Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Cleveleys, Lancashire, UK
Posts: 74

I am trying to find a way through the recordable DVD formats.

The short story is that I want to be able to record UK TV shows in PAL and send them to a friend in the States (well Cananda actually) with whom I swap TV shows with. Thought with DVD "write once" disc prices at less than £1 it would save me a fortune in postage, and give me a new toy to play with.

He has a standards converting Samsung VCR, so would feed the signal from his home DVD player (it can play PAL recordings via a menu hack) into the VCR.

A friend of mine near to me has bought the new Panasonic DVD-R / -RW recorder (around £500 - I forget the model but E30 rings a bell, or is that the hard disc based one..........?) and did me a test recording of 7 mins of TV.

It does not play on my region 1 Sony player, or my cheapo Wharfdale, the PC likes it though! Am going to do some test recordings onto a disc and send to my mate in Cananda and see if he can play them, but tonight I got an email from my Panny owning mate saying things like recordings he thought had worked OK do not. They "hang" at about 60 - 90 mins through on various DVD players he has - of course some play fine on some players but not on others - typical.

Which format would be best for me, the - or the + versions?
Could the problems onp layback be down to the discs used, what makes a "good" disc to record on - is it just down to price?

Any advice would be great.

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Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Dark side of the Moon
Posts: 140

I've got a Pioneer DVDR880 +RW, the benifits of these are (as per philips' advertising) that they will play in all DVD players, since they have taken the DVD standard & made it recorable; rather than writen new standards for DVDR's.

However my disks won't play in my Wharfdale 750 either! Do you want me to try my PS2?

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Women like to watch films about one person dying very slowly.

Men like to watch films about lots of people dying very quickly.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: St Albans, UK
Posts: 251

quote:

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Originally posted by Nishikigoi
I've got a Pioneer DVDR880

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Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Dark side of the Moon
Posts: 140

OOPS!

The Pioneer is my FTA OnDigital STB!

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Women like to watch films about one person dying very slowly.

Men like to watch films about lots of people dying very quickly.

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Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Cleveleys, Lancashire, UK
Posts: 74

It is an Apex one, not sure of the exact model number, will check.

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Northampton
Posts: 33

There's not really that much to choose between the formats when it comes to R discs. With at leat one supplier offering +R discs at £1.50 now the price difference isn't that great with -R discs and there's not much you can do to any R disc in the way of editing. Certainly with +R any edits you make after recording only work on the recorder, other players just see the unedited version.

With a +RW you can edit your discs after recording: changing menus, adding and removing chapter marks, hiding chapters, splitting titles, etc. The "make edits compatibile" function will then make the edited disc playable on most players. Of course with the cheapest of these being around £3.60 at them moment, which is less than half what they were only a couple of months ago, they're still a bit expensive to give away or use for permanent storage, so you'd want to recycle them after your friend had finished with them.

My understanding is that with -R/RW you have two modes in which a disc can be recorded - one that offers little or no editing capabilities but will be compatible with most players, and one with similar editing capabilities to the +RW but not compatible with standard DVD players. To overcome these limitations you can buy one of the models with a hard drive built in, then perform your assembly and editing on the hard drive and burn the results to disc.

As you'll have gathered I have a + machine, the Philips 880 to be specific, but I hope the above gives a reasonably neutral comparison. If you scroll down the front page of the DVDplusRW site you'll find among other things a comparison of the DVD+RW recorder models and a comparison with DVD-RW recorders but obviously this is not exactly a neutral site.

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Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Dark side of the Moon
Posts: 140

Where do you get the +R disks for £1.50?

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Women like to watch films about one person dying very slowly.

Men like to watch films about lots of people dying very quickly.

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Northampton
Posts: 33

CD Evolutions have the Intenso DVD+R in a single DVD case at £1.50 inc VAT.

Of course there's postage to add to that, but at this price you can probably afford to buy a decent quantity and spread the cost.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: South Coast, Sussex, UK
Posts: 1391

You may wish to check out the following article if you are trying new high speed write media.

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/cgi...ews.php?id=2289

Automan.

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Registered: May 2002
Location: Sunny Slough, UK
Posts: 121

quote:

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Originally posted by TivoUK

He has a standards converting Samsung VCR, so would feed the signal from his home DVD player (it can play PAL recordings via a menu hack) into the VCR.

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Must be true. Bloke down the pub told me.

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Registered: Aug 2002
Location: Maidenhead, UK
Posts: 265

quote:

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Originally posted by blokedownthepub


I doubt the VCR will actually convert a PAL video signal into an NTSC signal. I have a Sony VCR which will play NTSC tapes, outputting a PAL signal, it will not however convert a baseband NTSC signal into a PAL format.

It may be worth checking this out with your Canadian mate before you spend your money.

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Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Cleveleys, Lancashire, UK
Posts: 74

I had an email reply, the model number is Apex AD-1500.
Any better or worse at playing these -R discs???

BTW, it is the real standards converting Samsung he has, cost a bit but the group of people that watch the shows I record for him, chipped in towards the cost.

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Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Cleveleys, Lancashire, UK
Posts: 74

OK, I went to visit my friend with the DVD-R / -RW recorder today for some testing.

I took with me my cheapo Wharfdale DVD player, to see if we could get different makes of disc (with different dyes) to play.

Earlier this week he sent me a test recording on some cheapo make (cost 40 pence!) that my Wharfdale refused to play, it would just spin and spin.

He bought various makes of blanks, from more cheapo ones (Princo, Datasafe) to more expensive ones by Traxdata, Pioneer.

None would play in my Wharfdale player

He has done me a full disc of TV recordings I will be sending to Canada to see if it will play in his Apex, but thought I would share the results of disc playback on various machines, and a interesting “bug” (I use quotes advisedly!) I would like opinions one.

The test recordings we of the following:

1) The TV shows recorded in SP and LP on a DATASAFE disc
2) Copy of Panic Room DVD – done through composite video in SP mode – DATASAFE media.
3) Copy from PAL LD of Kate Bush “Cloudbursting” music video in XP mode on a brand of disc I cannot identify. Just has the letters “FWS” and a circuit logo on the cover.
4) Copy of PAL Star Wars – Special Edition LD – SP mode on PRINCO media.
5) Copy of a PAL music video laser disc – XP mode – E-PROFORMANCE media.

My friend has 3 DVD players in the house, a cheapo Dansai from Tesco, a more expensive, but by their standards, cheaper Pioneer player and a Panasonic A100.

All players played all the discs fine and dandy (just my pigging Wharfdale!!) but both the Panny and the Dansai showed the same problem on the film recordings.

After about 85 mins, the picture would freeze up and the player would lock on the Star Wars and Panic Room recordings. It appears that single recordings of about that length cause a problem on some players, anyone know why???

On the way home I called at at friends house, he has the ultra cheap Naiko player and that played them all without a problem, his PS2 would play them all but at the same place on the 2 films, would say it could not read the disc.

Your thoughts people?

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Registered: May 2002
Location: Sunny Slough, UK
Posts: 121

If you fast forward the disc and start playing just before the 85 minute point, does the problem still occur. Are there any things happening like the colour disappearing and black and white appearing? (Would indicate a timing issue on the disc). Or does the disc just become unplayable from that point. The Pioneer played the disc with no problems ?

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Must be true. Bloke down the pub told me.

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Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Cleveleys, Lancashire, UK
Posts: 74

If you watch the disc upto that point the picture freezes.

The Pioneer and the Naiko had no problems.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: West, UK
Posts: 71

I'm looking at getting the philips DVDR880, but need a little help on the media front. The DVDR880 is +RW drive from what I can make out. Can I only record on +RW and +R disks, or can I also record on -RW and -R disks on this model. My confusion partly stems from the page at CD Evolutions where they ony seem to do -R disks at 1.35 whereas murrayp seems to use this in his +writer. Or am i losing it?

Any help on this issue would be great
Thx Darren

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: St Albans, UK
Posts: 251

With the Philips, you can only use +RW and +R

Pioneer are only -RW and -R

Panasonic are DVD-RAM and -R

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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: Northampton
Posts: 33

Although the page on CD Evolutions is called DVD-R if you scroll about a third of the way down the page you will see a giant Intenso graphic, below which several DVD+R/RW products are listed.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: West, UK
Posts: 71

OK, I feel stupid. For some reason i thought the page only has one item, it never occured to me to scroll down - duh

Thanks murrayp

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: South Coast, Sussex, UK
Posts: 1391

I just got an email that this product will now not be availble till October

However, it is now featured at their UK website http://www.panasonic.co.uk/product/...r/DMRHS2EBS.HTM

Automan.

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