TiVo Community Forums Archives - Pioneer 810, SA DVD recorder/HD with SA Tivo S2, Computer editing, Which is best?

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Pioneer 810, SA DVD recorder/HD with SA Tivo S2, Computer editing, Which is best?
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Posted by: Tider

I am a new Tivo enthusiast and I'm just trying to decide which of these is best. What are the advantages and disadvantages of all three.

I would like to be able to edit out the commercials when transferring to DVD, but I don't want to sacrifice quality of the recording.

I am getting a Pioneer 810 for Christmas, but I want to make sure this is the best option.

Your opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Posted by: TiVotion

Honestly, I think it's a matter of personal preference. I've tried it both ways - standalone DVD recorder with a Standalone TiVo, and the Pioneer 810. I finally came back to the Pioneer.

For me, I just like the "one stop shop" aspect of the Pioneer. The process for recording shows via TiVo and burning them to DVD easily though an integrated menu system was too nice to pass up. The Pioneer makes it a piece of cake, and the menuing system is very friendly. I like having the TiVo and the DVD-R under one roof. Plus, it has 2 inputs, 2 outputs, composite out, digitial audio out, and it's progressive scan.

I decided that taking the time to use a standalone recorder and edit out all the commecials was too time consuming and cumbersome.

For some people, the fact that you can't edit the material on the Pioneer is a dealbreaker. Some people just don't want the commercials. Personally, I don't care. I'll just fast forward through them later anyway. However, for people that do edit out the commercials on a standalone DVD recorder, they will be able to fit slightly more material on one DVD because there's more room with the commercials removed. I'd never dream of burning anything to DVD off the Pioneer that wasn't recorded in "Fine" or "High" mode, and the most you're going to get on High is 2 hours on 1 DVD.
For anything remotely involving a lot of motion, you really need to record in Fine mode, in my opinion. So for the most part, I'm going to get 1 hour per DVD for most of the stuff I archive. The same is true on a standalone recorder, for the most part, except that some standalone recorders will do variable rate encoding, allowing you to get more data on the disk.

If you're going to go with a standalone recorder, I'd recommend the Panasonic DMR-E80H with a built in hard drive. I had it briefly, and it's very good.

Posted by: pbanders

The SA DVD Recorder and the Pioneer are better solutions for most people than a PC-based system. They're simple and reliable. For those who like to "get into it", the PC offers a lot of flexibility, at the cost of complexity and ease-of-use.

I like to record and archive a lot of 1 hour television programs, usually from the History Channel, Discovery, and A&E. The PC offers me a cheap way of doing this at high quality:

1. Record the program in "Best Quality" on the Tivo
2. Capture from the Tivo using my DV encoder (ADS Pyro A/V Link, ~$150) over the s-video out
3. Convert on-the-fly to SVCD format (480x480, MPEG-2, 2000 kbs) using Pinnacle Studio 8.10 SE.
4. Open the file in Ulead VideoStudio 7, use the "extract video" feature to edit out the commercials. This brings the length of the recording down to just under 45 minutes typically.
5. Burn to CD-R in Ulead.

From the start of step 2 to the finish (disc in hand) takes me about 1 hour 20 minutes. Playback quality is excellent. And by buying up CD-R's (TDK and Memorex) on sale at CompUSA, Circuit City, and Best Buy, I haven't paid more than $0.10 per disc in the past year.

Posted by: Robert S

I have a stand alone TiVo with the Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD recorder. This is halfway between the convenience of the 810 and the flexibility of a PC.

You can choose the quality to record to disk after the TiVo has made the recording. (I tend to do documentaries on 6 hour mode and everything else on 4 hour mode). I can pause the recorder during the commercials and I can use the TiVo to seek ahead to find where the next commercials are so I can have my 'finger on the button' for a nice clean edit. And I can use my PC at the same time.

The menus on the E50 are ugly and primitive, but the point it to watch the recordings, not the menus, so I can live with that.

Posted by: samo

If you want to be able to edit out commercials you don't want 810. What you want is SA TiVo and one of +RW SA DVD recorders. I recently got RCA 8000N from Sam's club for $338 -$50 rebate and I'm very happy with it. +RW format has a lot of advantages over -RW - one of them is ease of removing commercials or other unwanted content from DVD after recording is finished. As a side benefit RCA 8000N has very nice and free Guide+ TV guide for one touch recording of TV programming. What I like the most about this Guide - unlike TiVo it allows me to customize channel numbers any way I want. My cable company just changed my lineup and as usual my Tivo lineup got all screwed up. So I'll have to wait for few weeks for TiVo to fix it again. With Guide+ it is DIY and takes about 5 minutes. So on rare occasion that you'll need another tuner to record a conflict - Guide+ driven DVDR will to a much better job than VCR.