DVD recorders are well on their way to making VCRs obsolete. If you’re frustrated with VHS sound and picture quality — and anybody used to watching DVDs should be — the time has come to replace that clunky tape machine with a disc-based model.
Even inexpensive DVD recorders offer superb picture and sound quality, have cueing and editing capabilities that make VHS seem primitive, and use a recording medium that’s far more durable and compact than tape. Prices have been dropping steadily, even for models with hard-disk drives. And many models can replace not only a VCR but a progressive-scan DVD player and a CD player, too. Some can even replace a TiVo box!
But many people have held back from getting a DVD recorder because of the plethora of recordable formats. While the situation is confusing, it’s not insoluble.
ABCs of Recordable DVDs
The five recordable formats fall into three families: DVD-R and DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM. As with CD-R and CD-RW, “R” stands for recordable (but unerasable) and “RW” for rewritable (erasable). DVD-R and DVD+R discs, the least expensive kind of recordable DVD, will play on most new DVD players and computer DVD-ROM drives. The +R and +RW formats are compatible with one another, as are the -R and -RW formats. Recorders that can record on +RW discs, for example, can also record on +R discs. And players that can read -R and +R discs can probably also read the corresponding -RW and +RW rewritable formats. Many newer players can handle all disc types except DVD-RAM.
Like the RW formats, DVD-RAM is erasable and rewritable. All DVD-RAM decks can record on DVD-R discs, and models from Hitachi, JVC, and Toshiba can also record on DVD-RW. A few decks can record on both DVD-R/RW and +R/ RW, but no machine yet records on all five formats.
You can record DVD-RW discs in either VR (Video Recording) or Video mode. The VR mode allows for flexible editing — removing commercials, for instance — but discs recorded in the Video mode are more widely compatible with older DVD players.
Of the erasable formats, DVD-RW discs made in Video mode and DVD+RW discs will play in the widest range of DVD players and computer drives, so they’ll probably play on any machine you try. Most new DVD players will play DVD-RW discs done in VR format, but DVD-RAM discs are compatible with only a few DVD players (mostly ones from Panasonic) and computers with DVD-RAM drives.
Playing Nice Together
The issue of playback compatibility tends to get overblown. After all, the owner’smanual for every DVD recorder warns that no type of disc, unerasable or rewritable, is guaranteed to play on every machine. So if you want to make sure the disc of your home videos will work on grandma’s player, you — or she — will just have to try it.
If your computer has a recordable DVD drive, you might want to use the same type of discs in a DVD recorder. While this narrows your choices, many recent computer drives — especially external ones — record on -R/RW and +R/RW discs, which will considerably widen the number of recorders you can consider.
Pick a Format
Making sure a recorder can do what you want it to is to some extent a format question. To give you an easy way to compare the formats, we’ve listed some key features in the table below. Note that DVD-RAM differs significantly from the other rewritable formats, DVD+RW and DVD-RW.
Here are some things to keep in mind while checking out the table, which applies only to standalone DVD recorders:
- Every new generation of recorders seems to include features (especially in the DVD-RW area) that were unanticipated when the formats were introduced. For example, Sony claims that its RDR-GX300 recorder (due in July) not only records on +R/RW and -R/RW discs, but also lets you use DVD-RW discs for some of the simultaneous record-playback functions you used to need DVD-RAM or a recorder with a hard drive to perform.
- Recorders with built-in hard drives let you use DVD-R and DVD+R discs to do the kind of editing that’s usually only possible with the erasable formats. That’s because you do the editing on the hard drive before burning the video to DVD. And a hard drive lets you easily make multiple copies of something you’ve edited while maintaining sound and picture quality.
- Some recorders are better than others at taking advantage of a format’s capabilities, so read the fine print in the owner’s manual to see if a model behaves as listed in the table. You can download the manuals for most recorders from the manufacturers’ Web sites.
- Features that seem minor can turn out to be important once you start using a recorder. For example, adding chapter markers after recording a program — so you can skip commercials without editing them out — is impossible with certain formats.
- If you want to move discs between recorders, or between a recorder and a computer, pay attention to the rows in our table concerning finalization. Finalization lets you play DVD-R/RW or +R/RW discs in other decks, players, and computers, but it prevents further recording on write-once discs. It’s not relevant to DVD-RAM.
PDF: How the Recordable-DVD Formats Compare
Image Is Everything
The picture quality of recent DVD recorders is about even all around, so how good the image will be is mainly a question of which recording “mode” you select. Recorders have multiple modes, equivalent to a VCR’s tape speeds, that offer a tradeoff between recording time and picture quality. But the difference in quality between the “best” mode (which gives 1 hour per disc) and the “worst” mode (6 or 8 hours, depending on the model) is greater than between a VCR’s SP and EP speeds.
The 1-hour mode delivers picture quality about equal to that of a DVD movie, and many decks come close to this level of performance even in their 2-hour modes. It’s when you go beyond 2 hours that degradation becomes noticeable. Horizontal resolution is cut in half because the recorder captures only every other horizontal pixel. And various “artifacts,” or distortions caused by MPEG encoding, start to appear, especially around the edges of objects.
The most common problem is “blocking” (or “macroblocking”), in which areas of the picture appear to be broken up into small squares. The second most common artifact is “mosquito noise,” which makes objects with sharp borders look like they’re surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes. This often accompanies the movement of these objects and can change shape as the noise passes in front of other objects. In both cases, the picture looks less sharp overall — rougher or grittier.
For modes with recording times of 6 or more hours, most recorders encode every other vertical pixel, cutting vertical resolution in half as well. With horizontal and vertical detail significantly reduced and encoder artifacts going full tilt, the picture looks worse than at a VCR’s EP speed. The blocking and mosquito noise are more intrusive than the snowy (noisy), color-smeared look of slow-speed tape. And, on some machines, the movement can look jerky, too.
Hit the Decks
Are you a big time-shifter who can’t stand missing an episode of Six Feet Under? Or are you a camcorder nut who likes to edit home movies and send them to friends and relatives? Or do you just want to archive treasured video footage for your personal library? Whatever the case, the mission is to find a deck that offers the right set of recording and editing features.
If you want to record TV broadcasts for later viewing (downconverted to standard-definition for HDTV shows), look for a recorder with programming features like VCR Plus+ and newer onscreen services like Guide Plus+. Some models have an infrared (IR) “blaster” so the recorder can send channel-change codes to a cable-TV box, making it easy to record a succession of programs on different channels. Any inveterate time-shifter who can afford a model with a hard-disk drive — or even TiVo facilities — should buy one. Most recording and editing are done on the hard drive, with the DVD burner mainly used to make “keeper” discs.
If you want to extensively manipulate camcorder footage, pay attention to a deck’s editing capabilities — and how you’d use them. While most recorders can get rid of the commercials in TV shows (especially if you’re using rewritable discs), editing 2 hours of birthday-party footage down to a nice, tight 20, 15 — or, better, 10 — minutes requires more sophisticated tools.
While it’s hard to produce a truly movielike program using any DVD recorder, the decks best suited for editing camcorder footage allow you to easily trim, excerpt, and reorder shots. Disc format isn’t nearly as important here as the simplicity of the editing system. Unfortunately, all DVD-recorder editing systems are equally complex to use. So if you’re really into making your own movies, a computer with appropriate editing software is better than even the most sophisticated DVD recorder.
A few decks have video processing for cleaning up the signal from analog tapes — like VHS, 8mm, even Beta — before recording it. But if you have a Digital 8 or MiniDV digital camcorder, get a recorder with a FireWire (a.k.a. i.Link or IEEE 1394) input, typically labeled DV In. This is the only way to get your footage onto disc without going through a cycle of digital-to-analog-to-digital signal conversion, which will degrade the quality. Even inexpensive models now have this connector.
A few DVD recorders also have FireWire outputs for feeding camcorder footage into your computer for further processing. (Unfortunately, most of the FireWire inputs on DVD recorders won’t accept video from a computer.) As for DVD dubbing, don’t get any big ideas. Practically all DVD movies are copy-protected. DVD recorders won’t record copy-protected signals regardless of input, and they won’t feed such signals to their FireWire outputs during playback.
If video editing is a big priority, take a close look at the growing number of models with 80- to 160-gigabyte (GB) hard drives. Usually the hard drive is there to provide TiVo-like simultaneous record/playback functions, which will be of interest to hard-core time-shifters — although any DVD-RAM recorder (and, apparently, also Sony’s new RDR-GX300) can do that without a hard drive.
But a hard drive can also be used to edit footage before you burn a DVD, which has several advantages: editing is a lot faster because hard-drive cueing is much quicker than DVD cueing, you can use inexpensive DVD-R or DVD+R discs for making final copies, and it’s easy to make multiple copies of something you’ve edited because the editing commands are stored on the hard drive. Otherwise, you’d have to edit each copy separately or dub a homemade DVD played on an external player, which would degrade the signals.
Now check out the product listings to see which models catch your eye. There’s enough variety to satisfy just about any set of technical demands and to meet any budget. The trick is getting those requirements to come together in a single model. But with the field of DVD recorders undergoing a Big Bang expansion, you’re likely to find just what you’re looking for.
PDF: How the Recordable-DVD Formats ComparePDF: Product Listings