Buy Now...

There are quite a number of consumer DVD recorders out there and some are available for less than £200, however none of these are as easy to use as a basic video recorder and I know lots of people who can't even program their video!

This Bush unit has a Video recorder side by side with a DVD recorder, you can use either to record from a TV and even input from the SCART socket on the back of the unit. You can dub from either one to the other all quite useful and anyone with some IT knowledge should find it easy. However things like Finalising a DVD disc tend to send some people into a lather. If you wish to replay your DVD recording on the Bush machine there is no need as there are two ways or recording, the conventional way where the DVD is used just like one on a PC and once the disc is Finalised it can be replayed in any DVD player on either a PC or a consumer model. The second is to use it almost like a video you set the program day, time, length and station and then it will record. You then turn the unit on at a time to suit you and press play, it starts from the beginning. A four minute advert break can - with practice - be passed over in seven seconds, there is an even faster 'fast forward' speed but I never mastered that. Best of all you don't do your eyes in looking through distortion to see the end of the adverts as it displays a sample of stills rather like a very rapid screen show.

See also: Video Recorder

more

This unit was not designed to allow copying of protected DVD's although no doubt someone will eventually produce something that does. If like me you have portions of video tapes with a small section that is important all you need to do is run the video to find that point and then press the dub button, all dubbing is down at actual speed so when the part you want to save is passed you just stop dubbing. Move to the next tape and repeat the process. At what is equivalent to 'LP' on a video a DVD-RW disc can hold 253 minutes worth of items. If you are a 'belt braces and safety pin' person like me then you could dub everything back to a single video. This frees up lots of videos and best of all gives a copy on a different medium.

As a video recorder it is a Nicam two speed video and quality will be every bit as good as another video of the same quality. All setup for both video and DVD is done on screen and the menus are easy to follow. Once you have setup a few programs then everything should be able to be done without recourse to either the Getting Started Guide or the manual. My first attempt failed as I assumed once you had pressed setup to clear the menu all you needed to do was turn the unit off. The time I set came and passed. Once the machine is switched off you need to press 'Timer Rec' one of two red buttons on the 48 key remote control. The other red key is for manual recording. Perhaps the next most important button is DVD/VCR that chooses if you wish to use the video or the DVD although you can happily set recordings to either in the timed recording menu on the screen. You could even set several recordings and put say two on the DVD and one on the video.

There is one DVD supplied and this is a DVD-RW disc and this means once you have finished with your recordings you are able to reformat (one minute from an on screen menu) it and have a blank DVD all ready to rerecord. However it is not possible in the simple DVD mode to save an item on the DVD and wipe the rest or simply record over the rest as you can with a video. You would have to dub the item to video then reformat and if you needed that item on DVD dub it back but this of course reduces the quality to video standards that are not as good as DVD.

This is not a cheap option as it currently costs £299. Some other units are available for less but do check that they are DVD recorders as some dual machines out there are video player/recorder and DVD player. I have no doubt that the price of this very new type of product the video/DVD recorder will come down in time, the question is, if you wait, will you still have playable copies of those important videos that you can dub to DVD to save for the foreseeable future.

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=2501&productId=111024