Looking for an HDD recorder

[Red]

but most tvs will be ok with a freeview box or card.

I agree, but LC said her twin tuner consisted of one analogue tuner and one digitial tuner, so once the switchover happens it will only become a single digital tuner.
Hope that makes sense! lol

 

[livelovelaugh]

True but we're talking about the HDD recorder.

sorry - i am sure i am being really thick here, but if the hdd box is attached to the tv which has been made ready to receive digital channels, then it the hdd device will be able to receive the picture, pause, record and do everything as usual?

 

[LipstickCherry]

The trouble is once the digital switchover happens then analogue tuners will become obselete.

Yes, I am aware of that Red. I think we've got about 3 years to wait down on the south coast though.

Like Red said love when the switchover happens that will go.

We'll lose a tiny part of its functionality, but it's not an issue for us.

 

[Snoopy]

sorry - i am sure i am being really thick here, but if the hdd box is attached to the tv which has been made ready to receive digital channels, then it the hdd device will be able to receive the picture, pause, record and do everything as usual?

Yes but it needs twin digital tuners to pause live tv which the op wants.

 

[Satis]

Yes but it needs twin digital tuners to pause live tv which the op wants.

Now we're getting somewhere! I should be looking for something with twin digital tuners, plus VHS and DVD?

 

[Red]

Now we're getting somewhere! I should be looking for something with twin digital tuners, plus VHS and DVD?

At the moment it doesn't exist Satis, not with twin tuners anyway.

 

[Snoopy]

I would forget about buying one with VHS built in you can plug your video into your pc with a cheap gizzmo and copy them into digital.

 

[Satis]

I would forget about buying one with VHS built in you can plug your video into your pc with a cheap gizzmo and copy them into digital.

If my video still works. I've lost the book and it hasn't been operational for a while now.

 

[livelovelaugh]

Yes but it needs twin digital tuners to pause live tv which the op wants.

thanks snoopy! knew it would be something really obvious!

I think, therefore, this is the thing:

http://www.dvdrecorderworld.com/news/139

BTW, I think the 3-in-1 is good (as mentioned I bought one myself) but I would seriously look at how many VHS recordings you have - the poor quality of VHS makes them look awful next to DVDs, and I rarely use the VHS option....if you could transfer your VHS to DVD before (which is almost certainly what you will do as soon as you get one of these 3-in-1s anyway) you may find purchasing a HDD with DVD will be all you need...

 

[Jan]

I've got a Toppy it's purely a twin tuner hard disk recorder though, you can add TAP's to it. I've transferred stuff from the Toppy before and converted it into MPG to make DVD's.

 

[Satis]

I think, therefore, this is the thing:
http://www.dvdrecorderworld.com/news/139

It looks good, but it seems to have very mixed reviews including some stinkers. I'm going to study it a bit more today.

 

[Satis]

I've got a Toppy it's purely a twin tuner hard disk recorder though, you can add TAP's to it. I've transferred stuff from the Toppy before and converted it into MPG to make DVD's.

TAP's???

You need to speak in words of one syllable for me.

What do you mean, it IS a word of one syllable?

 

[Satis]

BTW, I think the 3-in-1 is good (as mentioned I bought one myself) but I would seriously look at how many VHS recordings you have - the poor quality of VHS makes them look awful next to DVDs, and I rarely use the VHS option....if you could transfer your VHS to DVD before (which is almost certainly what you will do as soon as you get one of these 3-in-1s anyway) you may find purchasing a HDD with DVD will be all you need...

The thing is, I am not sure if my old VHS player still works. Perhaps I ought to have a go at fixing it today. I don't want to buy lots of bits to achieve this, then find out I've spent more than I would by just buying one piece of equipment.

The reason I want to watch/transfer VHS is that my father was an actor and I have a collection of his television and film work on video. I'd like to copy the stuff over, but obviously I'd want to keep the originals.

 

[Aranlady]

I've got a Panasonic HDD/DVD player/recorder and have had no problems with it at all. Doesn't pause live TV but I use it all the time. Record mainly to HDD then transfer to DVD if I want to keep stuff. The instructions are pretty clear.

Pauline x

 

[clemenzina]

Once you've had a twin-tuner PVR you are spoilt for anything else. Do NOT buy one of the big brand names, their attempts have been abject failures for one reason or another. Get a cheapo(ish) from Argos unless you are flush with money and a bit techie and go for a Toppy - great but at a price. Humax is very good quality and you can get refurbed 9200's direct from their site - BUT Humax, despite long practice, haven't yet sorted out their 'accurate timing' so they often chop off the start/end of progs. Sharp, Hitachi, Wharfedale (most models), Tesco and Asda brands and the dear old Digihome... all these are rebranded Vestels, good for the money but with minor glitches. Go to http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=90 and get swamped but you can ask advice there.

I have 2 Vestels and a Tiscali+ box, but at the moment I'm busy with my 'vaping' (electronic fag in place of tobacco) so I'm overflowing my hard drives and not watching anything... except Strictly :9:

And buy a separate DVD recorder which you can record the tapes with.

clemenzina

 

[JoolzS]

As your new TV no doubt has built in freeview, then you don't need twin tuners on the HDD/DVD recorder unless you really, really think you are going to want to record two freeview channels whilst watching a third one through your TV. You don't need twin tuners to be able to pause live TV - my Panasonic does it just fine with the one tuner, but only if it's not already recording something else.

If you still have your video player, then it's not a difficult job to connect it to any HDD recorder and record from your tapes to the HDD or even straight to DVD. You certainly don't need it built into the new machine.

There are some very good forums about HDD and DVD recorders at http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=90 and at http://www.avforums.com/.

Personally I wouldn't get just a HDD recorder without the facility to copy to DVD for the following reasons:

1. I like to transfer things to DVD so that I can watch them in the bedroom, or the kitchen. I don't like being tied to the living room to be able to watch stuff I've recorded.

2. I had a Sony HDD/DVD recorder fail on me a couple of years ago. Because I transfer the bulk of what I record to DVD I lost very few recordings. If I'd not had the ability to transfer to DVD then I'd have probably lost a couple of months' worth of TV. As I record just about everything I want to watch these days, rather than watching live TV, that would have been a lot of telly.

3. My hubby recently managed to hit a few wrong buttons on our current Panasonic recorder and deleted everything that had been recorded. As with no. 2 above, that wasn't too big a deal because, again, most of the recorded stuff had been transferred to DVD. Don't worry that this could be too easy to do though - he has no idea how he did it and we haven't been able to duplicate what he thought he was doing with what he actually did!

4. If I see a TV series that I absolutely love I can burn myself a permanent copy of it. It's very easy to edit out all the adverts and bits I don't want so I end up with exactly what I do want.

We use re-writable DVDs so we treat them just like VHS. We record to the hard drive, copy it over to DVD, watch the DVD then use it again for the next thing we want to copy. It's quite quick to do this as a one hour programme on the Panasonic takes around 13 minutes to transfer onto a DVD. On my old, dead, Sony it took, IIRC, about 4 minutes.

Things to look out for:-

The ease of "padding" a programme time - i.e. adding a few minutes to either end of a recording. This was so convoluted as to be virtually impossible on the Sony (this was an older model so may have improved now), but is dead easy on the Panasonic.

One annoyance with the Panasonic that I've currently got is that there is no disc eject button on the remote control which I find very strange and a bit of a nuisance, but it's not a deal breaker.

Check what type of RW discs you need to use for fast copying from HDD to DVD. On the Sony I seem to remember I had to use +RWs, whereas on the Panasonic I have to use -RWs. You can use the opposite type, but then it can basically take the full time of the programme to do the transfer. This is apparently caused by the TV companies broadcasting the programme in one aspect ratio and the idents/adverts in a different one.

Buy your DVDs online - much, much cheaper than in most shops.

I believe that some of the newer machines have a "series record" facility whereby you can just tell it that you want to record the whole series and it will happily do so. Mine doesn't have this and I wouldn't buy a new one just to get the facility, but if and when mine packs up it's definitely something that I will look into.

Apologies for the length of this post, but I know that HDD/DVD recorders are still quite expensive, and aren't the easiest thing to make a decision about, but I have to say that you could only take mine away by prying it from my cold, dead fingers. In fact, I have two of them, although the one in the bedroom was an old one from my mum and only has an analogue tuner. I absolutely love being able to watch exactly what I want, when I want to and never, ever having to watch adverts and the dreadful "coming next/what you've just watched" rubbish other than at very high speed.

Julie

 

[JoolzS]

(I couldn't edit my previous post so had to add this one).

So far as your father's TV/Film work is concerned, you may find you can download some of it via torrent sites which would save you having to convert it from VHS to DVD. There are also companies who will do this for you.

If your VHS player has completely packed up then you might get lucky at uk.freecycle.org. I notice them come up on my local group quite regularly. Or, if you are anywhere near Southampton and could collect, I'm fairly sure I have a spare one hiding away in my attic somewhere.

Julie

 

[Satis]

Good heavens, Julie, what an amazingly detailed reply! Thanks so much to you and everyone else who has gone to so much trouble over this.

It looks as if the first thing I should do is see if the old VHS recorder is still functioning. I'm just starting a run of night shifts, but when they're over I'll have a search for the instructions and see if I can get it going.

Yes, I would particularly want to transfer things to DVD because I spend a lot of time in France, and our house there doesn't have television so I usually take some films to watch.

And thank you for reminding me about that "series record" facility which would be incredibly useful. Because I work shifts I find I miss about two-thirds of series I really want to see.

Oh yes, what is a Torrent Site?

This thread has been a very steep learning curve!

 

[Jan]

Hello Satis,

TAP's are extra little programs you can transfer, via USB cable, to make the Toppy even more customisable.

One of my favourites is Quick Jump, once it's installed on the Toppy you can configure it to jump (adverts) with the Text coloured buttons, i.e. Red on mine jumps 4 minutes, I can have the half time Corrie break start, press red and the second half music is on (does that make any sense?) Can't off the top of my head remember what order the colours are on the remote but the next button is a minute, then 30 secs, then jump back of 10 secs I think.

There is a very helpful forum dedicated to the Toppy.
http://forum.toppy.org.uk/forum/

 

[Satis]

There is a very helpful forum dedicated to the Toppy.
http://forum.toppy.org.uk/forum/

Ahh, thank you! And now I know what a Toppy is.

It is impossible to overestimate my ignorance on all this!