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robint123
Account closed as per user's own request
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9. May 2008 @ 23:18 _ Link to this message    Send private message to this user   
Hi guys,

any of you any takes on set top dvd recorders. These are standalone just like dvd players and record directly from an rgb composite audio video signal as typically output from a tv or another dvd player.

Ive had 2 of these (they werent cheap) One was a very nasty one from Dixons under the Matsui name, another was from the far east called a Soken

The Matsui just stopped recording and playing after 18 months (I assume the Laser head is worn out - it was a poor quality unit from the start and very tricky to use. I got through 25 DVD Rs before I got the technique, very poor manual and not very obvious how to use

Never ever buy Matsui products - cheap and nasty

The soken developed strange logic problems and wouldnt stay loaded (would eject discs for no reason)

But worst of all

All the discs I recorded may of not play on another dvd player (but will generally play on my PC

They have a non standard Video-RM folder aside from the usual Video-TS folder

Many of these disc have gradually become unreadable after 2 years and I am in the process of xferring them to a 1 TB external usb HD. DVD media are definately unrealiable and fade - please be warned.
Some of my stuf is collector items, old movies etc that I dont want to lose. So Imagine my frustration. Its going to take months of patient machine time to xfer 500 DVDs. And then I have the problem of filing them and indexing them properly, what a PITA

I have grown to hate the whole DVD hype thing and wish I could have everything back on the old VCD format - a 1000 times easier to process. It takes a whole morning of machine time to convert a 4 gig video to vcd. And if the process fails before hand you whole work is wasted (this often happens with weak dvds). I use alcohol 120 to burn a slow image buts its all very fraught with potential errors.

You never get anything like these sort of problems with vcd - and who wants all these fancy menues anyway - nice to have but Id settle for a watchable movie anyday.

and btw, the difference in perceived video quality between vcd and dvd on a 19 inch crt tv is really not that noticeable (assuming both are proper takes in the first place and have not been degraded by re-encoding

Purist will no doubt disagree but I am desperately trying to salvage my last 4 years of collections.

So much for technology

The more I know, the more I know how little I know
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