights off to watch television is not good for your eyes. And then even a CRT is like this.

    Plasma looks a bit better in a large size, but screen burn is a concern.
    I looked at every LCD I could find before I bought the Sony. I took discs that I recorded and some pressed discs into the stores and played them on a variety of TVs, no LCD in the same size TV came close to the quality of the Sony CRT. If you're happy with LCD quality whatever, that's up to you. I do watch TV in the dark and blacks are black on the Sony, period. Again no LCD compares to it, not even when viewing in a well lit store. Like I said, you haven't watched the right TVs if you think HD is a half a step backwards. HD on the right TV is nothing short of amazing, no SDTV can touch it. For watching VHS it might suck, I wouldn't know, I gave up VHS many years ago.
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  15. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by samijubal
    Like I said, you haven't watched the right TVs if you think HD is a half a step backwards. HD on the right TV is nothing short of amazing, no SDTV can touch it. For watching VHS it might suck, I wouldn't know, I gave up VHS many years ago.
    You completely missed LordSmurf's point me thinks.

    As I understand it this is what he is saying:

    SD material looks better on a "regular" SDTV or EDTV type display whereas SD looks like ass on a HDTV display.

    Now of course a HDTV display looks incredible when you have a true HDTV source or even a DVD but that wasn't what LordSmurf was talking about.

    He is "sad" if you will because SD looks like ass on these newer HDTV displays and that is why he calls it a "a half-step backwards".

    Is that clear ???

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    Originally Posted by samijubal
    For watching VHS it might suck, I wouldn't know, I gave up VHS many years ago.
    This is a rather childish remark to make ... there is still a lot of material out there that never made it to DVD let alone HDTV. Remember that content is king. Sure I love HDTV and wish everything was HDTV but that ain't the case. There are some things I want to watch that only exist on VHS so what can I do? ... not watch it? ... that's absurd. Yet your comment seems to indicate you think this way.
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  16. I refuse to watch any VHS quality stuff (especially stuff I've converted from VHS to DVD) on LCD or Plasma technology. It pretty much ruins the experience in either case. I've seen no exceptions to this rule with HDTV's, although some people insist that if you are willing to lay down three grand or so for one of the Sony Plasmas that SD stuff looks better, but I still have my doubts; you pretty much need a CRT to watch anything from yesteryear. I have a Sony XBR-970 34" widescreen HDTV that is a CRT and it's pretty much awesome for everything -- HD stuff looks incredible and at a normal viewing distance SD stuff looks great. Crappy over-compressed digital cable channels look crappy though (but this is the case on any TV).
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  17. That's the TV I have. It definitely rocks. The only LCDs that come anywhere near it are the Sony SXRDs. It's not like I'm going to put a 50" TV in my bedroom though.
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  18. Originally Posted by FulciLives
    Originally Posted by samijubal
    Like I said, you haven't watched the right TVs if you think HD is a half a step backwards. HD on the right TV is nothing short of amazing, no SDTV can touch it. For watching VHS it might suck, I wouldn't know, I gave up VHS many years ago.
    You completely missed LordSmurf's point me thinks.

    As I understand it this is what he is saying:

    SD material looks better on a "regular" SDTV or EDTV type display whereas SD looks like ass on a HDTV display.
    That's total crap. I have a top of the line SDTV and the Sony HDTV, no way does SD material look better on the SDTV. Again, you're not watching the right HDTV.
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  19. Originally Posted by FulciLives
    There are some things I want to watch that only exist on VHS so what can I do? ... not watch it? ... that's absurd. Yet your comment seems to indicate you think this way.
    That's exactly the way I think. After having a DVD recorder since 2001 and recording hundreds of discs, there's nothing on VHS that I'm going to watch. I can spend that time watching a crappy VHS or a high quality DVD, I'll take DVD.
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  20. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Sami likes "sharp" images (lots of noise and artificial sharpening), with "good color" (video is too dark and loses the tonal range), and hates anything not whiz-bang HD.

    Sorry, but your idea of quality gets more absurd as time goes by.

    The rest of us are a little more realistic about noise, detail, sharpness, color quality, and availability of content.
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  21. Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Sami likes "sharp" images (lots of noise and artificial sharpening), with "good color" (video is too dark and loses the tonal range), and hates anything not whiz-bang HD.

    Sorry, but your idea of quality gets more absurd as time goes by.

    The rest of us are a little more realistic about noise, detail, sharpness, color quality, and availability of content.
    When you've watched my TV and can say it's a half a step backwards, then we'll talk. Until then you're full of crap as usual. There is no noise whatsoever in my TV. If you're watching LCD, you're the one watching noise. I gave up watching VHS because I love noisy, poor color images, you got me. You don't even own an HDTV and still you think you're qualified to tell those of us who do about their faults.
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  22. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    You know what samijubal ... you are full of crap.

    When I was looking at HDTV displays back in 2005 I was considering the 34" 16x9 Sony ... they had two of them back then ... the "normal" model and one that had a slightly better tube to juice a bit more resolution from HDTV sources.

    It's true that those particular Sony models have pretty darn good SD as well as HD support but that's partly because it is a tube design as opposed to LCD or projection and also partly because even though 1080i is supported you aren't actually getting the full resolution of the 1080i format. In short those displays are a compromise if you will. They technically exist somewhere between SD and full HD quality.

    In the end I went with the Hitachi CRT Rear Projection display because the price would have been the same as the Sony 34" but I was getting a 51" screen and from all that I read the Hitachi was getting "rave" reviews.

    I am happy with my purchase even though VHS does look a bit ugly at times. I would have had better SD had I went with the Sony but then I would not be getting as sharp a picture not to mention a much smaller picture.

    Eventually I see a 50 some odd inch 16x9 LCD in my future ... one that does full 1920x1080p ... because even my Hitachi at 1080i is not giving me full 1920x1080 resolution ... but I got more resolution than your Sony and a big ass screen to boot.

    I expect VHS and some SD sources to not look good on a HDTV because in reality it is just that way and I do my best to avoid VHS but again not everything I watch is on DVD or HDTV so I refuse to NOT watch something I want to see simply because it doesn't exist in a better format. If it only exists on VHS and I want to watch it then I am watching it and I can deal with the less-than-stellar quality. After all even the best SD 50 some odd inch TV display cannot make VHS look good.

    I used to work at a video store when I was 16 - 17 years old. You remind me of a guy that wanted a list of VHS movies that had true Dolby Surround Sound. I asked why would he limit himself to only Dolby Surround Sound content when there are a lot of movies worth watching that are not in Dolby Surround Sound. His comment (and he was rather annoyed at my question) was that he had spent thousands on a new receiver and speakers and wanted Surround Sound ... period. It was very hard for me to refrain from calling him a jackass ... only because I was an employee and he was a customer.

    Since that dynamic is not at play here ... I have no problem at all calling you a jackass.

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  23. If I want to watch it I'll watch any way I can get it. IF that is VHS and it was never released on anything better, So what. Sami reminds me of someone that gave up smoking, They're worse than someone that never started at preaching.

    If I can I'll replace my VHS collection with DVDs if I can't then, oh well. If It comes around on Satellite I'll DVD it and put the VHS into storage. I watch a lot of SD on my HDTV. It may not look as good as HD but I can watch it, and not have to hope it will come around on the HD channels I get.

    In the meantime I'm slowly converting VHS to DVD and printing on the label Center left, "VHS to DVD". That is so I'll know what the source is and as a rminder to keep an eye out for a true DVD of it. BTW yes I keep my Original VHS tapes. Suppose I broke the DVD and as proof I have a right to that content. I'm sure the DMCA people do not feel I have a right to transfer something I bought but Bleep on them for things I purchased once already.
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  24. Originally Posted by FulciLives
    It's true that those particular Sony models have pretty darn good SD as well as HD support but that's partly because it is a tube design as opposed to LCD or projection and also partly because even though 1080i is supported you aren't actually getting the full resolution of the 1080i format. In short those displays are a compromise if you will. They technically exist somewhere between SD and full HD quality.
    That Sony XBR-970 is a 34" widescreen tube HDTV, but not the Super Fine Pitch type they stopped making a couple of years ago. The Super Fine Pitch tube was capable of about 1400x1080i actual viewable display resolution due to the .25mm aperture grill those units had.

    The 970 does not have the Super Fine Pitch tube and can actually only display about 900x1080i viewable. Not what I would call a real HDTV, but still a high resolution screen. That combined with the fact it is a direct view CRT (and has a relatively small 34" screen size compared to most HDTV's) is why SD looks decent on it. Much of the noise and low bandwidth image flaws of SD are being concealed by it's limited viewable resolution capability and CRT display technology.

    Plus, with a screen that small, even if it was capable of resolving a 1920x1080 image you'd have to sit just a few feet from it to see all those details.

    Once you get into larger (50" and up) fixed pixel HDTV's with 1920x1080 native display resolution, it's a whole different ball game. SD picture quality, especially analog SD like VHS and traditional broadcast/cable, becomes a tougher challenge to deal with.
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  25. Preservationist davideck's Avatar
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    CRTs have their own characteristic image quality issues as well. V and H linearity. Convergence. Purity. Focus. Blooming. The consumer "Hi-Def" CRTs that I've seen on display look pretty dismal compared to the perfect geometry and registration of flat screens. PQ has many facets.

    The visible scan lines on a CRT bother me as well. I appreciate the more uniform display of an LCD or Plasma. Any decent large monitor will reveal the limitations of low resolution sources. That's why preservation of detail is so important. Every little bit helps.
    Life is better when you focus on the signals instead of the noise.
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  26. Once again content. There are some, maybe many titles that will never come out on DVD.

    Amos & Andy the movie, Amos and Andy TV Show, I know not a PC show. But it still mde me laugh. Song of the south with editing?
    Those are just two examples that come to mind as being not PC, Others are most likely just to much a niche product. Or some of the old Kinescopes that would still look poor no matter what they did to improve the picture.

    Quick trivia ?
    What was funny/strange about the Amos and Andy show?
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  27. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by davideck
    will reveal the limitations of low resolution sources. That's why preservation of detail is so important. Every little bit helps.
    True. But the problem with HD is it reveals all the noise. And some people (at least on this site) confuse noise with detail. It's not the inherent issue of resolution, but rather the blind thoughtless idiocy of HD makers to not add some type of SD noise filter to the sets.

    I've even seen some HD flat screens that show the full overscan. What the hell were they thinking?
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  28. Preservationist davideck's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    But the problem with HD is it reveals all the noise. And some people (at least on this site) confuse noise with detail.
    Detail, Sharpness, and Noise have at times been confused. They're easier to discern with the proper source and setup, but much of this is also subjective. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

    My audio cassettes sounded noisier when I upgraded to a CD quality sound system. HDTV is no different.
    Life is better when you focus on the signals instead of the noise.
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  29. I received my RCA 8030 and overall I'm very happy with it. Like Lordsmurf said.. the 3 hour mode on this thing is very impressive. And after seeing all the pictures of it online I was expecting a very generic looking unit, but in person it's actually not bad looking.

    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.

    Lordsmurf (or anyone else with this model), if you are able to burn at faster speeds with yours, could you post what media you are using? Or do you all mainly do all your recordings straight to disc?
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  30. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    The timer doesn't like to burn straight to disc. I missed something when I tried that. Without the timer, it's fine.

    The slowness factor varies a lot. It only takes 4-5 minutes to burn a 35-minute recording to 2.4x INFODISCA1 DVD+RW. So it's going the full 2.4x speed, meaning 25 minutes of burn time for a ~3-hour disc.

    Some discs go much slower, some go faster. It's really no worse than any other HDD recorder I've ever used, be it Panasonic, Pioneer or otherwise.

    Does it work with DVD-RW? I never tried. I thought it was DVD+R/DVD+RW only.

    I generally transfer on a weekend, while I watch a DVD on the other recorder connected to that tv. I just pause my DVD, flip back to the RCA about every 5 minutes, instruct it to transfer the next one, then flip back to my DVD.

    It's not the perfect machine, but it's really good for my use (digital cable to 3-hour mode, to the hard drive on a timer), better than all other options currently available. And unlike the Toshiba (the machine I had originally wanted), this unit turns off fully when not in use.
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