Recording to a DVD only (no HDD) recorder..

[Jim Pixel]

If I wanted to burn to a DVD recorder without a HDD....

I take it there are multiple inputs on them, like any other recorder. Is this so??
Can you link a HDD recorder to a DVD only recorder, and press 'play' on a HDD recorded movie and press 'record' on the DVD only recorder and get it to burn to the DVD???

Forgive my apparent naivity in this situation but I have never owned a non HDD recorder, and started to think it might not be such a good idea if you tried to record in this manner but didn't press the play button on the other unit. You would record a blank screen until you hit play... Unlike a VCR, you can't edit a -r disc, if you didn't get it right the first time, could you???

Can these units record from another source other than the TV tuner within itself...???

The next question is, how would you know when to hit the play button on the source, as DVDs take a little while to actually record after you press record, don't they...???

 

[Toasty]

If I wanted to burn to a DVD recorder without a HDD....

I take it there are multiple inputs on them, like any other recorder. Is this so??

Yes

Can you link a HDD recorder to a DVD only recorder, and press 'play' on a HDD recorded movie and press 'record' on the DVD only recorder and get it to burn to the DVD???

Yes

Forgive my apparent naivity in this situation but I have never owned a non HDD recorder, and started to think it might not be such a good idea if you tried to record in this manner but didn't press the play button on the other unit. You would record a blank screen until you hit play... Unlike a VCR, you can't edit a -r disc, if you didn't get it right the first time, could you???

The DVD recorder will record exactly what is output from source, so if the HDD is displaying a menu before selecting a movie, the DVD recorder will record that menu until the movie starts. -R discs will not allow any editing, you may be able to do some crude editing with a -RW disc, but that will depend on the player. You can certainly write more than once to a -RW disc if you make mistakes.

The next question is, how would you know when to hit the play button on the source, as DVDs take a little while to actually record after you press record, don't they...???

I suspect this will be a manual process and you're right, Recorders can take a few seconds to setup a record session, the best way would be to start a record and immediatley put it on pause then press play and unpause at the same time. Again this would be down to the individual DVD recorder on how well this is handled.