What is the average life of DVD Recorder?

googler

ada1988 wrote: »

My DVD recorder for my more than 3 year old laptop is still fine. It not only depends on the time.

OP was talking about standalone DVD recorders, he was - not DVD drives in PCs.....

oldagetraveller

I've owned a Samsung combined DVD player/recorder and VHS video player/recorder for five and a half trouble free years so maybe Panasonic aren't as good as they used to be? I know from experience their modern televisions aren't! I wouldn't be too pleased if a supposed quality brand failed after 3 and a bit years.
I use the DVD recorder quite often to make hard copies of stuff I want to keep from my personal video recorder(PVR) rather than keep it store on the HDD which do often fail.

melbury

Thanks for all of your useful replies, must admit I had never heard of PVR's before,

Can you record onto disks with a PVR or can you only record to the hard drive and then have to delete? It's just that sometimes we record things for my son and then let him have the disk. Would this be possible with a PVR?

Certainly won't be looking for another Panny DVD recorder when this one fails!

That Humax PVR is £159 at John Lewis with a two year warranty - could have saved myself £60:mad:

oldagetraveller

My DVD recorder is between the PVR and the T.V. I have Freeview only so aerial into PVR and then to tele. SCART cable from PVR to DVD recorder, 2nd SCART cable from DVD recorder to tele. So anything recorded on the PVR is played to the DVD recorder which is set up to record and then what is being recorded can be monitored on the T.V. Obviously the correct SCART inputs have to be selected on both the DVD recorder and T.V.
Of course it's still possible to record a T.V. programme directly to DVD-R without recording to the PVR but I prefer the more involved way because I like to keep wanted stuff stored on the PVR's HDD too.
Hopefully the above makes sense?!:)

melbury

Thanks for your detailed reply, but if you only have a PVR and no DVD recorder, is it possible to record on disks using just a PVR?

macman

Not directly-a PVR is a hard drive recorder, not a DVD recorder.

melbury

macman wrote: »

Not directly-a PVR is a hard drive recorder, not a DVD recorder.

Thanks for clarifying that, so basically you can only record and watch on a PVR then, that is what I wanted to know.

Seems a bit restricting then really, if you record on the one player you can't say go and watch the recording in another room or lend it to someone else.;)

macman

On some PVR's you can copy the data off the hard drive and then use it elsewhere.
The 2 are not comparable-one is ideal for short term recording, the other is better for long term archiving.
The interface on a PVR (especially the Humax) is vastly better and easier than recording to DVD-it's virtually one or two touches, and has the other PVR functions such as series record, chase play etc.

marms

melbury wrote: »

Thanks for clarifying that, so basically you can only record and watch on a PVR then, that is what I wanted to know.

Seems a bit restricting then really, if you record on the one player you can't say go and watch the recording in another room or lend it to someone else.;)

The Panasonic DMR-EX773EBK can copy recordings from the internal hard drive on to dvd-r discs, i don't think people even read the threads they're replying to.

melbury

marms wrote: »

The Panasonic DMR-EX773EBK can copy recordings from the internal hard drive on to dvd-r discs, i don't think people even read the threads they're replying to.

Thanks, yes I know the one I have bought can copy from the hard drive to disks, I just wanted to know if a stand alone PVR can copy to disks. As it obviously can't, it is probably better that I bought another DVD recorder.