Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: standalone DVD burners

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-11-2008, 11:09 AM:

I've been looking at these lately. Does anyone make a reasonably-priced (say, under $500) consumer-type DVD burner that has component inputs? All that I have seen have only composite and (maybe) S-video.

Can any of these burn a dual-layer disk? Is there much variation in picture quality (on burned disks) among different brands and models?

Are there any specific units to look for or avoid? I've played with a mid-range Sony, which works fine but does not have component inputs.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-11-2008, 12:58 PM:

The first generation Philips machine (DVD+R and DVD+RW only), model DVDR985 has both component and Firewire inputs, in addition to composite and SVHS. It does not do dual layer'd however. Don't know about later Philips units.

Note that from the factory, the DVDR985 had a number of software and hardware issues that Philips only resolved shortly before it was discontinued. My early 985 totally died just before the warrantee ran out, and Philips upgraded it to the latest hardware and software when they fixed it, Never had a problem with it since.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-11-2008, 05:31 PM:

Dual layer discs are tricky since a break point MUST be specified. If you have it done arbitrarily, it would likely be in the middle of a scene and only a few DVD players can play this without a noticeable pause or hiccup. I've never seen a standalone dual layer burner. Instead, they just lower the quality to get longer burn times.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-11-2008, 07:01 PM:

True, the cheaper burners offer what VHS machines can also do - multiple burn times of the high quality 1hr burn, a standard 2hr burn, or the other two lesser quality of 4hr and 6hr burn.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-11-2008, 07:43 PM:

I am incapable of imagining what 6 hours of video on a single layer DVD would look like.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-11-2008, 09:24 PM:

Joe, have you ever copied a VHS to VHS? Have you ever done it at the slowest speed possible? Well, take that EP/SLP dub, dub it again, dub it again, dub it again, and then dub it one more time. Add some extra digital pixelation and that's about what you get.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-11-2008, 09:34 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
Joe, have you ever copied a VHS to VHS?

No. Hi8 to S-VHS to VHS (all using S-video) is the worst I've done, and I still feel ashamed and will regret it even beyond the grave.

quote: Brad Miller
Have you ever done it at the slowest speed possible?

God no! I purposely modified all of my VCRs so they could not record at slower speeds than SP!

quote: Brad Miller
Add some extra digital pixelation and that's about what you get.

My closest imagination to the result would probably have much more digital artifacting than that. It would be a screen full of blurry-ass blocks doing god-knows-what.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-12-2008, 12:26 AM:

(yea, it's pretty nasty looking - to say the least) Only thing I think that the 6hr burn would be good for is if it's a direct wideband burn from camera without any duping.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-12-2008, 12:56 AM:

Ummm.... wideband?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-12-2008, 01:22 AM:

..maybe should have inserted "direct connection" from camera to DVD recorder....

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-24-2008, 07:53 AM:

In case anyone cares, I ended up getting a Panasonic DMR-EZ28K. It does not have a component input (and, oddly, composite in looks better than S-video in...weird).

It's OK, but not great. It has a built-in ATSC tuner (which I don't need) and picture and sound quality of burned disks is pretty good. I've had no problem with Taiyo Yuden DVD-R blanks; I assume that it works well with other blanks as well. Unlike the Sony that I tried, the Panasonic allows one to burn a DVD that plays upon insertion (no menu) and allows the on-screen display to be turned off. It does not have any provision for flagging a DVD as anamorphic.

All indications are that pretty much all consumer-level DVD burners are pretty poorly made and buggy. Are these not very popular products? Or are all the non-Tivo people still using VHS to record TV shows?

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 06-25-2008, 02:20 PM:

From what I could gather in doing some research is that there are two typical kinds of consumers that buy DVD recorders.

There are those just looking to transfer video tapes and/or record the occasional show, and then there are those that want to use it like they did their VCR before TiVo's were invented. I'm in the former category. I already have three DVR's, so I have no need for a machine that has a built-in hard drive and has all kinds of bells and whistles.

That latter camp seems to really like the Philips DVD recorder with the hard drive. I'm looking to pick up a Toshiba D-R410 for around $110. It'll be interesting to see if it's worth the money.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-25-2008, 05:41 PM:

Scott, your player propbably doesn't support true S-video. It likely routes the composite over the luma and chroma lines which gives it this weird super-sharp (as in if you cranked the sharpness on your TV all the way up, no "clarity" sharp) image that can have lines in it. You cheap bastard! I know you bought the cheap unit!

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 06-26-2008, 05:52 AM:

My mother bought a Toshiba DVD-R/VCR combo, which does work rather well for her purposes. However, I burned a DVD on a DVD+R, and later tried a DVD-R, in as standard format as I could. The frippin thing won't read it. Every other DVD player except that, and one other, older, Toshiba DVD-R/VCR combo my friend has, can read it no problems at all. Oddly enough, the DVD-Rs that it'll burn will play in the other DVD players, though causes my Phillips DVD player (that will play just about every format of disc that will fit, I'm almost expecting it to be able to play a slice of balogna) some issues. Don't try to pause the video, because it won't restart. My computer's Sony DVD drive can read and record in every DVD format except DVD-RAM. It cannot read the Toshiba's DVD-Rs, but has no problem reading any others. It's like my computer's DVD drive and the Toshiba are mutually incompatible somehow, even though both supposedly can read each other's formats, and supposedly records in standard formats. It's really odd.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-26-2008, 06:03 AM:

Actually, Joe, this is the most expensive one that Best Buy (yeah, I know) sells. S-video has that weird super-sharp look that you describe, while composite looks fine.

Why these things come with component output, but not component input, is a total mystery to me, though.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-01-2008, 09:53 AM:

Update (in case anyone cares): it is possible to flag DVDs burned with the Panasonic as anamorphic, but it requires copying the contents of a burned DVD to a computer, hex-editing the IFO files to set the anamorphic flag, creating an ISO image, and burning it. In at least one case, the pad values on the IFO files were incorrect (issue with Panasonic unit?) and had to be re-created.

This isn't much fun, but it _is_ do-able.

For those who care, byte 257 of the VIDEO_TS.IFO and .BUP file and byte 513 of the VTS_*.IFO and .BUP files need to be changed from "43" to "4E" to flag the disk as anamorphic. Note that the .BUP files must be identical to the .IFO files (they are backup copies of the same thing).

I had to use a Windows applet called "ifoedit" to fix the padding issue and then used mkisofs ("mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o file.iso directoryname") to make the ISO image.