Originally posted by dimetro:

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I bought it yesterday, and overall I am pleased with it so far.
Picture/audio quality is excellent on both XP and SP modes.
The 80gb hard drive can hold about 17 (give or take an hour or 2) hours of video in XP mode, 33 hours or so in SP, etc....
I copied some VHS tapes to the hard drive and the digital copies look just as good or in some cases better than the original VHS tape.
Its pretty easy to edit video on this once you get the hang of it.

Drawbacks - I don't know if its just me beeing a new user of this machine, but it seems that in order to record edited clips from the hard drive to a DVD, you have to let the video play out while it is recording. I did not run into this with unedited clips however. Again, it could just be me not knowing how to dub at high speed at this point.
***UPDATE*** I discovered that it is possible to do high speed dubing, to DVD-RW VR discs only. *******

For DVD recordings, the manual says that it will only record on DVD-R/-RW. I have not tried recording with a +R.

Another drawback is that there is a sort of lid that flips open when the drive is ejected. I'd recommend keeping kids away from the unit for that reason. But it looks strong enough to hold up as long as good care is taken.

Overall I think the good outweighs the bad on this unit. If you are looking for something that can digitize your old VHS collection (note - will not dub macrovision protected tapes) and still serve you well as a DVR and DVD recorder then I would recommend it. If you just need a DVR/DVD recorder without the VCR you may want to go a different route.

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Originally posted by dimetro:

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I bought it yesterday, and overall I am pleased with it so far.
Picture/audio quality is excellent on both XP and SP modes.
The 80gb hard drive can hold about 17 (give or take an hour or 2) hours of video in XP mode, 33 hours or so in SP, etc....
I copied some VHS tapes to the hard drive and the digital copies look just as good or in some cases better than the original VHS tape.
Its pretty easy to edit video on this once you get the hang of it.

Drawbacks - I don't know if its just me beeing a new user of this machine, but it seems that in order to record edited clips from the hard drive to a DVD, you have to let the video play out while it is recording. I did not run into this with unedited clips however. Again, it could just be me not knowing how to dub at high speed at this point.
***UPDATE*** I discovered that it is possible to do high speed dubing, to DVD-RW VR discs only. *******

For DVD recordings, the manual says that it will only record on DVD-R/-RW. I have not tried recording with a +R.

Another drawback is that there is a sort of lid that flips open when the drive is ejected. I'd recommend keeping kids away from the unit for that reason. But it looks strong enough to hold up as long as good care is taken.

Overall I think the good outweighs the bad on this unit. If you are looking for something that can digitize your old VHS collection (note - will not dub macrovision protected tapes) and still serve you well as a DVR and DVD recorder then I would recommend it. If you just need a DVR/DVD recorder without the VCR you may want to go a different route.

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