I have Pioneer DVDRs, and they have many speed settings, in 5-10 minute increments, so you can make a single short feature fill a DVD, and benefit from the extra bits. Pioneer no longer makes DVDRs.

I have never used a Panasonic, but they have a mode designed to record at the speed needed to make a single title fill the disc. Panasonic no longer makes DVDRs with a HDD for the US market, but I think they do make one without a HDD.

The Magnavox 513 or 515 is the only DVDR with a HDD still available new in the US, and they are disappearing fast, as they are no longer made, They have several recording speeds, but not the flexibility of a Pioneer or Panasonic.

I use a VCR mainly for recording movies off of TCM. Unfortunately, the original remote control for it broke long ago and I haven't found a replacement for it that can menu access/enter the timer-recording feature, so if there's a film on I want to see in the middle of the night I either have to: 1) drag myself out of bed at the appointed time, hit record, then crawl sleepily back into bed; 2) put in an blank tape and press record BEFORE I go to bed, recording everything on before the film I want to see; or 3) forget about it and hope the film is scheduled for a more decent hour next time. I've thought about buying a new VCR but this one is really good quality, with self-cleaning heads and such, so I just put up with the no timer problem.

I always prefer EP mode. For one thing, you can fit four movies on a tape instead of one. For another, in the past when I've recorded on SP I never found the picture quality as dependable in the long-run; it seemed to suffer from picture break up more easily. If I like a movie I've recorded I will only keep it on tape until I've found a copy for sale on DVD. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of classic films not on DVD yet, so I have to keep them on tape until then. Once I do find a DVD of a film, though, I record over the tape version with something else I want to see.

Obviously DVDs are far better quality than VHS; you just have to take care of the discs to avoid smudges, scratches, etc. If you have problems viewing them more often than not it's the DVD player that is at fault. I have an old Toshiba DVD player that cost me $350 back then that has trouble playing some discs without pixelization. Several years ago I bought a Phillips DVD player for $50 at Wal-Mart that plays all discs picture perfect. And the price was so good I went back and bought a second player for a back up that I still haven't had to unbox yet.

If you want to make digital copies of movies you've recorded onto VHS tape, I am certain I've seen for sale a unit you can hook up to your computer so you can burn it to a DVD disc. The quality will only be as good as the tape recording but it will at least stay that way for a much longer period. VHS tapes will degrade just sitting on the shelf due to static build-up; the average lifespan being about 10 years. In contrast, the lifespan of the average DVD disc is ten times that--a hundred years.

They're not made like they use to. The tapes today feel lighter than a tape from the 80s. And i've experienced bad results when recording over something. The quality is not the same.

I can also do ALL of that on my computer and also have had NO problems with compatibility issues afterward, so...

ValentineXavier wrote:When I said that Verbatim AZOs were hard to find, I meant in B&M stores. Of course you can find them on line. But, where I live, they pretty much don't exist in B&M stores any more, the "Life" cheapo stuff has replaced them. I can buy Taiyo Yuden on line as cheaply as Verbatim AZO, so I go with Tys. But, I have never had a problem with Verb AZOs.

I haven't used Ritek, but those on the DVDR forum on the Audio Video Science Forum don't seem to think too much of them. If they work for you, fine.

The last time I bought -RWs, they were a 50 pack of Verbs, on sale at SMS at the lowest price I had seen, and cost me about 60 cents a disc. I was getting Tys for ~22 cents each on sale then. I don't use many -RWs, and haven't priced them in quite a while. I guess they have come down.

I realize that you can have more flexibility burning on a computer, but I find using a DVDR with a HDD to be simple and quick, so I've never tried it. What I don't understand is why you switch formats, from -R to +R. That seems pointless, and limiting, to me.

Since your DVDR can use the VR mode, I'd bet that if you want it to, you can have it format a -R disc to VR mode. They only don't need formatting if you are recording in Video Mode.

OK, one at a time.

As far as Ritek goes, they have had their good times and their bad times, and I have seen both. One thing with them is that have different qualities for different branders. They apparently want to use every disc (or just about) that they make, so they ship their premium quality disks to premium brands and send their crap to El Cheapo. An excellent demonstration of this is the quality which they are currently shipping to Maxell, which I find to be excellent. I have sophisticated Plextor disc testing software, with which I have checked many,many discs. I can substantiate that Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim Azo score the best, while Ritek scores all over the map, depending upon the branding. I also believe that, when Ritek puts its own name on the disc, it is usually a good (but not necessarily excellent) disc. Furthermore, it is the speed at which a disc is recorded which separates the sheep from the goats. Any old junker will write OK if you write it slowly enough.

As to -RW discs, I did not say that the current very low price which I quoted is for a mass closeout of these Fuji discs from the same media sales company, Total Media in Riverdale, N.J., both in their home office and on Ebay, at the same price. They have them packaged in different lot sizes, holding different numbers of 15-disc cakeboxes. These discs work fine in my recorder and on my computer. My biggest gripe with them is their static attraction to dust, etc. They apparently do not use any type of anti-static coating. Otherwise, I have no complaints. Of course, I do not throw them away after copying off the recorded disc on my computer. That would be stupid. I will never use up all of these RW discs that I currently have, considering that they are rewriteable! But then, I am a disc junky.

When I copy an RW recorded disc on my computer to a non-rewritable disc, I normally use +R discs. There is no need to use both +R and -R discs for this purpose. This is not true when copying an RW disc from my recorder to an RW disc in the computer. In this case, I must use the same disc family (- or +) in order to preserve the editability of the copy disc. I do not copy from one RW disc to another RW disc for playback compatibility. Since there is a distinct difference in both the editing of a +RW disc and a -RW disc on my recorder and compatibility with the copied recording on a DVD player, I sometimes use +RW for recording and sometimes use -RW. My all-around preference is for recording on -RW, which has superior editing flexibility but inferior compatibility than +RW. For maximum editing flexibility, the -RW disc must be formatted with -VR, not with -VR Video, which has little to recommend it over +VR Video, compatibility-wise. Etc., etc., on into the night....:-)

I do not use either +R or -R for recording, since these discs are not rewriteable and cannot be edited. Furthermore, either a -R disc or +R disc can be written to if it is not full, but it cannot be formatted. Formatting, as used in my recorder, is the process of marking tracks on the disc in order to be able to write information in the proper sequence. Once a track is marked, writing on an RW disc takes place by going back and inserting the recording information in the proper place on the track. You cannot do this on a non-rewriteable disc! Are you and I talking about the same thing when we refer to "formatting"?

musikone

You misspelled that. It's Memowrecks.

Yes, they are notorious for being the worst blank media there is.

On + R and - R, differences are negligible. -R is considered more universally compatible with DVD players, but with any player made in the last 5+ years, +Rs shouldn't have any problems.

At one time, many DVD recorders could only use one, or the other. Eventually, all manufacturers started making DVDRs compatible with both, but often their original preference would work better in their unit. I.E., Pioneers have a slight preference for -R, and Philips for +R.

Some say that the +R discs are slightly better when it comes to correcting errors. I'm skeptical of that. At any rate, the quality of the media is much more important that whether it is +R or -R.

I asked my esso why he only uses +R. He said that his first DVD recorder required an extra step to record to them. That was many years and many recorders ago. He still uses them because that simply became what he uses.

The local Office Max often had sales where a spindle of one hundred Verbatim DVD+R were less than $20. It is sad to say that they no longer carry that brand and the sale price is much higher on brands of lesser quality. He refuses to use Memorex blank DVDs and he credits the early demise of one of his recorders to them. It was his favorite brand of cassette tapes.