mdawkins said:
After reading a few threads today I had decided on buying a Panasonic E55,
but after downloading and reading the manual I see that it does not record the WS flag on DVD-R. Please can someone let me know if this is also happens if the E55 records direct from a SKY decoder via Scart (RGB) to DVD-R, as I would like to be able to record from SKY in 16:9 and play it back on my 16:9 TV without having to keep switching the TV back to 16:9.
Thanks
Martin.
I had a brief period of disbelief about this (I happen to have a Pioneer HDD/DVD recorder), because it seemed so unlikely. It's slightly worse that Johnjackthom said though, in three ways.
1. Other threads have pointed out that Sky boxes do not send a Line 23 WS trigger (a signal in the invisible line 23 of the TV pic) but only the scart Pin8 trigger (a European scart peculiarity). This means that you have to find a recorder that will detect the Pin 8 trigger, and off hand I don't know of any. I think you can tell Toshiba to add a WS trigger to recordings if there is not one there, but you'd have to check that in a Toshiba manual.
2. Even if you solve the above. no DVD recorder will put the WS flag on LP DVD video mode recordings because it's not in the DVD spec at those speeds.
I think the Pioneers are OK in DVD-VR mode, which is a bit like DVD-RAM but only available on DVD-RW disks. DVD-VR is not a particularly portable format.
3. (would not apply to you) The absence of the trigger, whether because of the recorder (e.g. E55) or Sky or recording speed, means that a WS program cannot be played satisfactorily on a 4:3 TV, as there is no way of 'unsquashing' the anamorphic recording to either Letterbox or Pan and Scan (picture unsquashed and sides chopped off).
I thought playback specified to 4:3 TV would do it but it seems not, presumably because the player cannot find out the intent of the recording.