A friend has asked me for ideas and I am stumped as I have got a bit left behind.
He is preparing for the digital Switchover and wants to use the prompt to get a HDD Recorder. He is a fanatic of some minority interest sport programmes and hopes to save such programmes to DVD. (He likes things in bookcases so a large HDD wouldn't satisfy him) We have identified that such machines are available. We presume you take recordings from the HDD and compile them somehow to a package to burn onto a DVD.
Questions: Would such a machine have the connectability to enable a VHS to be connected so that VHS content could be put onto DVD?
The new Humax HD recorder can record to a USB or network storage device. If he has a PC he can then burn these recordings to DVD. I've not tried it, but it may be possible to skip saving the programmes to an intermediate storage before burning if the DTR is networked to the PC.
Persuade him to stick a big NAS device on his network. I have and I hardly ever use my DVD for recorded programmes any more.
With a good old-fashioned HDD recorder, you can simply copy any programmes from the hard disk to a DVD (which, at the standard recording speed/quality, takes 2h 5m of video).
When a programme is on the hard disk, you will be able to edit it. For example, you can cut out the adverts and other unwanted bits, then re-join what you want to copy over to the DVD.
Note: If there isn't sufficient space on the disk, it won't allow you to do the copy. If you've recorded a programme of three hours, you first have to split it on the hard disk to (say) two hours and one hour, and copy each part to two DVDs.
Also, you can't 'change speeds', ie you can only copy to the DVD at the same speed/quality as you recorded to the hard disk. If you record a four programme to the hard disk at standard quality, you can't make it fit on a 2 hour DVD by copying it over at long play quality.
You can copy any video from a VCR (or anything else) to a hard disk recorder, provided the material on the tape is not copy-protected. Fortunately, only certain commercial tapes are protected. copy. Material you've recorded yourself will be OK. As with any analogue copying procedure, there will be some (probably slight) loss of quality when copying to the hard disk recorder. There will be no loss when copying from the hard disk to a DVD.
Being RW, you can erase them and re-use them. However, some people have found (or have a theory) that there is a tendency for RW disks fail to retain a recording as long as non-RW.
The PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) I have come across work on the basis they are recording digital content so do not mess with the already compressed signal - they stream it to disk as is.
That works well - but even if the device has analogue pass through for chaing say a VHS into it, it is unlikely the machine will be able to record the VHS picture as that would require actual encoding and compression work to be done by the machine.
There might be the odd fancy machine that could do it - but it's unlikely in the commodity area.
They won't last forever - and not as long in general as a pressed DVD. You can improve matters by using higher quality (archival) media, storing correctly etc - but don't regard them as permanant. Other than that, no.
Personally though, I would try to get with the times and get a media device with a large hard drive to stick them on, plus a backup. It will probably cost less than a moderate quantity of media - but if he wants DVD - then fair enough - just warn him they won;t last forever and may need recopying if they are important enough.
That depends on the hard drive recorder. Many won't have any capability to digitise analogue video - they simply save the off air digital stream for later playback. If it has a DVD recorder in it as well, then it probably can record from an analogue source.
Basically *all* commercial tapes. However stripping the macrovision protection is not too difficult. Cheap boxes to do same used to litter ebay. Alas less common now, but still about if you look. (typically sold as "video stabilisers").
Depends if the device has an analogue tuner, that would have to have an encoder to record the analogue signal. A digital tuner only box may still be able to record from an analogue input, one would have to look at the spec for a given device to be sure.
There may also be a problem with the relatively poor signal one would get from VHS as well. When I first got a HDD/DVD recorder I jury rigged it in another room to play, the aerial feed wasn't the best. The VHS quality reception (ie a bit noisey) gave the encoder in the box a head ache that it could only just cope with.
I doubt if any of the older types of hard disk + DVD recorder with analogue TV tuners (and probably some with digital tuners) did not have a SCART (or RCA/phono) video input-output connectors. However the hard-disk-only PVR recorders, which followed them, usually only had a TV aerial input, and there was no provision for a video input/output signal, ie there was no way of extracting the recording from the hard disk. The up-to-date stuff usually allows you to extract your recording via a USB connection - but not directly to a DVD. I'm not sure if any of the modern equipment provides the same facilities the hard disk + DVD recorders of six years ago! [I'm no expert, so please advise to the contrary!]
Probably most of the commercial high-ranking movie tapes are copy-protected. However, I have several tapes made by smaller-scale commercial companies, and these are not.
If you've got an older hard disc / DVD recorder, with an analogue TV tuner, the copy protection usually 'gets lost' if you do an RF (not video) copy from the VCR to the recorder. However, the quality will be somewhat worse than with a direct video copy over a SCART lead.
I have also found that I can copy copy-protected video to my computer, using the AV inputs on the Hauppauge TV tuner card while running a protection-removal program in the background. This produces an MPG file, which I can then use to produce a normal DVD video.
It all depends if you are in a hurry! However, I believe that DVD RWs do tend to be a bit more fussy. My now-ageing recorder started becoming increasingly reluctant to record to RW disks (even from the same pack). I read that this might be a sign that the laser lens was dirty. Cleaning it fixed the problem.
Old fahioned HDD recorders are still widely available. See Sony HDX995 for example with analogue & digital tuners, 250 GB, records on most DVD types.
I have a Sony RDR-DC90 with similar spec., 90 GB, which records/copies onto +RW, -RW, +R, -R though I haven't bothered to investigate the editing capabilities.
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