Sunday, October 17, 2004

DVD Recorder

This doesn't relate to my entry. This is an unopened JIB Oakland A's antenna ball. Pink small ball is blown bubble gum.

We have a DVD Recorder. It's very compact compared with the Video cassette tape recorder. Also of course picture quality is better than VHS. However there are major problems in having and maintaining a DVD Recorder.

1. DVD Disk : Whenever we buy a pack of DVD discs, usually 20% of these are bad quality disk. If you want to watch a finished disc on a regular DVD player, we first must finalize this disc. Otherwise we can't watch what we just recorded. This becomes a hassle sometimes. We keep recording various segments into a disk (to maximize the space)...but we often couldn't finalize the disk. We couldn't tell ahead of time if the condition of a DVD disc is good until we finalize it. It's sooo frustrating because if I am recording one TV show every week..maybe I can fit 5 episodes in one disk. So after 5 episodes (5 weeks), I am ready to finalize. More often than not, and with my luck, it will show an error. You know my 5 weeks' effort is totally gone and it makes me sooo disappointed.. If they have a repeat of the same show in the future, then maybe it's ok... But most likely...not. Once I still tried to finalize...then you know what happened next? this action broke the recorder!.. I had to send it back to the manufacturer to get it fixed. This trouble happened just 5 months after we bought the machine. The manufacturer said some DVD disk brands do not have good quality and are not compatible or not recommended for use on their recorder. Then they gave us a good/bad brand list for DVD disk. However...even if I use a brand that they said is good, the error still happens. I am totally lost.. Even if I recorded it using their good brand from their list, I still can't tell which will turn out as good or bad discs in the end. Recently I learned by noticing from its sound when the disc is running inside the recorder. I've been told I have really sensitive (radar) ears.. hahaha... when I insert a disk in the DVD Player, bad disk makes this funny sound.. So I am careful of the sounds, this way I could reduce the risk of running into errors later..But it's still not 100%.. I still come across disks that still has problems. Now it's not at the beginning or at the end of the disk...the problem is in the middle of the disk..Maybe I can record first hour.. After I stop and try to record different time and different day, I can't!!! it will show an error again..Once error shows, we will not be able to record and finalize this disk anymore. That one is hard to identify.. So I just pray.. please no trouble until I finalize...

2. Copying : You know...for example.. you attend a wedding and record it on video.. In this case..it's easy to dub from one video to other video. But DVD to DVD..you can't. They have copy protection. I know they are selling a DVD handy camera now. But this one can't make copy either ..for example you can't make a copy and send one to other members of the family even if you want to..I tried looking for a solution. Then I got an idea..I know we can record from video to DVD. So how about recording from DVD to video first..then record from video to other DVD. I couldn't...!!! They put protection for this way, too.. We can't record from DVD to video!!! geeeeee... I don't recommend to use DVD Handy Camera if you want to use it for your ceremony or memory. Too risky. Just do analog way... using video handy camera.

For these reasons, I am always frustrated to use DVD Recorder. Oh don't misunderstand about me. I have do have a sense of how these machines work and I know how to use it. I just can't trust 100% of this technology right now. I guess people who make DVD disk can't follow this technology yet. But storagewise.. yeah.. we can save so much space compared w/ video tape. I just use our DVD recorder for only this reason.

link | posted by ExcelVir at 10:33 PM