OT: DVD recorders

[Joe]

The Diocese of Brentwood used Demon for quite a while, until someone pointed out the incongruity to the Bishop...

Did you notice that a Cardinal Sin has recently died in the Philipines?

[Set Square]

Maybe it's time to cast out your demons and find a more suitable ISP/web hosting company.

How about Cloud Nine or, perhaps better still, Paradise Internet?

[Martin Angove]

Yes, but even in computing, isn't that usually spelled "daemon"?

Hwyl!

M.

[Martin Angove]

I plan on using CD-R; the things are cheap enough these days not to need to re-use them. I'm told that the write-once discs are better in older players than the rewriteables. Something to do with the contrast of the dye.

Besides which, although we are at present mainly using ATRAC LP4 mode, I'm not at all happy with lossy systems, particularly if there's a lot going on. Post upgrade the recorded audio will also be (dynamic range) compressed, which'll make it much harder for a lossy system to work transparently. Oh yes, and the radio mics aren't the best I've ever used, and there is a little background radio hiss going on which is a killer for lossy systems.

Some stand-alone MP3 recorders I've seen (none of which would be suitable by the way as they all record to memory cards) will only code up to 128kbps which is right at the bottom end of what I would consider acceptable ;-)

Hwyl!

M.

[Martin Angove]

or scan convert. I'm currently looking at a couple of rather nice devices from Keene which do the job for under £100. The idea is that if we end up permanently installing the video projector it makes sense to have only one connection to it (i.e. VGA) so that when switching between video and computer output you don't have to stand up the front and wave the remote control about :-)

Hwyl!

M.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Does it accept RGB? And composite? And perhaps S Video? If a high quality device could be the answer to many a prayer.

[bigcat]

I clearly didnt say that. Since cda is on sale in every store theres not much question of that.

However in future, when everyone else is getting either 10x as much info on CDs or 100x on DVDs, and youre still putting nowt but 74 mins of audio, you'll kick yourself.

NT

[Set Square]

Doesn't that mean that he needs CD-DA for current users *plus* something better to make it future-proof? Unless it does CD-DA, he can't make recordings which are compatible with his customers' current kit.

[Martin Angove]

The "under £100" ones only accept composite, s-video and VGA as inputs, but there's a device for £120 which has:

RF input for internal NICAM tuner (PAL-I, B/G, D/K, SECAM)

Composite input with stereo audio (PAL/SECAM/NTSC)

S-video input with stereo audio

Component input (YCbCr)

VGA input

VGA output at 60Hz or 75Hz at 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768

DVI output

stereo output

Deinterlacing

Fastext

3:2 pulldown

I know you asked for RGB and this is YCbCr, but maybe it'll do. It's not going to be phenominal quality for £120, but it obviously has digital processing inside of some description and compared with the "high end" devices I've seen at £300 or £400 or more.

Model number VTB100 if you can find it on the website.

enough, even though I'd have thought it would be fairly simple to convert YCbCr to RGB, Keene's devices for doing so are rather expensive, e.g. RGB2C @ £90

Hwyl!

M.

[Martin Angove]

I'll say it again, without going down the computer route there is no device on the market today that is future proof in this way. Not only that, but even if I were to go down the computer route there is no one format that is either universally accepted or is likely to become a standard except perhaps mp3, and there are many "out there" who think mp3 is last century's technology too. And since CD is going to be 700MB or so in storage for ever, the only way to get more than 70(ish) minutes of audio on there is to data compress the stuff. Maybe I don't fancy that :-)

For £150 it isn't worth arguing. CD-DA is going to be around for the foreseable future. The people I am going to be lending these CDs to are going to be able to play CD-DA for at least the next 10 years. Our services rarely beat 70 minutes, so an 80 minute CD is going to be just fine.

I can see a point where I'm going to install a computer, record to hard disc and then dump to whatever format I need at times "real time" at the end of the service, but I haven't reached that point yet. You could argue that a £300/£400 computer will do that job now and that the price difference isn't that great, but that isn't my only concern. My secondary concern would be that such a computer, if bought, would not only be vulnerable to people who fancy playing games on the big screen, but would be pressed into service running the projector too, and I am

*not* confident that there is a way to make those two things happen reliably together (i.e. record the audio (or video) while running the presentation).

Thanks to all who have helped, especially those who have pointed me in the direction of LiteOn. It's a shame the beast has a number of poor reviews in among the rave ones, but as it's been on the market since December perhaps things are settling down now.

Hwyl!

M.

[Owain]

And is a subtle yet effective way of discouraging waffly ministers :-)

Owain

[Martin Angove]

I wouldn't think so. Back in the days when I used to record the service onto one side of a C90 (i.e. 45 minutes of tape), I used to just record the notices, the reading(s), the sermon and perhaps the last hymn if there was any tape left. Problem was that at that time we had a minister who could easily talk for 40 minutes, and regarded a 30 minute sermon as a longish children's talk...

...it was not unknown for me to flip the tape over so that the end of the evening sermon recorded over the start of the morning service :-)

And the bloke didn't notice. The people who listened to the tapes did, of course, but they were usually content with one complete sermon.

I still have a few of those tapes hanging about if anyone wants to... no, I thought not.

And CD players don't tend to make the obvious mechanical "clunk" when the tape runs out :-)

Hwyl!

M.

[Dave]

Does it work on prime ministers as well ;-)

Dave

[bigcat]

A computer can do any format that comes along, past present or future. And you can very easily make discs in moer than one format to cater for anyone with old kit while at the same time catering for those 1000 new faetures you want on there for the rest of your clients.

I know you dont want to get into computers, and of course i accept that, im only saying

a) if would be by far the most capable option b) its more past proof, present proof and future proof c) whereas a .cda recorder wont satisfy you long term

mp3 is the logical way, it is pretty well a universal format now, the one thats taken over from cda. Mp3 works with background hiss, and variable bit rates give good compression without sacrificing quality.

yes... for your present job.

A =A30 computer will do that now, with a =A340 DVD/CD writer.

install win 2000, then they can use it but not muck it about.

thats easy. But I'd try to get a P3 if you want to do all that, rather than P2.

G'luck with your cd recorder, I assume thats what youre getting.

NT