This morning one of my Panasonic 768 DVD-=HD recorders suffered DVD drive failure. I`ve had one conk out before. Somewhat frustrating. I see from researching a replacement that DVD/HD recorders appear to be a dying piece of technology. Bad bad news!
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Since buying a Humax Smart TV box, I haven't used my DVD recorder very often. Fortunately, it's still working. One of the frustrating things about it is that, being quite old, it will not accept the "faster" 16x modern blank DVD-Rs/+Rs. So I have to use RW discs.Originally posted by ARBurton View Post -
I now have a newer Blu-ray player and tend to use that for playing both Blu-ray and DVD, but I still use the older recorder for listening to radio on its Freeview. It is directly connected to the tuner input on my amp so the TV does not need to be switched on. It is now my main source for terrestrial radio, including R3, but also with Six Music, Five Live and other channels not available on VHF, which I have now - with a tinge of regret - finally phased out.
It still works as a TV recorder but is a bit obsolete, since it doesn't record Hi Def. For that I use either Sky Box or a hard drive connected directly to the TV set via USB. I still like to record radio as an alternative to i-Player, especially for longer items like whole concerts or operas, and it works very conveniently with one click from its Freeview EPG. Sky Box is quite fiddly for recording radio and the USB hard drive attached to the TV won't record radio at all.Comment
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What is one supposed to do, in order to keep things on disc for one`s personal collection?!Comment
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It's one of those problems you never thought you'd have. I have a Panasonic DMR-EX83 HDD/DVD recorder and have dozens of DVD RAM discs stashed away, mostly of Proms I've been too etc. I also have a hard drive that is practically full so a failure is going to be a big, big headache.
What is the best way to get some of these RAM DVD's transferred to CD?"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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Do you mean "transferred to DVD"?Originally posted by Petrushka View Post
Assuming that you do: VideoReDo is *very* useful and is very highly regarded software. This would enable you to edit the contents of the DVD-RAM discs and convert them into a format suitable for burning to DVD-/+R discs.
One word of caution though - the Panasonic recorders had a recording mode called "Flexible Recording" (FR) which fitted a recording to a suitable size for a DVD disc. This it did by constantly switching between two of the other recording modes (e.g. 2 minutes of XP, 2 minutes of SP, etc, etc). Any recordings made in this particular mode are too tricky and time consuming to convert.
(Of course, all this is providing you have a computer DVD drive which accepts DVD-RAM discs.)Comment
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A lot of the material I have consists of off-air recordings and I really need to get these transferred to CD before the whole lot is rendered worthless. This happened to my video tapes and piles of valuable material had to be skipped. The audio material is actually worth more to me than the video element. DVD RAM discs are still available so doubt if the technology is going to be obsolete any time soon but the OP's experience is a warning!Originally posted by johnb View Post"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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Getting the audio off a DVD isn't difficult. There's lots of software that will do this. Google something like "DVD extract Audio".SteveComment
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Steve, any suggestions as to suitable software that would allow me to feed the video & audio output from the hd recorder (the HD drive still working) into a PC via a suitable USB lead, and then burn to dvd in the PC?Comment
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You could use something like this...Originally posted by ARBurton View Post
...my experience of similar devices on a Mac is that the quality of what they capture isn't as high as the original.SteveComment
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Also that would be in real time, which could be somewhat slow.Originally posted by Stunsworth View PostYou could use something like this...
...my experience of similar devices on a Mac is that the quality of what they capture isn't as high as the original.
I've not had to do much of this, but i recall a friend has a Panasonic recorder, and from time to time he passes me files/discs. I have a DVD drive which can recognise DVD-RAMs - though I haven't connected it to my Macs - used to be Windows. As I recall the Panasonic files were a total pain to deal with. I'm not actually sure if I can connect my rather chunky and solidly built LG DVD drive to my Macs to do anything useful. The problems, as ever, are software and trying to find suitable drivers.
I'not sure if any newer devices - either DVD burners or Blu Ray Burners can be made to work with DVD-RAMs..Comment
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My issue isn`t so much about dvd-ram discs but as the simple matter of archiving material on dvd disc. I do wonder whether the entire industry is moving towards a point where you simply can`t keep things for posterity because there are no machines on which to burn discs!Comment
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Things have moved to PVR type boxes and the storage of videos on a HDDs, both internal (in the PVR) and external (in external HDDs, on NAS boxes and on PCs).
I too owned a Panasonic recorder but find my Humax HDR-Fox-T2 in a totally different league both for convenience and the quality of the recordings. It is also much more convenient to store recordings on a HDD (with a backup, of course), which can then be connected to a DVD player/TV/etc (directly or via a network).
The Humax HDR-Fox-T2 has been superseded but I recently bought a used box for backup (for all of £56) in case mine fails in the future. Why, you might ask. Well Custom Firmware has been developed (by enthusiasts) for this particular model that transforms it from a very good box to one that is exceptionally capable, with facilities that I would be loath to lose.
There is no way I would go back to the Panasonic and all those DVD-R discs.Comment
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Re msg 11 - I wasn't really suggesting that anyone revert back to DVD recorders (or even DVD-RAM recorders) but there are occasions when one might want to extract recordings which have been made on such recorders - and sometimes that cn be tricky - particularly for DVD-RAMs.Originally posted by johnb View Post
As it happens I did have a DVD (Phiips IIRC) recorder for a very short while, but it didn't work well enough (though it did have some good features) so I took it back to the store (Sainsbury's) for a refund, and I never felt inclined to buy another one. I think it was about the time that PVRs were just coming to the market, and it was fairly obvious that there wasn't any need to have both.Comment
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Actually converting recordings on a DVD-RAM disc to a DVD compatible format is pretty simple with the right software, such as the highly regarded VideoReDo video editor (though I am sure there must be free alternatives).Comment
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