Best DVD Recorder with HDD?

[gan*]

A friend wants to buy a dvd recorder to record SKY+ stuff, and is willing to spend up to £800!!!

What would be the best one? Also would it be able to use re-writable dvds? ir dvd-rw? or just dvd-r?

What is the advantage of using dvd-ram?

thanks

 

[nwgarratt]

I would say the Panasonic E95 that is coming out. Otherwise the E100 is just as good. It doesn't use -RW but RAM and DVD-R. The E95 will be 750 at avland.co.uk. The E100 is around that price at the moment. I have a Panny HS2 which should be around £550-£600.

There are models from Pioneer that have a HD and do -RW. I prefer Pansonic or perhaps wait for the Sony HD models. But, they maybe some time off.

 

[dude1971]

Benefits of DVD Ram, the main oen that I can think of is the ability to watch something on the same media while you record to it. Think of it as a removeable hard disk.

regards

Dude

 

[kenfowler3966]

Once you have a HDD you will hardly ever use ram. I have not bought any extra apart from the 3 that came free with my hs2 over 18 months ago. I only use them if I want to temporarily store programs in a series off the hard drive until I have all the episodes to transfer in one operation to a -r. Indeed I don't even leave one in the machine due to the extra time it then takes to start up, merely inserting one to transfer to and from as required.

In effect a hdd works exactly the same as a ram disc, but you can store 8 times as much in the hs2, and 16 times as much in the E100 at any particular recording quality.

 

[nwgarratt]

I upgraded to a HS2 from a E50. I now only use RAM to transfer recordings to my PC for editing.

I have a cartridge RAM that was used purely for watch and wipe. I don't need now, as the HDD is now over 8 times more capacity in SP mode. I get 17 hours 50 minutes of SP on my HS2.