Not bad cheap DVD recorder

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Watching something on your tivo or vcr and wish you could dump it off to a dvd for other purposes, but dont want to spend much money?

We picked up a magnavox MSR90D6 dvd recorder from sams club for about $95. I think I saw the same or similar at wallymart for a few bucks more.

Pretty straightforward. Hooks up like a vcr or tivo. Start what you want to record and hit the 'record' button. Has several recording 'speeds', which give from 1-6 hours of recording time with the quality of the recording descending as the time gets longer. Recording in the 2.5 hour mode gives me perfectly good looking recordings for casual stuff. You can start and stop recording to compile a disk, then finalize it, after which it'll play in most players.

Uses dvd+ or dvd- disks, and can do RW's. Not dual layer, the cheapest dual layer standalone i saw was another $50.

Spent a couple of hours and compiled gabes favorite snippets from "go baby" and "babyfirst tv", which are mostly lots of kids running around with a song playing in the background.

Now I just need an el cheapo dvd player to put in the car...

 

[Nords]

Watching something on your tivo or vcr and wish you could dump it off to a dvd for other purposes, but dont want to spend much money?

So is this a good machine for converting all those VHS tapes to DVD?

 

[justin]

Cool. I've been watching these DVD recorder prices drop for a few years waiting to pounce. Looks like the $100 price level is about as cheap as they are going to get? It's been at that level for a while now it seems.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

So is this a good machine for converting all those VHS tapes to DVD?

Yep.

I cant speak for long term reliability, but the output quality at 2.5 hours per dvd+r disk was (to my eye on two hdtvs) as good as the input. A capable basic dvd player as well. Pretty dang simple to use, just hit record on the dvd recorders remote and start your source output, when done hit 'stop' on the dvd recorder. Each recording is a 'chapter' on the dvd. When done, go into the menu and 'finalize' the disk.

Sams also had a nice looking panasonic dvd recorder that did dual layer and an upscan converter on the dvd output for about $160. I have a boatload of single layer dvd-r blank media, so it was tempting, but I decided to go cheap. Read some reviews, other people had similar "this is basic but good, no problems" feedback.

 

[riskadverse]

I recently bought a cheap lite-on from Costco which sounds functionally about the same.  It has trouble with playback of it's recorded -RW disks, but with -R disks as cheap as they are, this is a minor drawback.  It's great for dumping the stuff on the TiVo(s) which I can't bear to erase.  I need to find time to coordinate it's vcrplus and my directivo functions so I can record directly to DVD.  It looks like I've recorded my last VCR tape.   

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

There was a lot of discussion about the liteon vs the maggotbox, with liteon being the better brand name but nobody able to find anything functionally better or worse about either.

The maggotbox also has timer recordings and will 'autosize' the recording 'speed' so that your available disk space matches the recordings you have planned. Allegedly.

So yep, with some RW media, this replaces a vcr. But yeah, with one-time dvd media running around 20c a pop, give or take a nickel, it makes tape look pretty yesteryear. If you spring for a dual layer recorder and media, you could load a pretty good amount of lower quality video on a single disk. Probably fit at least 2-3 movies on there quite watchable on a smaller screen.

Each recording is created as an autochapter, so you can use 'skip' or 'next' on your remote to hop to the next recording. No more fast forwarding!