My DVD player is playing up a little bit. Sometimes it says “no disc” when there is one. No problem: eject and re-insert and it works fine. Probably just needs the DVD equivalent of a head cleaner, but it got me thinking.
At some point either it will die, or I will decide that I really have to have a DVD recorder, and I just can’t see anything on the market which does what I would want. I am used to having the ability to play DVD-Audio and SACD and getting the full 5.1 sound on them. Very few machines have that ability – just a few Pioneers I think – and I can’t see a single recorder which has either facility. Not even the ones from Sony who invented and evangelised the SACD format.
So if I do ever want a recording facility I will have to either give up the ability to listen to those few SACD discs I have in surround sound or I will have to have a separate player. That is stupid. Surely it is not such unreasonable requirement?  Why do DVD recorders skimp on playback features?
We are having a bit of the same dilemma. We just have a DVD player and a TV with built in Freeview – okay but we can only record from ‘real’ tv (1-5). Do we get a DVD recorder that works with freeview, a PVR, hard disc recorder or what? Our analogue signal (and we can see the transmitter from the kitchen window so reception is nooo problem) is safe until 2011 so I guess we’ve got a while to wait for things to break ( since we are meant to be being green….)
I got around that problem by having a V+ box (Virgin’s equivalent to Sky+) which has the advantage of being able to record 2 programmes while you watch a third.
The chances of having three watchable, let alone record-worthy, shows on at the same time are very slim though.
Would a very cheap set-top freeview box work with the recorder?
Another option – when we visit we could let one of the kids break the recorder.
Can you use a V+ box without selling your soul to Virgin Media? Given Mary’s recent ‘issues’ with them, and just because we don’t really need any more tv channels, I don’t think we want to go down that route….
I think we may just have the wrong wires or possibly sockets. We got about the only video recorder we could find and are stuck with the sockets/holes/whatever they are it has. I think for the moment we’ll just make do – to be honest there is very little we are bothered about missing (although we just missed the latest repeat of the Dr Who scarecrow story and have never seen the second episode – still, I’m fairly sure my boss has the DVD box set so all is not lost!)
No you have to be with Virgin. In our case we already had phone and broadband from them so taking their basic service was a lot cheaper than Sky.
TV reception is not great here so freeview was not really an option – especially not when you have to think about TV in the kids’ rooms.
When I was in London I could see the Crystal Palace transmitter from the kitchen window and TVs would get a good reception even without an aerial. I just had a metre of co-axial cable hanging out the back and it was fine, but here you really need decent rooftop equipment.
Don’t worry about Dr Who though. That episode was only on BBC Three a couple of weeks ago, and again tonight. It should be on again any time now.