DVD technology, originally introduced in the late 1990s, has now replaced traditional, analogue VHS (“Video Home System”) tape technology in many home entertainment systems. DVD – which, incidentally, for the uninitiated, stands for “Digital Video Disk”, or, more recently, “Digital Versatile Disk”, reflecting the use of the technology for applications other than video – utilises digital encoding techniques, to produce not only superb quality pictures, but also sound to match. The Dolby Digital surround sound format – allowing five, discrete main channels, plus a further LFE (“Low Frequency Effect”) channel to be recorded onto, say, a film soundtrack – is the industry standard for DVD, so with appropriately arranged loudspeakers, the technology can offer an immersive and entertaining listening, as well as viewing, experience.
DVDs, themselves, are more compact, in physical size, than VHS tapes, generally less susceptible to wear and tear, and not subject to any form of degradation in quality after repeated use. DVD recorders allow recordings to made from, for example, analogue television, digital television – satellite, digital cable, or “Freeview” – and digital and analogue camcorders, with a minimum of fuss, without the need for continual rewinding, or fast-forwarding, associated with VHS tape, and the reduced number of moving parts required means that DVD recorders are more reliable than their predecessors.
Considerations
As you may, or may not, already know, recordable DVD formats may be designated DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, or the more proprietary DVD-RAM. DVD+/-R is a “write once, read many” format, and, as such, disks of this type are generally less expensive than those that can be rewritten, but, do bear in mind, too, that DVD+/-R tends to waste a high proportion of storage space. If backwards compatibility – that is compatibility with older DVD devices – is an issue, DVD-R is probably the best choice, offering compatibility with 90-100% of earlier DVD players and computer drives. DVD+/-RW, on the other hand, is a “write many, read many” format, and disks of this type may be rewritten up to 1,000 times. Backwards compatibility is limited, however, to around 60%, or so, of earlier DVD devices, and DVD+/-RW disks are slightly more expensive.
The DVD recorder market is still somewhat “woolly”, with regard to whether the “+” and “-” format will ultimately prevail – to the extent that some manufacturers are producing dual-format DVD recorders, by way of hedging their bets, if you like, against the prevalence of one format over the other – as, at the time of writing, no clear industry standard exists. The Daewoo DTRT10 Dual Format DVD Recorder, for example, is a model of this type.
To further muddy the waters, there are also two new, competing, “High Definition” formats, in the form of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, although these are only really applicable if you already own, or are intending to purchase, an HDTV. Blu-Ray disks, for example, are capable of storing up five times more data than standard DVDs, but, as with any emergent technology, there is no guarantee that this, or HD-DVD, for that matter, will still be around in years to come.
If you’re intending to record many hours of video, you may like to consider a hard disk DVD recorder, which, although more expensive, in monetary terms, does provide you with the alternatives of recording to DVD, or to a high-capacity hard disk drive, of perhaps, 100, 200, or 300 GB, sufficient for several hundred hours of video (subject, of course, to your choice of recording quality). Many DVD recorders of this type also have additional, advanced functions, such as “live pause”, which effectively allows you to start and stop live programming at will, or the facility to watch one program while recording another. Do bear in mind, however, that if the hard disk becomes full, and you want to keep your recordings, you will need to archive them to some other media – DVD, for example – and delete them from the hard disk, before making any new recordings; this may involve the “hidden” cost of additional DVD media. Examples include the Philips DVDR520H DVD recorder, which features an 80 GB, integrated hard drive, and the Toshiba RDXS25 DVD Recorder, with a 160 GB hard drive.
Connectivity – to other components of your home entertainment system, such as a flat panel, Plasma, or LCD (“Liquid Crystal Display”) television set – is another consideration, and while the majority of DVD recorders will have analogue connections for composite, component and S-video, look out for FireWire (particularly useful for downloading digital camcorder footage), and the latest, all-digital interfaces of DVI (“Digital Visual Interface”) and HDMI (“High Definition Multimedia Interface”). These new standards are virtually loss-free, requiring no digital to analogue conversions, offering high bandwidths and extremely fast data transfer speeds, and producing video and audio of a quality far superior to analogue methods. The Sony RDRHX825S, and LG RH278H models, as examples, both feature HDMI.
Conclusion
There is a huge variety of DVD recorders on the market today, and the choice can appear bewildering, so it’s important to think carefully, before you start shopping, about how you will use a DVD recorder and what you consider to be essential features, and those that you can do without. This will help you to focus on what’s important, and means that you are less likely to be coerced, by the claims of glossy sales brochures, or specifications, into spending more money – because additional features will mean more money – on gimmicks that you will, in reality, rarely, or never, use. User forums, on the Internet, with postings from “real” customers, can often be a valuable source of information regarding the relative merits (or otherwise) of DVD recorders. Finally, remember that you will also need to purchase DVD media, and, perhaps, replacement cabling – high-quality cabling can make a big difference to audio and video quality and, from a purely practical point of view, the cables supplied with many DVD recorders are very short.
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