# DVD Recorders to Replace DVRs and Set-Tops?



## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

IMS Research said in a new report that the worldwide market for consumer DVD recorders will grow from 4.5 million units shipped in 2003 to 61 million units in 2009. And the firm said it expects hard disk drives and digital tuners will be integrated into the majority of consumer DVD recorders by 2009.

Based on a recent study from IMS, consumer DVD recorders are likely to see significant consumer take-up beginning this year. In addition to falling prices, the integration of supplementary features, such as storage and DVR capability made possible by an internal hard disk drive, will be driving the market, the research company said.

The proportion of DVD recorders with integrated hard-disk drives is expected to exceed 65 percent of units shipped in Japan in 2004. The same category is forecast to surpass 50 percent of units shipped in the United States in 2005, and in Western Europe in 2007, IMS said in its report.

It's also likely that a large portion of DVD recorders with hard-disk drives will have an integrated digital tuner, enabling seamless digital program viewing and recording, IMS Research said.

http://www.skyreport.com (Used with permission)


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## HappyGoLucky (Jan 11, 2004)

I know I could not live without my DVD burner on my computer, so having one incorporated in a DVR would be wonderful!


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## durl (Mar 27, 2003)

I'm a DVD recorder fan mainly because I like the ability to store programs to disc. If I want to record a show, I use a DVD+RW and it's no different than using a DVR; both allow you to record the program. I can understand the convenience of DVR, but I don't view it as significantly more convenient.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

durl said:


> I'm a DVD recorder fan mainly because I like the ability to store programs to disc. If I want to record a show, I use a DVD+RW and it's no different than using a DVR; both allow you to record the program. I can understand the convenience of DVR, but I don't view it as significantly more convenient.


Have to disagree with you durl if we are talking about a stand alone DVDR recorder. The biggest added value that an integrated DVR (Dishs, TivoDirect) is the semless integration with the content it is recording. I definitily see DVD-Rs filling a consumer recording need and would be a great addition to any DVR, but unless they provide semless integration with the content it will be a hard sell.

I seem them as a complementary technology more than a competing one. This would be a great way to roll off content from your DVR to watch on another TV or for later viewing. If the technologies do become friends, politics will come into play that might prevent this marriage from wide acceptance.

The power of a DVR is not the ability to record content. It is in the managability of recording that content. The ease of which one can select a program to record and view it in a manner the is more productive. A DVD+R would have to provide the same experience and feature set. I have not used a DVD+R set top recorder so I don't know if it does, but my impression is it is similar in functionality as a VCR. I don't see DVR and standard DVD+R providing the same set of functionality. When combined they provide a powerful user experience.


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## tonyp56 (Apr 26, 2004)

Is this going to be possible? With all the talk about piracy, and how our government would like to make VCR's illegal (according to some post here) how can something like this happen. One big reason why Dish won't activate their DishWire on their receivers is because of fears of piracy. If you give people a DVD burner that records copyrighted stuff, wouldn't that be the same thing. And if you can't record a digital stream on a DVD, then whats the point of recording it on a DVD. Does it not take a firewire (Dishwire) connection to truly record the Dolby Digital, and HD signal, without it wouldn't you be recording a analog signal, with no HD, DD, etc. in other words, a DVD thats no better than a VHS tape, only thing different, it can be scratched, and the ability to jump to different chapters, several hundred dollars (right now) for a DVD burner, just so you can jump through a movie faster, I don't think so.

I don't see why it's such a big deal for a individual to record something for their own private, in home viewing. Unless you are recording something that is copyrighted and selling it on the open market, or recording a movie at the movie theater and then selling it as a release, I don't see why we worry about this. But apparently others think its a big deal, and they will try to make it impossible to record anything!! 

Just my two cents, I believe in copyright protection, but I think right now it has started to go down a very long dark highway, and it could become so extreme that no one will be able to record their family video's, let alone a movie that has already made millions. I blame the music industry for this, thanks to their greed, everyone's attention has been zeroed into piracy. I never, nor will I ever download music, but I also never and will never buy a CD that costs $14-$20+, when I can listen to the radio and enjoy all the music I want. I don't think the music industry understands the reason for lackluster CD sells, is not because of music downloads, but rather over priced junk! Not that all music that is out there is junk, but there is a lot of junk out there.


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## durl (Mar 27, 2003)

WeeJavaDude said:


> I seem them as a complementary technology more than a competing one. This would be a great way to roll off content from your DVR to watch on another TV or for later viewing. If the technologies do become friends, politics will come into play that might prevent this marriage from wide acceptance.
> 
> The power of a DVR is not the ability to record content. It is in the managability of recording that content. The ease of which one can select a program to record and view it in a manner the is more productive. A DVD+R would have to provide the same experience and feature set. I have not used a DVD+R set top recorder so I don't know if it does, but my impression is it is similar in functionality as a VCR. I don't see DVR and standard DVD+R providing the same set of functionality. When combined they provide a powerful user experience.


You're correct about seamless integration. To me that's the extra convenience of DVRs. I completely agree that managability is a key perk of DVRs, but to me the inconvenience is that the program is stuck on a hard drive with (in a lot of cases) limited space. And since recording TV is not something our family does every day (or every month for that matter), a DVR just isn't what we need.

To record, I can set my satellite receiver to tune to a program that I want to record and the DVD recorder will automatically begin recording when it senses the satellite receiver being activated. I can later pull up "Titles" (recorded programs) much like you can with a DVR, view the date and time it recorded, along with a thumbnail picture, and play it back. While it's not completely integrated like a DVR, it behaves very similarly. In my case, that's as convenient as I need a recorder to be for television recording.

So in my case a DVD recorder does everything that I personally would need a DVR to do: record shows. The additional benefits of DVR (tracking my viewing habits and making suggestions, season ticket recording) are not things that are important to me. And with a DVD recorder I get another benefit: saving home videos to DVD. So for me personally and my needs, a DVD recorder fit the bill perfectly. Don't get me wrong, if a DVR had no monthly fees and someone offered me one, I'd probably take it just because I like toys. But given the choice of one over the other, I'd stick with my DVD recorder. That should make all the companies happy out there to know that there's a market for BOTH.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

If a lot of consumers are going to have DVD recorders with the majority of them being hard drive based for DVR functionality then the networks/channels will just time shift their shows in such a manner to make it to where you cannot use it to record or have ad placements in the shows. They may even send a que to prevent the DVR's from skipping commercials.


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## chriscyberTLC (Jun 20, 2004)

Actually, DVD recorders can record Dolby streams. It is 100x better than VHS.

I use my DVR all the time, and back stuff up onto my set-top Sansui VRDVD4005 DVD recorder. The picture quality and sound is indistinguishable from what is recorded on the DVR. It's just a way to back it up, archive it, or watch it elsewhere (it doesn't make sense to move your whole DVR box just to watch a show you recorded at a friend's place - burn it to DVD!).

I love the setup. Having an integrated DVD Recorder with hard drive DVR would be awesome. It would do what I'm doing now, but with one unit.


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## Chris Freeland (Mar 24, 2002)

WeeJavaDude said:


> Have to disagree with you durl if we are talking about a stand alone DVDR recorder. The biggest added value that an integrated DVR (Dishs, TivoDirect) is the semless integration with the content it is recording. I definitily see DVD-Rs filling a consumer recording need and would be a great addition to any DVR, but unless they provide semless integration with the content it will be a hard sell.
> 
> I seem them as a complementary technology more than a competing one. This would be a great way to roll off content from your DVR to watch on another TV or for later viewing. If the technologies do become friends, politics will come into play that might prevent this marriage from wide acceptance.
> 
> The power of a DVR is not the ability to record content. It is in the managability of recording that content. The ease of which one can select a program to record and view it in a manner the is more productive. A DVD+R would have to provide the same experience and feature set. I have not used a DVD+R set top recorder so I don't know if it does, but my impression is it is similar in functionality as a VCR. I don't see DVR and standard DVD+R providing the same set of functionality. When combined they provide a powerful user experience.





chriscyberTLC said:


> Actually, DVD recorders can record Dolby streams. It is 100x better than VHS.
> 
> I use my DVR all the time, and back stuff up onto my set-top Sansui VRDVD4005 DVD recorder. The picture quality and sound is indistinguishable from what is recorded on the DVR. It's just a way to back it up, archive it, or watch it elsewhere (it doesn't make sense to move your whole DVR box just to watch a show you recorded at a friend's place - burn it to DVD!).
> 
> I love the setup. Having an integrated DVD Recorder with hard drive DVR would be awesome. It would do what I'm doing now, but with one unit.


I agree with both of you guys, the DVD recorder will supplement the DVR in the future, not replace it. The DVR for managing time shift recordings and the DVD recorder for archiving stuff you want to keep. What would be ideal would be either a combination satellite/DVR/DVD recorder or a digital to digital connection between the satellite/DVR to the DVD recorder to by-pass the analog conversion.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Chris Freeland said:


> I agree with both of you guys, the DVD recorder will supplement the DVR in the future, not replace it. The DVR for managing time shift recordings and the DVD recorder for archiving stuff you want to keep. What would be ideal would be either a combination satellite/DVR/DVD recorder or a digital to digital connection between the satellite/DVR to the DVD recorder to by-pass the analog conversion.


And until there is a digital connection - that's what TV capture cards are good for


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## reedl (May 10, 2002)

The one major issue with just recordable DVD devices is that you always need to manage the media. For example if you want to record 8 hours of programming on a recordable DVD device, there is no way to do this without swapping disks (much the same as VCR's are). This is the same problems that VCR's have had over the years, and is not fixed by a purely DVD solution.

To me many of the shows I and my family watch on our DVR's are one off type shows. We record them, watch them later without commercials at the speed we want to and them delete them. Here are some examples:

1) General Hospital. My wife records it every single day. She may have 2 or 6 episodes in the DVR at any one time, and watches them pretty much in one sitting. We used to use tape for this purpose way before the DVR, but it involved swapping tapes, etc. She has absolutely no interest in keeping anything once watched.

2) Prime Time network shows. Sometimes we record two different shows at the same time (even three some nights using two DVR's). This could simply not be done with a single or two DVD drives. Furthermore the management of the disks would be pretty much impossible. With a DVR, it records the shows, we watch them, then delete them. Very few shows are worth keeping after we watch them.

3) Watching recorded programs on a DVR. All I need to do is select the program from the screen, and it starts. With a DVD device, I need to find that DVD (out of the many that I have not labelled), and put it in and hope that nobody overwrote it before I got a chance to watch it. Sounds like tape doesn't it?

4) Watching live TV (on the rare occassion that we do). A DVR allows pause, rewind, etc. Unless you are recording everything a DVD device will not allow this.

So for me, the best solution would be a DVR device that allowed exporting shows to a DVD for the few that I want to keep. Use the DVR to record everything, then save the few shows to DVD that you want to keep.

Reedl


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

I can remember posting on this or another web board that the 921 was supposed to include a dvd recorder added to the middle of the unit sometime in the future. Granted it won't be a hd recorder but it could then be used to make dvd copies of shows you wanted to save. I don't know if this is still going to happen but I remember not many at the time thought that this would be such a good idea for the 921. I think they should wait till the hd recoders come out and then add them as a add on module to the 921 shelf in the middle of the box. Then this would really add value to the 921. Of course I don't know if this has to do with the dish wire ports or if it can still be done without them.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Mike: Don't hold your breath expecting ANY enhancements - hardware or software to the 921. I suspect the 721 will end up the same.

Why? I think E* is going to cut Eldon loose (for good reason), and then we won't see anything beyond hack fixes.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

To resolve having to replace the dvd's each time you want something different recorded or run out of time all that would need to be done is have a dvd changer that could hold multiple dvd's. Also the future of dvd's will be able to burn multiple layers and/or both sides. This will help give each dvd a bit more space. A person could have each show as a different track and still be able to pause, fast forward, rewind, and record just as you would on a DVR. Couldn't DVD+RW's be used to record the buffer for pause functionality? I imagine hard drives do a bit of a better job of this but at least DVD's (DVD+RW's) could be used to store the data to watch at a later time. It could even be used to archieve it to save so that it will not be overwritten.


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## Sonnie Parker (Nov 29, 2002)

We've gotten used to the DVR from E* but will now have Tivo in a few days. The Tivo has a significant advantage over the E*DVR's and DVD recorders in the name based recording. It was always a problem for us when recording a show like Big Brother which comes on sometimes at 7pm and sometimes at 8pm and anywhere from 2 to 4 nights per week. It's hard to know just when without searching thru the guide and setting timers to record. With Tivo simply use the season pass and it grabs every show. Much less aggravation than a DVD recorder IMO. 

But for shows that are fairly steady and maybe I'd like to have on DVD (if they were HD as I wouldn't really want to keep D* or E* SD recordings much) such as 24, Alias, The Shield... etc... a DVD recorder would probably suffice. 

If D* would put a DVD recorder in their HD Tivo and get all locals in HD (since we record more network programming than anything else) then I'd say we'd have us a real toy. Of course I'm dreaming.


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## kamack65 (Aug 19, 2004)

durl said:


> You're correct about seamless integration. To me that's the extra convenience of DVRs. I completely agree that managability is a key perk of DVRs, but to me the inconvenience is that the program is stuck on a hard drive with (in a lot of cases) limited space. And since recording TV is not something our family does every day (or every month for that matter), a DVR just isn't what we need.
> 
> To record, I can set my satellite receiver to tune to a program that I want to record and the DVD recorder will automatically begin recording when it senses the satellite receiver being activated. I can later pull up "Titles" (recorded programs) much like you can with a DVR, view the date and time it recorded, along with a thumbnail picture, and play it back. While it's not completely integrated like a DVR, it behaves very similarly. In my case, that's as convenient as I need a recorder to be for television recording.
> 
> So in my case a DVD recorder does everything that I personally would need a DVR to do: record shows. The additional benefits of DVR (tracking my viewing habits and making suggestions, season ticket recording) are not things that are important to me. And with a DVD recorder I get another benefit: saving home videos to DVD. So for me personally and my needs, a DVD recorder fit the bill perfectly. Don't get me wrong, if a DVR had no monthly fees and someone offered me one, I'd probably take it just because I like toys. But given the choice of one over the other, I'd stick with my DVD recorder. That should make all the companies happy out there to know that there's a market for BOTH.


Sounds like you have the DVD Recorder I'm looking for, Durl. Which one do you have? I'm looking for one that will work with my Dish 811. I want one that I don't have to program both 811 and DVD recorder to get a program. Thanks for the info.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Note that some (many?) E* receivers do NOT "kill" the video output when they are put into "stand-by" mode (turned off). This means the auto-start feature of the DVD-R will NOT work. 

E* non-design engineers strike again.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

I have three DVRs (two DISH and a DirecTV TiVo) and two DVD recorders (one in this PC and one stand alone). In this household the DVD recorder has replaced the (VHS) video recorder for archiving stuff (mainly movies).

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor asked me to record an upcoming program that her grandson was going to be on (it was on a cable channel and she didn't have cable). After I recorded it I gave her the DVD and she said "what's this?" I said it was a DVD and she said she didn't have a DVD player. My point is, vendors have to get DVD PLAYERS into homes first before people accept DVD recorders. She did have a VCR so I dubbed it to tape.


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## Jorge Mazlumian (Sep 25, 2004)

Hello gents,
I just got my 921 unit yesterday, and will be installed and hooked up today hopefully. So I what I'm about to ask may become obvious tomorrow. However, I understand that if I want to record from the DVR in 480P mode, using the *component* cable can only be done if the DVI is *not* connected to the display.
So, how do I see what I'm about to record unto a DVD-R?, or is the only option to record using S-video or regular composite output?

Thanks for the help.

Jorge


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## jpurkey (May 15, 2003)

I recently purchased a VCR/DVD Recorder combo rather than a DVR. The DVD Recorded has given me the two features I wanted in a DVR, which are the ability to watch one program while recording another and also start watching the program that is being recorded before it has finished. I can also pause live TV too, if I remember to hit REC first that is. The DVD-RAM discs are good for 100,000 writes/re-writes, which is probably not much shorter than the life of a DVR drive?

The main advantages over a DVR are that I can archive directly to DVD-R and I have as much space for time shifting as the # of DVD-RAMs I want to buy. The main disadvantages I suppose are less room to record at any one time (2 to 8 hours per disc depending on recording speed.) and not as convenient to set a timer recording. 

I did see some DVD-R/DVR combo units when shopping, but really needed a VCR/DVD-R unit, mainly due to lack of space and also to more easily archive some 180+ tapes to DVD. An all-in-one (VCR/DVD-R/DVR combo) would be really nice, but probably too expensive to risk having one part break down before the others.


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## jhickman (Oct 8, 2003)

I'm considering buying a DVD recorder soon, and want to find out between DVD-R and DVD+R, which format works in older DVD players, or will they both work? Thanks!


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## Raymond Simonian (Nov 22, 2002)

Coincidently, I have been researching Hard Drive based DVD recorders on the AVS Forum for several months now. I have the 921, 811, 501 and 301. There are two that should be coming out next month. The Toshiba RD-XS52 which has a format upconversion to 720p/1080i. There is also the Phillips DVDR740 which can record Dolby Digital 5.1. Currently available with an 80GB Hard Drive is the DVDRHD04 iLO at Wal Mart for $278.00. Like the other two it has a front Video input IEEE 1394 for Camador use.


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## jpurkey (May 15, 2003)

jhickman said:


> I'm considering buying a DVD recorder soon, and want to find out between DVD-R and DVD+R, which format works in older DVD players, or will they both work? Thanks!


Google the *alt.video.dvdr* and *alt.video.dvd.authoring* newsgroups. There is a discussion comparing DVD-R to DVD+R in alt.video.dvdr that was started just the other day.


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