Perfect replacement for a VCR (plus good upconverting DVD player)
This unit is really great! We recently got a 40" HD TV and needed a replacement for the VCR -- we wanted to record shows (and On-Demand movies) at a good enough quality for HD viewing.
One option was DVR from Comcast for $10/month (which might or might not allow recording of On-Demand movies and transfer to computer for disc-burning). Another option was using a computer with a video acquisition device and record to hard drive. The third option was this unit for $110 delivered from Amazon -- hands down the most practical choice.
Though this unit doesn't record in true HD resolution the quality is about the same (in 2 hour mode 16x9) as regular 16x9 enhanced DVDs. At first I was worried the recorded discs might not play on other DVD players; but they did no problem at all on any of our equipment (that is after the recording is finalized). The recording time for a DVD-R disc (on high quality mode) was 2 hours and 8 minutes. (On lower quality modes it's 4+ hours and 8+ hours.)
Navigating the menu system is easy enough and each recorded disk is given a simple menu with the various recordings available to choose from (which by default have the date & time of recording as the title but can be renamed).
Upconversion of commercial DVDs is quite good (enough so that we're not that motivated to get a Blu-Ray player yet ;-).
Our only complaints (which are very minor) are that the tray-eject is a little slow & noisy and that there isn't component video inputs (just composite video & S-Video inputs). But it was easy enough to hook up to our cable box (or TV) to record from their outputs.
This will be a great unit to have until Blu-Ray recorders become less expensive.More detail ...
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