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While DVD recorders have a ways to go before they reach the bargain-basement prices that VCRs hit before they became obsolete, today’s starter models are genuine bargains — especially because they can produce much better recordings than even the most expensive VCRs. The three decks tested here — Panasonic’s DMR-ES10 ($200), Philips’s DVDR 615 ($250), and Pioneer’s DVR-233 ($259) — come from companies that have proved themselves masters at designing DVD recorders at higher prices. In fact, these three companies were the original proponents of DVD recorders, and it’s fascinating to see what they’ve been able to accomplish in their entry-level decks.
What they managed to leave in is far more impressive that what they’ve omitted, which actually isn’t much. Most important, they’ve retained the image integrity, even in the medium-quality recording modes. (Recording modes are essentially the same as a VCR’s tape speeds, with the better-quality modes producing shorter recording times on a blank DVD.)
Surveys have shown that many people don’t edit their DVD recordings. But watching my own early, off-air DVD dubs — with commercials intact — has convinced me that to enjoy repeated viewings of a recording over the long term, you’ve got to get rid of those annoying commercials! So it’s worth your time to check out how good a recorder is at removing blocks of commercials. I paid particular attention to that feature with these three machines, and what I found may surprise you as much as it did me.
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The starter model from Panasonic, the DMR-ES10, manages to preserve many of the most notable features of its current and former higher-priced decks. Chief among these is the ability to record on erasable DVD-RAM discs, arguably the most versatile recordable-DVD format, though also the least compatible.
Using DVD-RAM, the DMR-ES10 can perform some simultaneous record/playback tricks that are usually possible only with a TiVo-like hard-disk recorder. These include the ability to play a recording from the beginning before it’s finished and to play a previously recorded title while a new recording is in progress.
But DV camcorder users may be disappointed that the DMR-ES10 lacks an i.Link (a.k.a. FireWire or IEEE 1394) input, which would have permitted direct digital-to-digital copying. A similarly direct digital audio link is possible, but only if your receiver has an optical digital audio input and you don’t mind paying for an optical cable.
Although the DMR-ES10 also records on DVD-RW discs, Panasonic has restricted some editing features, such as video playlists, to DVD-RAM only. That’s too bad, since playlist editing is the only way to change the playback order of recorded program segments, as you might want to do when editing camcorder footage.
You can also remove commercials from an off-air recording only when you use a DVD-RAM disc. By far the easiest way to do so — both on this deck and among all three recorders here — is via the Shorten Title function. Just use the cueing controls and the ever-helpful Commercial Skip (CM Skip) button to enter the start and end points of the segment you want to remove. It’s quick and easy, and the liberated disc space can be reused.
All three decks can produce image quality equal to or near that of a commercial DVD movie in the top recording modes. At this level, they can fit a maximum of 1 or 2 hours of program on a blank DVD. But, like all of Panasonic’s latest DVD decks, and unlike the other two in this group, the DMR-ES10 preserves the same high resolution in its 4-hour mode. The other decks, like all previous DVD recorders I’ve tested, cut horizontal resolution in half in their 4-hour modes, leading to a soft, VHS-like image.
But Panasonic can’t avoid all tradeoffs in image quality as disc capacity increases. While full DVD resolution is preserved in the DMR-ES10’s 4-hour mode, I saw a lot more encoding “artifacts” — visual blemishes produced by the processing, such as “mosquito” noise around the edges of objects — compared with the deck’s 1- and 2-hour modes, and even in comparison with the admittedly softer 4-hour modes on the other machines. On some material — especially any action sport — the artifacts can be very distracting. On more static programs — like a concert — you’ll appreciate the added detail.
In both the 6- and 8-hour modes, vertical resolution is also cut in half, producing an image even softer than VHS. And in the 8-hour mode, there were so many artifacts that video quality became irrelevant. Audio quality is always preserved, however, which makes the 6- and 8-hour modes useful for very long programs where the images are less important than the music or speech.
Panasonic’s DMR-ES10 does well as a basic VCR replacement. It has fine video performance and a versatile editing system, and you can probably buy it for less than $200.
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Continuing its strict adherence to the “plus” party line, the Philips DVDR 615 records only on write-once DVD+R and erasable DVD+RW discs. DVD+RW offers only a few capabilities beyond what’s possible with DVD+R. With DVD+R, a new recording is always placed after the ones already on a disc. But with DVD+RW you can overwrite a previous recording.
For some people, it may be decisive that the DVDR 615 is the only deck among the three with an i.Link (FireWire) input for direct digital dubs of DV camcorder footage. And if you’re stuck with an old TV that has only an RF (antenna) input, a compelling factor may be the deck’s built-in RF modulator, which feeds the recorder’s signals into the TV (the other two decks merely pass their RF inputs through unaltered to their RF outputs).
Compared with the playlist-editing capabilities Panasonic gives to DVD-RAM, editing functions are limited with DVD+RWs. On the other hand, it’s possible to remove commercials from both DVD+R and DVD+RW recordings. But you can’t re-order program segments that are already recorded regardless of disc type.
The manual doesn’t mention this, but the best way to get program segments into the order you want with the DVDR 615 is to “assemble edit” them on DVD+RW by recording one segment after another in the desired sequence. This exploits the recorder’s ability to overwrite old material, though you need precise cueing for it to work.
Since Philips remote doesn’t provide a Commercial Skip button for playback, editing out commercials from your disc copies is even more important here than with the other two recorders. The editing process operates using chapter markers that can be automatically inserted every 5 minutes or so while recording or added after recording is done.
To remove a block of commercials, you cue the disc up to the beginning of the first commercial, add a chapter marker, then cue up the end of the block and insert another marker. You then go back to the first marker and designate that chapter (up to the second marker) as “hidden.” During playback hidden chapters are skipped. They aren’t erased and can be restored at any time (before finalization with DVD+Rs).
Like previous Philips DVD recorders we’ve tested, the DVDR 615 produced dubs equal in quality to commercial DVDs in its 1- and 2-hour recording modes. Horizontal resolution gets cut in half to near-VHS quality starting with the 3-hour mode, and vertical resolution is also cut in half, producing a distinctly soft picture, when you reach the 8-hour mode.
But in its 6-hour mode the Philips deck operates at normal 480-line vertical resolution, while the 6-hour modes of both the Panasonic and Pioneer have only 240 lines. Consequently, recordings in that mode on the Philips looked sharper than on the other two, though still soft compared with standard DVDs. Even Philips has to pay the piper, though, and aside from resolution both its 6- and 8-hour modes produced pretty dismal video overall. The image was jerky, particularly when there was lots of action, and full of blocking artifacts and mosquito noise, which made some pictures look very gritty.
Once I got past the cryptic symbols used by the onscreen display, the Philips DVDR 615 proved easy to use. Video performance was fine in the higher-resolution recording modes, though removing commercials was a little cumbersome.
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When I reviewed Pioneer’s first DVD recorders in 2001, I didn’t imagine their capabilities would ever be available for prices as low as the $259 sticker on the DVR-233. Pioneer has stuck steadfastly to the “dash” (DVD-R/RW) formats since the beginning, and the DVR-233 is no exception. Although it doesn’t offer anything new, it’s remarkable enough that the DVR-233 manages to perform all the major operations of those first, extremely expensive machines — with one notable exception: playlist editing.
A minor lapse is that there’s no front-panel S-video input, which will make it inconvenient to dub an analog camcorder’s best output signal. The DVR-233 also lacks an i.Link (FireWire) input for digital dubbing of DV camcorder footage.
Playlist editing has been a perennial feature of Pioneer DVD recorders, but it’s missing on the DVR-233. It’s the only way to re-order the playback of material already recorded on DVD-RWs, and its absence here might be a deal breaker if you’re interested in editing that goes beyond skipping commercials.
Fortunately, even without playlist editing, the deck gives you adequate means for taking out blocks of commercials on DVD-RW recordings — as long as you use the VR mode instead of the less flexible but more widely compatible Video mode. As with the Philips, the Pioneer editing functions operate on chapters — you have to designate a block of commercials as a chapter in order to delete it — but unlike the Philips chapter-hiding procedure, Pioneer’s deletion process is not reversible, so think carefully about your chapter designations.
To define a chapter, you use a special onscreen control-panel/menu, with a window showing the program being edited. A similar control-panel/menu is used to delete chapters. The commercial-removal process is easier if you first define all the chapters in a title that contain commercials. Once these are designated, you can quickly march though the title, deleting the offending chapters.
All the cueing controls of the player can be used when you select a chapter point (fast scan, slow motion, and frame stepping, all in forward or reverse, as well as pause and play and the Commercial Skip button on the remote). A timeline showing where the chapter markers are inserted helps you keep track of where you are — a simple yet extremely valuable visual aid that makes Pioneer’s editing operations almost as easy as Panasonic’s title-shortening function.
The recording quality of the DVR-233 pretty much falls in line with that of previous Pioneer decks. You get full DVD resolution and picture quality in the 1- and 2-hour modes, but horizontal resolution is cut in half starting with the 4-hour mode, producing a much softer picture. Vertical resolution suffered the same fate starting in the 6-hour mode. Pioneer not only provides an 8-hour mode (something its first decks would never have dared) but even a 10-hour one. As you might expect, the three highest-capacity settings produced images riddled with encoding artifacts that got worse as the recording time increased. During a video clip of a football game we use as a DVD-recorder torture test, every player in motion broke up into a mosaic of color blocks. Pioneer’s various MPEG noise-reduction controls, the most versatile among these three recorders, provided some relief when turned full up, but not nearly enough.
I’d use the 8- and 10-hour modes only if I were desperate to get as many episodes of a sitcom on one disc as possible — two discs would hold an entire season. Good sitcoms and talk shows depend more on the soundtrack than on the visuals — fortunately, audio quality is preserved in the 8- and 10-hour modes.
If you use the Pioneer DVR-233’s extended recording modes (8 and 10 hours) very sparingly, you’ll end up with reasonably good video quality most of the time — and excellent quality in the 1- and 2-hour modes. The relative ease of deleting commercials with this deck will have you skipping away.
It’s easy to get hung up on which recordable-DVD format a recorder uses, especially if you listen to the manufacturers’ self-serving propaganda. Fortunately, where editing and image quality are concerned, disc format doesn’t much matter, at least with the recorders tested here. Each model will also make recordings in one of the nonerasable formats (DVD-R or DVD+R) that you’ll be able to play in most DVD players and computer DVD drives.
More important than disc format is each recorder’s “connectivity.” You might demand an i.Link input for digital dubbing of DV camcorder tapes, or a coaxial digital audio connection because it’s hard to find reasonably priced optical cables, or maybe you want a front-panel S-video input to ensure the best possible archival dubs from Hi8 or S-VHS tapes.
Factoring in their editing capabilities, recording quality, and ease of use, these three DVD recorders turn out to be almost perfectly balanced against each other. The , with its built-in RF modulator, might be best if you’re a rank video beginner who doesn’t have even a DVD player and whose aging TV lacks separate video and audio inputs.
is a good choice if you’re a budding video editor, especially if you like the idea of quickly removing commercials and prefer easy-to-find DVD-RW blank discs. , with its playlist editing and simple commercial-killing functions, is an excellent choice if you want to try more advanced editing. And its attractive price is a plus.
I’d be happy with any of them, and the only additions I’d be looking for in a higher-priced model would be an i.Link input and a hard-disk drive. With starter decks like these, DVD recorders are ready to hit the big time.