Pionêr 104 and standalone DVD recorder: which one ?

[ktnwin]

I am facing a "tough" decision here: buy a Pioneer 104 or buy a stand alone DVD recorder.

I have done some little homework:
Pioneer 104:
advantages: more flexible in creating my own DVD (bitrate, menus, etc...), can also backup huge amount of computer data. Cost about 500 US$ less.

disadvantages: time consuming for DVD creation. Need to capture, encode, author then burn.

Stand alone recorder: advantages: creating DVD is a snap, just like recording on tapes
disadvantages: useless for my PC, cost 500 US$ more.

The 500$ delta is NOT my concern.

Can anyone offer advises as which is the better choice (for the next 12 months). I know a better solution today may not be better anymore 12 months from now.

And please don't tell me to buy both (at least for the next 12 months).

Thanks for serious advises.

[mourer]

If you want to copy DVD's movies, the first solution might be the best.
Standalone writer can only record video stream. You will have to connect it to a DVD player :
DVD player will convert digital picture to analog signal and the standalone recorder will re-convert this signal to MPEG with an evident loss of quality.
On the top of that, the recording speed is 1 meaning that recording time is the length of the movie.
You will also lose menus and chapters...
It is even not shure you can copy so easily because of Macrovision protection...

With a PC DVD writer, you can copy almost every title with no additional work (if they are less than 4,5GB) and get an exact copy of the original.

Authoring of your own movies is also better with the first solution since you can arrange, cut and past scene and audio with authoring softwares.

The only advantage of the standalone recorder is for recording TV programs. But the quality will be the TV quality...

So, the decision depends on what usage you plan for your recorder...

[ktnwin]

Thanks for a quick response, mourer. Your advise has many valid points.

I have been creating X/S/VCD disks for more than a year now with very good results. These are for home movies, some DVD rips (not worth to put on DVD-R for me), transfer to video lessons into VCD discs (this helps to select any lesson to play right away without the fast forward/rewind mess).

However, for home movies (my sources are old Hi8 and new digital 8 tapes), the Hi8 source do suffer some quality problems when encoded in XVCD (VBR with bitrate in the range 2400) or SVCD. The Digital 8 tapes result in high quality SVCD. I am not asking for how to improve X/S/VCD quality here because I know this quite well. There is only so much you can do with 2520 kbps bitrate. With DVD, I can go near 9500 kbps.

Any other advise, please.