Console DVD Recorders

With VCRs going the way of the dodo, a couple of products have appeared to replace the VCR for recording television. One of them is the PVR (such as TiVo) which records television shows to a hard drive, and console-based recorders which work like VCRs but record to blank DVDs instead of VHS tapes.

About May of 2006 our cheap ($35 about 3 years ago) DVD player stopped reading DVDs. Not that the lens was dirty, but the motor that spins the DVDs had burned out.

Soon afterward, we started looking for a replacement. A friend at work recommended a recorder. Intrigued by the thought of recording TV to DVD, I picked one up for $99 at my local Best Buy. I took it home, hooked it up, and set the timer to record Saturday cartoons for my kids.

I use DVD-R discs for recording, because the other DVD player in my house won't play back DVD+R discs.

Here are some of the benefits and problems we've had with it:

Benefits:

• Record TV
• Record movies
• Unlimited storage (just buy new blank DVDs)
• Watch recorded TV shows and movies on any other device in the house that plays DVDs (computers and DVD players)
• Automatically creates a menu of recorded shows for easy navigation and playback
• Blank DVDs are cheap, even brand-name 50-packs can be found on sale for $15

Problems:

• Occasionally a TV show starts one minute early, and so I always set it to record a minute or two before the time slot
• Just about every 50-pack of DVDs has one or more bad discs that won't play back after recording (brand name discs, like TDK and Memorex, have fewer bad discs, no-name brands usually have more)
• I have to clean the lens in the DVD recorder about once every three months

Overall, it has been handy to have a recorder that directly saves TV to DVD. With the recorder, my kids usually watch TV on demand, and are unaware that Saturday morning is when their cartoons are broadcast over the air. I keep up on my TV shows by recording them when they air. I usually end up watching them late Friday or Saturday night in another room, or on my laptop.

Here's the DVD recorder that I own: LiteOn LVW-1107HC1.