For a lot of reasons, a DVD recorder equipped with a hard-disk drive makes a lot of sense. Sharp’s stylish DV-HR300, which contains a drive with an 80-gigabyte (GB) capacity, is a good example of the advantages of such an arrangement.
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FAST FACTS
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DIMENSIONS 17 x 2 3/8 x 13 inches |
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KEY FEATURES
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• Records on DVD-R/RW discs and an internal 80-gigabyte hard drive |
Like previous Sharp DVD recorders, the DV-HR300 records on write-once DVD-R and rewritable DVD-RW discs, and it’ll play, but not record on, DVD+R/ RW discs. It records on DVD-RW discs either in Video format — which produces discs that behave very much like movie DVDs and can be played in most standard DVD players and computer drives — or in VR format, which lets you edit programs but produces discs that aren’t as widely playable.
Having a hard-disk recorder in the same chassis, however, makes disc compatibility pretty much irrelevant, because you can edit any program you’ve recorded on the hard drive and copy it — without the commercials if it’s a TV show! — to DVD-R.
The hard drive also makes possible some of the “trick” features familiar to users of TiVo and ReplayTV recorders. There’s Time Shift Viewing, which lets you pause a program you’re watching and recording and then pick up where you left off when you’re ready to resume playback — all without interfering with the recording. Chasing Playback lets you play a program from the beginning even though it hasn’t finished recording. There’s also a record/playback function that lets you watch a program already on the hard drive while a new one is being recorded. And when you’re using the timer to make a DVD recording, you can also set the machine to automatically kick in the hard drive for the remainder of the program so the end isn’t cut off.
One of the most important functions of the hard drive, though, is to serve as a high-capacity buffer to hold and play recordings while you decide which ones you want to preserve on “keeper” DVDs. You can record a long program to the drive in a high-quality mode, and then either dub it to DVD in a lower-quality mode to make it fit, or retain the high quality of the original and use the editing controls to split it up on two or more DVDs.
High-speed hard-disk-to-DVD dubbing is possible, too. Dubbing a 1-hour program encoded at the highest quality (Fine mode) takes 30 minutes if you use a 2x-compatible DVD blank. Dubbing the same 1-hour program recorded at the lowest quality (EP) takes only 5 minutes. If you want to change to a different recording-quality mode, you’ll have to do the dub in real time.
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PLUS MINUS |
Hookup was uneventful. I was able to get the front-panel i.Link (a.k.a. FireWire) input, intended for data from a digital camcorder, to also respond to audio and video signals fed from my computer even though the manual implies this can’t be done (results may vary depending on your computer and playback software). The i.Link connection is input only, so you can’t upload a recorded program to, say, your computer.
The recorder’s remote is generally easy to use, with the most-used player controls comfortably arranged in the lower half of the handset. Its only real drawback is that some important buttons, like the onscreen-display controls, are underneath a flip-down door that itself carries important controls — like the record button.
These and all the other features of the DV-HR300 operated exactly as described in the manual, including certain exceptions and complexities involving both high-speed dubbing and editing (though the complications of the latter are par for the course — I haven’t seen a simpler editing system that is equally versatile). Video performance in both recording and movie playback was very good, making allowances for the usual degradations you get when recording in the long-play modes.
Using the onscreen timer recording system proved easier than the usual manual process — the recorder puts up a grid of times and channel numbers, and you use the remote control to navigate the grid and select the blocks representing the time/ channel combinations you want to record. (Actual channel names and program titles do not appear, but VCR Plus+ recording is also available.) While it doesn’t quite match the ease of use of an onscreen electronic program guide, Sharp’s DV-HR300 gets very close. Its editing features also make it extremely versatile, and it looks great both on the shelf and on the screen.
In the LabDVD-VIDEO PERFORMANCE
Maximum-white level error: 0 IRE
Setup level: 0 IRE
Horizontal luminance response
(re level at 1 MHz)
3/4/5/6/6.75 MHz: ±0/±0/±0/–0.44 dB
Onscreen horizontal resolution: 540 lines
In-player letterboxing: good
Component-output level error (interlaced)
(Y/Pr/Pb): +1.14/+4.5/+5.9%
Component-output timing error (interlaced)
(Pr/Pb): –37/–34 nanoseconds
The DV-HR300 did well in the lab tests, with very fine video performance and fairly clean audio recording and CD playback. Its progressive-scan output was free of the color-smearing effects of the common “chroma-upsampling bug,” but, as often happens, was a little rough in reproducing interlaced video material. Recorded video quality depends mainly on the selected recording mode and not on whether the hard drive or a DVD is the storage medium. Below the Fine (commercial-DVD quality) and SP (near-DVD quality) modes, there are distinct breakpoints: you lose half the horizontal resolution using the LP mode (270 lines instead of 540) for a distinctly less sharp picture, but still sharper than VHS. You also lose half the vertical resolution using the EP mode (240 lines instead of 480).
MPEG-encoding artifacts such as blocking and mosquito noise, which are invisible or well controlled with the Fine and SP modes, become more visible with the LP and EP modes. —D.R.