Re: Current best value DVD recorder
babydays said:
Tks M.Bond.
Did you see any independent reviews of it. The Mustek (but 80Gb) seems also to be good value.
I could only find reviews in German!
They regularly review cheap DVD recorders in Home Cinema Choice. Mustek and Kiss and the like get ok reviews, but they usually finish by saying "for £50 you can buy a Philips (or other named brand)" - for Ireland, you can double that figure, THEN translate into Euro.
You get what you pay for.
Brands like Sony, Philips, Pioneer, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung etc. are experienced in AV and Hi Fi. Mustek, Kiss, Liteon etc. are (as far as I know) all PC brands bringing their PC component experience to the AV market, which is not sufficient in my humble opinion or at least not sufficient YET until they have a few more years under their belts.
I still have not found my wishlist DVD recorder:
- DIVX/XVID/WMA/MP3/Video CD/Photo CD/JPEG playback
- Ideally, Internet upgradable firmware in order to support new codecs in the future e.g. Nero 6, DIVX 6
- Hard disk min. 80GB
- Multiformat recorder (DVD+-R/W, DVD-RAM would be nice but not essential)
- Double-layer (DL) DVD support
- SACD and DVD-Audio playback
- 5.1 input (not essential)
- Plenty of SCART inputs (as I will use this as a switcher until I eventually buy a HDMI switching amplifier)
- iLink aka Firewire aka IEEE 1394 aka DV In aka Camcorder Input
- Video upscaling (to 720p or 1080i)
- HDMI Output - essential for future proofness
- An EPG (Electronic Program Guide) such as Guide+ (which may eventually work in Ireland)
- Ideally, support for streaming music either wirelessly (802.11G) or via an Ethernet port
Samsung have a DVD for €173 on Pixmania with most of this, which I may buy (and a cheaper one for €120 without SACD and DVD-A), then buy a DVD recorder next year.
The move to bigger hard disks, MPEG4 compression, HDTV resolution support, not to mention players which skip commercials on playback, is probably going to change the landscape a bit in the next year. Not to mention HD-DVD and BluRay.