mandragora: (Default)
[personal profile] mandragora
So the video (VCR in Americanese) gave up the ghost on Tuesday night, rather inconveniently just as I was attempting to swop the tape between SG1 and BSG. Yes, I know I can (and have in the case of SG1) download them, but I can't then seem to burn the downloaded programme to DVD in a format that my DVD player will play. Anyone got any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Anyhow, I decided that there was little point in even attempting to get the video repaired, especially as it's a format that's on the way out. But, I have a whole load of videos that I wanted to be able to play and I needed a recording medium off the TV. The solution? One combined DVD recorder/VCR, with recordable hard-drive, as well as recordable straight onto DVD, and that will also transcribe video recordings onto DVD. Oh, and it had to be multi-region, of course, so I can play all my region 1, as well as region 2, DVDs.

Did the research on Tuesday night, ordered it online Wednesday morning, had it delivered this morning. Very efficient. I didn't instal it until late this afternoon, because I'm presently working to a deadline (including working the whole of the weekend just gone, and am about to get back to work any minute now) and, God, but it's complicated.

First of all the automatic set-up didn't work, so I had to set it up manually. Which was, you know. so *much* fun! Most of my TV watching is by cable, and of course there was no indication which of the TV channels tuned into the new...thing is the cable channel, which is essential from a recording POV. Worked that one out by trial and error, though, sticking in a video to record, in the hope that I'd picked the right channel on the thing and that it would duly record the cable channel I had up on the TV. And it did. Hallelujah!

Same for recording to the hard drive. Have worked out how to directly record and how to set up the timer and checked that it would record the channel I wanted. Yep. Must say the resulting recording (and there are 6 different variants of quality to choose from - I went with standard) is fantastic. If only I could work out how to name the damn things for easy calling up. Oh, and how to access any but the last recorded programme. Sigh. But I think I've made my last ever video recording. DVD is just...yum!

Haven't tried recording to DVD as yet, because all the DVDs in the correct format I have in are DVD-R only and I'm not wasting several DVDs on testing it out, will wait until I've got some DVD-RWs in. Nor have I tried converting video to DVD. Not to mention all the bells and whistles - there are loads and it exhausts me even to comtemplate working them out. All of that will have to wait until I've got more energy. And time. Back to work.

But before I go - why the hell do 'they' have to make the instruction manuals so damn complicated? Who writes these things, anyway? Whoever they are, I'd be prepared to bet good money on one thing. They're all men.

Date: 20 January 2006 02:10 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] raincitygirl.livejournal.com
Poor Mandragora. On the bright side, think how great your shiny new toy will be when it's working perfectly. And yes, electronics instruction manuals are even worse than Ikea instructions, and that's saying something.

Date: 20 January 2006 19:22 (UTC)
ext_8763: (Default)
From: [identity profile] mandragora1.livejournal.com
Thanks for the sympathy. I'm sure that it will be wonderful when I've mastered the instruction manual. Which'll be...oooh...around 2010!

Date: 20 January 2006 19:43 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] keletkezes.livejournal.com
The best instructions I ever had for anything come in Revell kits, be they aircraft or otherwise.

And not just by men, by men who know how to fit it all up and have it working in front of them already and know what all the bits are really called rather than the everyday words for them :)

Sorry, long sentence moment...

Date: 20 January 2006 22:41 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moth1.livejournal.com
Not only are they all men, they are all BAD men. We have ended up sending one of my Christmas present machines back because it didn't work properly (and are waiting for a replacement) and the other is sitting folornly on a chair waiting for one of us to try(again) to work out how to make it work at all. Colin says it's a conspiracy to force you to get a specialist in to set it all up for you. So far, we're resisting. The machine we sent back is like yours. The other is a tuner thing that should act like Sky+ without a Sky package - but we're beginning to think we should send that back too and wait for a combination of the two, which may be available soon.

Date: 21 January 2006 21:56 (UTC)
ext_8763: (Default)
From: [identity profile] mandragora1.livejournal.com
*g* Pity the people who write the instructions for Revell kits don't write DVD recorder/HDD/VCR instructions.

Date: 21 January 2006 21:57 (UTC)
ext_8763: (Default)
From: [identity profile] mandragora1.livejournal.com
Ouch. Sorry to read about all the problems. I suspect that Colin is right - it's a conspiracy.

My thing seems to be working (although I still haven't tested all the functions) but, God, it's complicated to work.

Date: 21 January 2006 22:39 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moth1.livejournal.com
Well, again, if it's complicated enough they can sell us their expertise or more machines, or pre-recorded boxed sets . . . .

Date: 30 January 2006 00:01 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] suilven.livejournal.com
Your criteria for a DVD player sounds exactly what I want. Ever one for taking short-cuts, if you don't mind, may I ask you what you ended up buying?

Date: 30 January 2006 07:55 (UTC)
ext_8763: (Default)
From: [identity profile] mandragora1.livejournal.com
It's a Pioneer DVR-RT601H-S.

I went for a mid-price model. From what I can gather the more money you pay, the bigger the hard-drive you get. Mine is 80GB, which 'only' gives 277 hours of recordings. But given that the recommendation is that anything you want to keep should be burned onto DVD anyway, I figured that was plenty.

One other thing the more expensive ones do (or at least the more expensive Pioneer model I toyed with) is to have even more different recording formats. Mine has 6, the more expensive ones have more. But I decided that I couldn't justify the extra money when I'll probably end up buying a new one - because of advances in technology - in about 3 years time anyway.

Oh, one other thing, make certain you look for the multi-region model - it's also sold in a Region 2 encrypted version only, as well.

Date: 30 January 2006 09:05 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] suilven.livejournal.com
Thanks for that. It is really helpful. Your criteria is exactly mine, except last time I put any effort into trying to find one, it was unsuccessful and I decided to wait a bit for the technology to settle down. This has given me kick. The multi-region one is must.

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