DVD Recorder and Freeview

diamondsky

Hi,

Erm, what's pvr's...

gizmoleeds

perryash1 wrote:

on the topic of the dvd recorders, my husband and i are thinking of getting one for xmas, not one with the hard drive, but someone has said that there are different recording frequenses, some are - and some are +, so they will not play on some players, now i am confused, can anyone enlighten me please.

I'm afraid I will have to confuse you a bit more here, becuase there are actually three different recording types.

DVD-R/RW is the most common format.
DVD+R/RW is slightly better, and slightly less common.

Most DVD players can play DVD-R and DVD+R disks, and a lot can play DVD-RW and +RW disks as well.

Most DVD recorders will actually use both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW disks - so you don't need to worry too much here.

(nb. R disks are recordable only once (ie. you can't delete stuff once it's on) and RW disks are re-writable (you can delete stuff and put other stuff in its place ).

The third format is DVD-RAM. Very few DVD players will play DVD-RAM, but it is probably the best format to go for, as it can do a nifty thing called "timeslip" - which means you can start watching a program before it finishes recording (or even "pause" live TV while you go to the loo ).

Any DVD-RAM players will always use one of the other formats too. They usually cost a little extra, but I think it is well worth it.

Just look at the spec of any DVD recorder you are interested in and most should support both + and - disks, and if you can get one with RAM support, even better.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Oh, and if you post the make/model of any DVD players you have I can try and tell you what formats they support

Poppycat

PVR is a personnel video recorder I believe. Like Sky Plus but you can also get freeview boxes like that, basically a tuner or satellite box with hard drive to record on.

Also with pcrs you can also get timeslip, when phone rings record prgram your watching, put phoen down, carry on where you left off, whilst it still records,

perryash1

Thankyou for your words of wisdom, got slightly worried when i saw explanation posts, but after reading them i feel less confused, i think i will pass on the timeslip recorder, as i would never get to watch the end of anything with the ability to stop and start it,i am not wanting to spend vast amounts on this, i know that the quality wont be as good as an expensive one but are the cheaper ones that bad?

gizmoleeds

perryash1 wrote:

i know that the quality wont be as good as an expensive one but are the cheaper ones that bad?

I don't have a DVD-recorder (am waiting till my VCR packs in), so I can't comment on the quality.

I don't know how much you were planning on spending, but Richer Sounds have got a Panasonic at £140 which supports all the different formats, and this is the one I would get.