pls help me decide which dvd recorder,please!

sherbet

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hello,

firstly may i apologise for asking for help,ive looked through the posts but am at present none the wiser with regards to my nightmare!my brain has fallen out and the more i reviews and info i read the worse it gets. so here goes...

due to the left hand video lying to me, saying it was recording life on mars when it wasnt (the one i was really looking forward to, the camberwick green one, still not been repeated even at 3am *sob*)ive been forced to venture in dvd recorder land. what i thought would be simple, like buying a vcr, has ended up anything but! i swear, ive had sleepless nights over it!

i really didnt want to go much over £100, so after a few weeks id got down to 2, a liteon, and the samsung -128. i was erring towards the lit, then found a load of bad reviews on amazon, but could only find one review for the sam.then i saw it only records on -r/rw, and id found reviews for other sam models, and they werent all that great, and a common feature was disc failure, and poor picture quality. the last thing i want is it not to record, aka LOM, what if that happened during a final series ep of the shield or somat. god, the horror. so then i started delving into the world of HDD, then i saw freeview and then i started getting really dizzy. yeah, i will get to the point now...

i really dont have the money to go crazy, and am very worried about forking out a fortune only for it to go the way of vcrs, ok for a year, then starts eating tapes. ive read alot of reviews, and it comes across as though dvdr's arent that reliable, or maybe ppl are just having bad luck, i dunno.
so if anyone can help with these questions,and my rambling dilemma id greatly appreciate it...

1. im down to the samsung -128, at £100, and the panasonic dmrez25, at £180. (does it really matter that the samsung only does-r/rw, or am i making too big a deal about it? infact does anyone know anything about this sam, good or bad?) which way should i go?

2.should i go insane and get the panny, its does loads of s****y things, theyre meant to have great pic quality, (as opposed to the samsungs), also it has freeview.

3. is disc failure a really common problem, would i be better off getting something with a HDD instead of a freeview, theres a samsung hr730, for around the same as the panny, but it only does -r again.

4. £170 is well and truly over my upper limit, but is there something else inbetween the price ranges that someone could recommend if the 2 ive mentioned arent advisable? id like at somepoint to put tapes onto dvd, as it looks like vids are well and truly leaving us, and to do the usual tape telly and record over, and tape films to keep (and never ever watch again, and put in the cupboard), also to have stuff watchable in my older upstairs dvd player.ideally id like it to be from a shop, not online, somewhere with a good returns policy if it all goes wrong, not like that shop named after space debris.

5. should i just give up, get another vid for £50, accept that itll die in a year, and be done with it?

im sorry to have gone on, i really wish this whole deciding thing was easy for me, but its a lot of money, esp for someone who has no idea about dvdrs.this whole thing feels like a gamble, do i gamble £100, or £180? id be very thankful for any advice, even if its just along the lines of, never darken our doors again you annoying moo.

thankyou,

sherbet.
 
Hello Sherbet. Welcome to the forum.

This is really simple. There is no competition here.

1 - Go for the Panasonic.

2 - Yes. 'Go insane'

3 - What sort of disc failure do you mean? DVD or Hard disk? If the former - Yes DVD failure is common if you buy cheap disks. It is a false economy.
It is much more reliable with quality media.
If the latter - No - Hard disk failure is not common, with the kind of use these machines typically get.

4 - I strongly recommend against the cheaper end of the market. Stick with the Panasonic. Use a dealer like John Lewis if you want cast iron dealer responsibility.

5 - No - get the Panasonic. It is the way forward for you.
 
I have just bought a Liteon LVW-5025GHC from www.svp.co.uk for £89.99 + delivery, it is a factory repack but mine looked perfect. Its a DVD recorder that will record on + and - discs and it has an 80Gb hard drive in it. It also has component video out and a built in analogue tuner. So you can record you tv stuff then edit out the adverts and then save to DVD. It will aslo do live timeslip and it takes digital camcorder input (firewire).

I havent played with it too much so far but I am impressed with the picture on component out and with how easy it is to use for the money its great.
 
hello!

blimey, i was worried i wouldnt get a reply, massive thanks to you all!

it was dvd disc failure i was on about, thats a good tip about the discs, so i should prob be avoiding the ones outta that highstreet cat shop then?

last night i thought, right,ill go all in, get the panny, then became stunned and sickened that you cant unlock it easily, i have loads of region 1 discs. ive seen you can get remotes that unlock them, is this safe, or am i just asking for a whole heap of trouble? i saw in an unlocking thread theres a way to do it via a laptop, but i dont have one, and i have a feeling thats asking for more trouble than the chipped remote... esp where me and any form of chip other than chipshop chips are concerned. i suppose i could get a scart splitter like upstairs, and keep the old dvd player for playing reg 1s. hmmmm yeah, well, i think its time to take the plunge...

thanks again and good luck to you all with the whole recording onto fancy dvd thing!

sherbet
 
I'm intrigued by that Liteon - my Philips HDRW720 has finally gone kaputt (I can sense the groans/sympathetic nods) but all I need now is an external DVD recorder with a small HDD for editing to hang off the back of my Telewest TVDrive - the MPEG-4, DivX, MP3/WMA, JPEG file playback would be a real bonus - does anyone have any experience of the editing facilities please?
 
Go for the Panasonic!!!
It's about the same price as Dixons here
http://www.multizoneav.com/web/product.php?productid=20331&partner=pricegrabber
and it's multi-region - the one at Dixons isn't -and there's a choice of extended guarantees through Domestic and General.
I'd trust D&G's extended warranty rather than Dixons anytime

One of the best reasons IMHO for the Panasonic (or any DVD-RAM recorder) is the timeslip feature
 

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