Looking for a good dvd recorder vcr combo

[KateP]

ok guys I am looking for a good dvd recorder vcr combo right now I have the lg rc797t and a sharp dv-rw 360 in my bedroom but the region hack does not work or in the case of the sharp does not have one and I have to have a dvd player hooked up also that is hack to play region 1 dvds

can anyone recommend me a good new one that has a working region hack one that is ok with hd I have between £100 and £200 to spend on this any help would be good as I really need to get rid of the 2 separate dvd players just for region free

[LCSHG]

Why a hack for region 1 uwhen sing a dissk
I thought Canada was region 1

Conbo's Are not looked upon very well by many and I don't think you will find one wiyj a HDD

Try A Wal-Mart store [good return policy]
If you don't like it bring it back

[betocchi]

ok guys I am looking for a good dvd recorder vcr combo

Same question: I need a DVD recorder/VCR combo. For an array of reasons (including characteristics, price, and local availability) I'm considering:

• Panasonic DMR ES35
  Samsung VR375
  LG RC389

The Panasonic gets the best reviews, but it's from 2006! The Samsung gets very bad reviews, most concerning out of sync audio. I have found very little on the Internet about the LG (also about its older sibling RC388): it's the cheapest too.
I would really appreciate an advice.

[lordsmurf]

Read this: http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-recorders.htm

[betocchi]

Thanks.

[jjeff]

The '06 ES-35 is a decent machine. It has Panasonic's own silicon instead of the later buggy LSI (used on the EZ's as well as the '05 ES-20 and ES-40v) both terribly buggy machines which I would NOT recommend.
The ES-35 was the base combo of '06 while the ES-45/6 included HDMI upconverting. If the ES-35 is used you should really clean the spindle ASAP and try and not record much in speeds between 3+ hrs and 4hrs(LP)/disc. 4:01/disc and above will switch to 1/2 D1 and improve macroblocking for those longer speeds.
As LS's link mentioned '06 was probably the pinnacle year for DVDRs, my favorite combo would be the Panasonic ES-30v which is a '05 model year with dual displays which is very handy for dubbing from one side to the other. The '05 model year had slightly better build quality but the '06 model year wasn't bad either. Avoid the '07 and newer EZ series combos if you have little tolerance for bugs and quirks.

[lordsmurf]

LSI encoder chipsets are better than Panasonic's own chips, for the best video quality. I don't know that the chips are at all buggy -- in fact, they are historically one of the most respected encoder chips ever used in DVD recorders. So much that many brands used to advertise "powered by LSI Logic" in promotional documentation online or in print -- even Panasonic.

Panasonic encoding is notorious for adding noise, blocks in Half D1 (main reason they pushed Full D1 where it never should have been done), and "cooking" the quality of gamma and/or luma. It did get better with time, though problems persist to this day.

[jman98]

Why a hack for region 1 uwhen sing a dissk
I thought Canada was region 1

The original poster is apparently lying about being in Canada. Note the reference to pounds (£) which are completely meaningless in Canada. The pound is the currency of the UK and this post makes better sense if one assumes that this person is actually in the UK and thus region 2. I have no problem with people not putting the correct country in their profiles (see mine), but in some cases they really should tell where they are at if it has relevance to what they are asking about and in this case it does.

DVD/VCR combos could rarely be made region free a few years ago when it was fairly easy to find region free DVD players. Now that almost everybody has caved in to Hollywood's demands and stopped making players that consumers can change regions on, I wish the original poster an awful lot of luck in finding any DVD/VCR combo that can still be hacked.

KateP appears to have long abandoned her interest in this subject, so we're all just posting for the benefit of others who might read this.

[lordsmurf]

Yeah, but betocchi asked too -- few posts down. I answered for him.

[jjeff]

LSI encoder chipsets are better than Panasonic's own chips, for the best video quality. I don't know that the chips are at all buggy -- in fact, they are historically one of the most respected encoder chips ever used in DVD recorders.

LSI/Magnum chips may be a better encoder chip than Panasonics silicon but personally I believe every Panasonic with the LSI chip is quite buggy.
Case in point the '05 ES-20 and ES-40 and then the '07 and newer EZ series recorders(all with LSI/Magnum silicon). It's been reported that all of these models are buggy and contain many timer related bugs. I've personally had a ES-20 as well as a EZ-17/27 and 28. They all had timer related problems as well as other quirks which required frequent resets(I've read similar problems with the ES-40v). Personally I'd trade any picture quality gain for increased reliability, after all if the DVDR doesn't record your event, or locks up during recording what good is it if the PQ is great.

Now I read post from someone at AVS (Dr1384 I think) who hinted it may be the software that drives the LSI chip that may be buggy. I'm not sure if that's true or not but again all I know is every US Panasonic DVDR that's contained LSI/Magnum silicon has been on the buggy side, for whatever reason.
Maybe someone who's familiar with silicon and software could shed some light on the parallel between LSI and the buggy Pannys. I'd really like to know the truth One would have thought Panasonic could have fixed the bugs by now, after all they've been having the problems with the various LSI models since '05

[lordsmurf]

Timer bugs and the lot -- not really related to the chipset.