|
|
 | | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:54:12 +1300 |
|
|
 | Well, after all the discussion a few weeks ago about various DVD hard
drive recorders, I visited various shops and decided that my local
Heathcote's had the best range of models. After asking the salesman for
the instruction manuals to look at and discussing features with him, I
decided on an LG RH4820W: 80GB hard drive, able to write DVD-R/RW. So I
took that home on Thursday and have been trying all kinds of things with
it since then.
Getting to grips with the controls--not too hard at all. I was easily
able to copy a little test sequence off-air, then go back and snip out
the ad breaks. One minor disappointment though: editing is not
frame-accurate. I think this is because all the video is stored encoded
in MPEG-2 format (as used on DVDs) with frame-differencing, so you can
really only cut it up at I-frames (which are not frame-differenced). The
manual does warn that you may not be able to snip out segments less than
3 seconds long.
The unit also has functions for copying MP3 and JPEG files off CDs,
though it cannot copy them off again and it cannot write CDs. I haven't
tried JPEGs yet, but I was able to copy most of my collection of Goon
Show MP3s onto CD-RW and transfer them to the unit that way. That's when
I started developing my first frustrations with how the system worked.
You see, with video sequences, I can play them, pause them, search
through them, merge them, split them and edit them. With MP3 files, I
can only play them, pause them, and resume from where I paused. I can't
skip through them, so if I stop 14 minutes through a 27-minute Goon Show
and tell it to do something else, I can't come back to that file and
resume from where I left off--I have to listen to those first 14 minutes
again.
On the other hand, I can create my own named folders for MP3s and
organize them that way, which I can't do for video clips. Oddly, when I
move a few dozen MP3 files into a folder, it takes a few seconds,
accompanied by a lot of activity on the hard drive--looks as though it
is actually copying the entire files into the folder (then deleting the
originals), instead of merely doing a quick rearrangement of filesystem
pointers as normal computer-based systems would do.
Trying to enter names for clips, folders and discs is another slightly
frustrating thing: you have to use the navigation buttons on the remote
to move around the picture of a keyboard on the screen, and press Enter
when you get to the right key. There are 3 keyboard pages, one for
uppercase letters, one lowercase, and one for special symbols. All three
also include the digits, as well as space and editing keys--move left or
right one character, and delete the character to the left. Why the
editing keys at least couldn't be mapped directly to buttons on the
remote, I don't know. This and the filesystem issues are starting to
convert me to the idea that maybe there is a place for a full-fledged PC
in the living room after all. This thing is so close to being a PC,
except for all these odd restrictions in its functions.
Then I had a look through this bookcase of mine that is filled two
layers deep with VHS videotapes accumulated over many years. I pulled
out the six parts of Jeremy Clarkson's "Speed", put them on one of my
VCRs, and recorded them onto the hard drive. Naturally this could only
happen at real-time speed, which took three hours. Then I went through,
carefully snipped out the ads, which knocked each episode back to about
24 minutes. Then I set about writing them to DVD-R.
It turns out the unit supports two formats for writing to DVD: the usual
"DVD-Video", where it sticks a simple navigation menu system at the
start and which is playable on any DVD player, and a newer "DVD-VR"
format which allows for various kinds of editing after writing, but
which only works on DVD-RW discs and can only be understood, it appears
by other DVD recorders at this stage. It claimed to offer a high-speed
option for writing DVD-VR format, but unfortunately DVD-Video format
could only be written at real-time speed. Which meant another two hours'
worth of copying (at least cutting out the ads saved time).
Another thing is that the unit supports three different quality levels:
"high", "standard" and "low" (HQ, SQ and LQ). This applies on both the
hard drive and on DVDs. At "high" quality, a single DVD can only hold 60
minutes' worth of footage; this doubles at "standard" quality. At the HQ
setting, each DVD would only hold two episodes of the doco. However, it
would happily let me try to write a third, then stop part way through
when it ran out of space.
Something else I found at this stage was each episode appeared as three
separate "titles" in the DVD navigation menu: the divisions coincided
exactly with the points where I'd snipped out the ad breaks. It looks
like each video file was split into multiple files at those points, but
the hard drive video menu continued to present them to me as a single
item. However, it could not copy them to the DVD as a single item. The
best I could do on the DVD was put names in only the first and fourth
navigation menu items, and set the other button titles to blank--they
were still selectable, but this was the best way I could think of to
give the impression that they were not separate titles in their own
right.
The next tape I tried copying was one containing half a dozen "Get
Smart" episodes, recorded during my brief foray into S-VHS-ET mode
(S-VHS recorded on ordinary VHS tape) a few years ago. I left the tape
playing, set the recorder's timer to go for three hours plus a few
minutes, and went to bed.
The next morning (Saturday), I pulled up the entire sequence on the
menu, and set about snipping out the ads. This was actually quite easy,
once I got the hang of the different steps. First you choose the start
point: you can use all the trick-play functions, pause, single-frame,
fast-play. Once you've found the right point (making allowance for the
previously-mentioned imprecision of the editing process), you press the
Enter button. Then you do the same thing fix the end point. After that
you have the option of repeating the process to find another sequence to
snip out. Selecting the Cancel menu option at any stage takes you back a
step. Selecting the Done option commits all the edits you've performed.
The fast-play goes in steps of 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 100x speed, so even
though you don't have the option of going immediately to a selected
hh:mm:ss time (which you have during normal playback), it is still quite
quick to get to any point in a long video sequence.
One odd thing was, at one or two points while frame-stepping to find the
end points of the ad breaks, the unit displayed a message saying there
was an error trying to read the disk, and abandoned the editing process,
losing all the edits I'd entered in that session. Yet when I played
through those problem points at normal speed, there was no error.
Anyway, I was able to perform those edits by getting to the problem end
points at a different playing speed, and I learned to commit my changes
after doing fewer edits and before going back in again to edit some more.
However, after all this work, I was dismayed to discover that the
video/audio sync was out. It was quite obvious during scenes where the
actors were speaking, that there was a discrepancy of maybe a third or a
half of a second between their lip movements and the sound of the words
they were saying. The original videotape was fine--the discrepancy only
came in during the recording on the LG. I rechecked my previous
recordings--the Jeremy Clarkson DVDs, the off-air test sequence still on
the hard drive--and they were all fine.
Mystified and disappointed, I deleted the wasted "Get Smart" recordings
off the hard drive, and dug out my old "Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy" tapes.
I felt that there was a slight lip-sync problem in recording this too,
but it didn't get too bad until I got to episode 6, where it was just
too noticeable to be tolerated. Feeling quite annoyed, I called up
Heathcote's this afternoon and spoke to one of their staff. Naturally,
they'd never heard of this problem before, so I brought in the unit,
with the problem HHGG episodes still on its hard drive, to show it to
them. I showed one example sequence to the guy I spoke to, who then
called out a colleague to see it again. They both agreed there was a
problem. I played the off-air sequence for comparison, to show that that
was OK.
They said they would call LG tomorrow (Monday) to tell them about the
problem, and find out if there was some software upgrade available to
fix it. It seemed quite clearly to be a software bug--it was hard to
imagine how hardware could fail in such a way.
After I brought the unit home, I did another bit of off-air recording,
just to ensure that was still working OK--which it was. And then the
next bit of recording off tape I did was just fine.
That's when I realized what could be happening: after several hours of
recording through the AV input, the synchronization between audio and
video would drift. But if I did just a bit of off-air recording, even
just a minute's worth, probably less, it would be pulled back into sync
again, and stay that way for maybe the next few tapes. Totally bizarre
bug, particularly since I can't reconcile it with any reasonable
conception of how the device's internal function units might be divided
up.
Anyway, I rerecorded HHGG episode 6, with quite satisfactory results. I
then went back through the previous recordings, trying to decide which
ones were bad enough to need rerecording. Episode 3 seemed quite poor,
so I changed its name from "HHGG 3" to "HHGG 3§" to remind myself to
redo it. Then, as I was checking through the other episodes, strange
things began to happen. Episode 1 was no longer episode 1: it had
mysteriously turned into another copy of episode 4, I think it was. And
the second recording of episode 6 I had done had somehow become stuffed:
every time I tried playing it, the unit displayed an error dialog and
gave up. The only thing I could do was delete it. After wiping all the
HHGG episodes, things seemed to be back to normal, for the moment.
Filesystem bugs! What else? This, the previously-mentioned editing
errors, and the audio sync problem, all add up to dismayingly lousy
quality control, I must say. To put something into production with such
obviously poorly-tested software is not something I would expect from
any company that cared about its reputation.
Anyway, I'll await what the Heathcote guy has to say tomorrow. It could
be just this one unit (or one batch of units) slipped through the
quality-control process without the necessary software upgrade, and the
whole thing is easily fixed. Or not.
We'll see.
|
|
| | From: | Ockerr | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:54:28 +1300 |
|
|
| Very interesting site below, Not good for Lg
http://www.dvdrecorderworld.com/forum/post-128.html
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-823ECF.22541116012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> Well, after all the discussion a few weeks ago about various DVD hard
> drive recorders, I visited various shops and decided that my local
> Heathcote's had the best range of models. After asking the salesman for
> the instruction manuals to look at and discussing features with him, I
> decided on an LG RH4820W: 80GB hard drive, able to write DVD-R/RW. So I
> took that home on Thursday and have been trying all kinds of things with
> it since then.
>
> Getting to grips with the controls--not too hard at all. I was easily
> able to copy a little test sequence off-air, then go back and snip out
> the ad breaks. One minor disappointment though: editing is not
> frame-accurate. I think this is because all the video is stored encoded
> in MPEG-2 format (as used on DVDs) with frame-differencing, so you can
> really only cut it up at I-frames (which are not frame-differenced). The
> manual does warn that you may not be able to snip out segments less than
> 3 seconds long.
>
> The unit also has functions for copying MP3 and JPEG files off CDs,
> though it cannot copy them off again and it cannot write CDs. I haven't
> tried JPEGs yet, but I was able to copy most of my collection of Goon
> Show MP3s onto CD-RW and transfer them to the unit that way. That's when
> I started developing my first frustrations with how the system worked.
>
> You see, with video sequences, I can play them, pause them, search
> through them, merge them, split them and edit them. With MP3 files, I
> can only play them, pause them, and resume from where I paused. I can't
> skip through them, so if I stop 14 minutes through a 27-minute Goon Show
> and tell it to do something else, I can't come back to that file and
> resume from where I left off--I have to listen to those first 14 minutes
> again.
>
> On the other hand, I can create my own named folders for MP3s and
> organize them that way, which I can't do for video clips. Oddly, when I
> move a few dozen MP3 files into a folder, it takes a few seconds,
> accompanied by a lot of activity on the hard drive--looks as though it
> is actually copying the entire files into the folder (then deleting the
> originals), instead of merely doing a quick rearrangement of filesystem
> pointers as normal computer-based systems would do.
>
> Trying to enter names for clips, folders and discs is another slightly
> frustrating thing: you have to use the navigation buttons on the remote
> to move around the picture of a keyboard on the screen, and press Enter
> when you get to the right key. There are 3 keyboard pages, one for
> uppercase letters, one lowercase, and one for special symbols. All three
> also include the digits, as well as space and editing keys--move left or
> right one character, and delete the character to the left. Why the
> editing keys at least couldn't be mapped directly to buttons on the
> remote, I don't know. This and the filesystem issues are starting to
> convert me to the idea that maybe there is a place for a full-fledged PC
> in the living room after all. This thing is so close to being a PC,
> except for all these odd restrictions in its functions.
>
> Then I had a look through this bookcase of mine that is filled two
> layers deep with VHS videotapes accumulated over many years. I pulled
> out the six parts of Jeremy Clarkson's "Speed", put them on one of my
> VCRs, and recorded them onto the hard drive. Naturally this could only
> happen at real-time speed, which took three hours. Then I went through,
> carefully snipped out the ads, which knocked each episode back to about
> 24 minutes. Then I set about writing them to DVD-R.
>
> It turns out the unit supports two formats for writing to DVD: the usual
> "DVD-Video", where it sticks a simple navigation menu system at the
> start and which is playable on any DVD player, and a newer "DVD-VR"
> format which allows for various kinds of editing after writing, but
> which only works on DVD-RW discs and can only be understood, it appears
> by other DVD recorders at this stage. It claimed to offer a high-speed
> option for writing DVD-VR format, but unfortunately DVD-Video format
> could only be written at real-time speed. Which meant another two hours'
> worth of copying (at least cutting out the ads saved time).
>
> Another thing is that the unit supports three different quality levels:
> "high", "standard" and "low" (HQ, SQ and LQ). This applies on both the
> hard drive and on DVDs. At "high" quality, a single DVD can only hold 60
> minutes' worth of footage; this doubles at "standard" quality. At the HQ
> setting, each DVD would only hold two episodes of the doco. However, it
> would happily let me try to write a third, then stop part way through
> when it ran out of space.
>
> Something else I found at this stage was each episode appeared as three
> separate "titles" in the DVD navigation menu: the divisions coincided
> exactly with the points where I'd snipped out the ad breaks. It looks
> like each video file was split into multiple files at those points, but
> the hard drive video menu continued to present them to me as a single
> item. However, it could not copy them to the DVD as a single item. The
> best I could do on the DVD was put names in only the first and fourth
> navigation menu items, and set the other button titles to blank--they
> were still selectable, but this was the best way I could think of to
> give the impression that they were not separate titles in their own
> right.
>
> The next tape I tried copying was one containing half a dozen "Get
> Smart" episodes, recorded during my brief foray into S-VHS-ET mode
> (S-VHS recorded on ordinary VHS tape) a few years ago. I left the tape
> playing, set the recorder's timer to go for three hours plus a few
> minutes, and went to bed.
>
> The next morning (Saturday), I pulled up the entire sequence on the
> menu, and set about snipping out the ads. This was actually quite easy,
> once I got the hang of the different steps. First you choose the start
> point: you can use all the trick-play functions, pause, single-frame,
> fast-play. Once you've found the right point (making allowance for the
> previously-mentioned imprecision of the editing process), you press the
> Enter button. Then you do the same thing fix the end point. After that
> you have the option of repeating the process to find another sequence to
> snip out. Selecting the Cancel menu option at any stage takes you back a
> step. Selecting the Done option commits all the edits you've performed.
> The fast-play goes in steps of 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 100x speed, so even
> though you don't have the option of going immediately to a selected
> hh:mm:ss time (which you have during normal playback), it is still quite
> quick to get to any point in a long video sequence.
>
> One odd thing was, at one or two points while frame-stepping to find the
> end points of the ad breaks, the unit displayed a message saying there
> was an error trying to read the disk, and abandoned the editing process,
> losing all the edits I'd entered in that session. Yet when I played
> through those problem points at normal speed, there was no error.
> Anyway, I was able to perform those edits by getting to the problem end
> points at a different playing speed, and I learned to commit my changes
> after doing fewer edits and before going back in again to edit some more.
>
> However, after all this work, I was dismayed to discover that the
> video/audio sync was out. It was quite obvious during scenes where the
> actors were speaking, that there was a discrepancy of maybe a third or a
> half of a second between their lip movements and the sound of the words
> they were saying. The original videotape was fine--the discrepancy only
> came in during the recording on the LG. I rechecked my previous
> recordings--the Jeremy Clarkson DVDs, the off-air test sequence still on
> the hard drive--and they were all fine.
>
> Mystified and disappointed, I deleted the wasted "Get Smart" recordings
> off the hard drive, and dug out my old "Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the
> Galaxy" tapes.
>
> I felt that there was a slight lip-sync problem in recording this too,
> but it didn't get too bad until I got to episode 6, where it was just
> too noticeable to be tolerated. Feeling quite annoyed, I called up
> Heathcote's this afternoon and spoke to one of their staff. Naturally,
> they'd never heard of this problem before, so I brought in the unit,
> with the problem HHGG episodes still on its hard drive, to show it to
> them. I showed one example sequence to the guy I spoke to, who then
> called out a colleague to see it again. They both agreed there was a
> problem. I played the off-air sequence for comparison, to show that that
> was OK.
>
> They said they would call LG tomorrow (Monday) to tell them about the
> problem, and find out if there was some software upgrade available to
> fix it. It seemed quite clearly to be a software bug--it was hard to
> imagine how hardware could fail in such a way.
>
> After I brought the unit home, I did another bit of off-air recording,
> just to ensure that was still working OK--which it was. And then the
> next bit of recording off tape I did was just fine.
>
> That's when I realized what could be happening: after several hours of
> recording through the AV input, the synchronization between audio and
> video would drift. But if I did just a bit of off-air recording, even
> just a minute's worth, probably less, it would be pulled back into sync
> again, and stay that way for maybe the next few tapes. Totally bizarre
> bug, particularly since I can't reconcile it with any reasonable
> conception of how the device's internal function units might be divided
> up.
>
> Anyway, I rerecorded HHGG episode 6, with quite satisfactory results. I
> then went back through the previous recordings, trying to decide which
> ones were bad enough to need rerecording. Episode 3 seemed quite poor,
> so I changed its name from "HHGG 3" to "HHGG 3§" to remind myself to
> redo it. Then, as I was checking through the other episodes, strange
> things began to happen. Episode 1 was no longer episode 1: it had
> mysteriously turned into another copy of episode 4, I think it was. And
> the second recording of episode 6 I had done had somehow become stuffed:
> every time I tried playing it, the unit displayed an error dialog and
> gave up. The only thing I could do was delete it. After wiping all the
> HHGG episodes, things seemed to be back to normal, for the moment.
>
> Filesystem bugs! What else? This, the previously-mentioned editing
> errors, and the audio sync problem, all add up to dismayingly lousy
> quality control, I must say. To put something into production with such
> obviously poorly-tested software is not something I would expect from
> any company that cared about its reputation.
>
> Anyway, I'll await what the Heathcote guy has to say tomorrow. It could
> be just this one unit (or one batch of units) slipped through the
> quality-control process without the necessary software upgrade, and the
> whole thing is easily fixed. Or not.
>
> We'll see.
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:12:02 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <%JUGd.8703$mo2.667134@news.xtra.co.nz>,
"Ockerr" wrote:
>Very interesting site below, Not good for Lg
>
>http://www.dvdrecorderworld.com/forum/post-128.html
I haven't (yet) noticed any problems in copying once the material is in
the digital domain. The sync problems only seem to come in during the
conversion from analog.
By the way, I went back to Heathcote's this afternoon and they've given
me a replacement unit. The salesman I talked to said the person at LG
had never experienced this sort of problem before, so I left an example
on the hard drive of the old unit for them to look at.
I'll see once I've clocked up a few more hours on the new unit, whether
the sync problem recurs...
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Tue, 18 Jan 2005 23:18:49 +1300 |
|
|
| In article ,
Lawrence DčOliveiro wrote:
>By the way, I went back to Heathcote's this afternoon and they've given
>me a replacement unit.
One interesting functional difference I've noticed so far: according to
the manual, the "Dubbing" function (copying between hard drive and DVD)
is supposed to offer a "Fast" (i.e. faster than real-time) mode in
addition to the usual HQ, SQ and LQ quality settings, with DVD-VR discs.
Yet the option was not there in the old unit. But it is in this one.
One odd difference I noticed in the shop (and pointed out to the
salesmen) was that the new unit has the LG logo embossed into the top of
the case, whereas the old one did not. I facetiously suggested the old
one was a counterfeit unit, but perhaps it was from an earlier
production run or something.
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:52:58 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-823ECF.22541116012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> Well, after all the discussion a few weeks ago about various DVD hard
> drive recorders, I visited various shops and decided that my local
> Heathcote's had the best range of models. After asking the salesman for
> the instruction manuals to look at and discussing features with him, I
> decided on an LG RH4820W: 80GB hard drive, able to write DVD-R/RW. So I
> took that home on Thursday and have been trying all kinds of things with
> it since then.
>
> Getting to grips with the controls--not too hard at all. I was easily
> able to copy a little test sequence off-air, then go back and snip out
> the ad breaks. One minor disappointment though: editing is not
> frame-accurate. I think this is because all the video is stored encoded
> in MPEG-2 format (as used on DVDs) with frame-differencing, so you can
> really only cut it up at I-frames (which are not frame-differenced). The
> manual does warn that you may not be able to snip out segments less than
> 3 seconds long.
>
> The unit also has functions for copying MP3 and JPEG files off CDs,
> though it cannot copy them off again and it cannot write CDs. I haven't
> tried JPEGs yet, but I was able to copy most of my collection of Goon
> Show MP3s onto CD-RW and transfer them to the unit that way. That's when
> I started developing my first frustrations with how the system worked.
>
> You see, with video sequences, I can play them, pause them, search
> through them, merge them, split them and edit them. With MP3 files, I
> can only play them, pause them, and resume from where I paused. I can't
> skip through them, so if I stop 14 minutes through a 27-minute Goon Show
> and tell it to do something else, I can't come back to that file and
> resume from where I left off--I have to listen to those first 14 minutes
> again.
>
> On the other hand, I can create my own named folders for MP3s and
> organize them that way, which I can't do for video clips. Oddly, when I
> move a few dozen MP3 files into a folder, it takes a few seconds,
> accompanied by a lot of activity on the hard drive--looks as though it
> is actually copying the entire files into the folder (then deleting the
> originals), instead of merely doing a quick rearrangement of filesystem
> pointers as normal computer-based systems would do.
>
> Trying to enter names for clips, folders and discs is another slightly
> frustrating thing: you have to use the navigation buttons on the remote
> to move around the picture of a keyboard on the screen, and press Enter
> when you get to the right key. There are 3 keyboard pages, one for
> uppercase letters, one lowercase, and one for special symbols. All three
> also include the digits, as well as space and editing keys--move left or
> right one character, and delete the character to the left. Why the
> editing keys at least couldn't be mapped directly to buttons on the
> remote, I don't know. This and the filesystem issues are starting to
> convert me to the idea that maybe there is a place for a full-fledged PC
> in the living room after all. This thing is so close to being a PC,
> except for all these odd restrictions in its functions.
>
> Then I had a look through this bookcase of mine that is filled two
> layers deep with VHS videotapes accumulated over many years. I pulled
> out the six parts of Jeremy Clarkson's "Speed", put them on one of my
> VCRs, and recorded them onto the hard drive. Naturally this could only
> happen at real-time speed, which took three hours. Then I went through,
> carefully snipped out the ads, which knocked each episode back to about
> 24 minutes. Then I set about writing them to DVD-R.
>
> It turns out the unit supports two formats for writing to DVD: the usual
> "DVD-Video", where it sticks a simple navigation menu system at the
> start and which is playable on any DVD player, and a newer "DVD-VR"
> format which allows for various kinds of editing after writing, but
> which only works on DVD-RW discs and can only be understood, it appears
> by other DVD recorders at this stage. It claimed to offer a high-speed
> option for writing DVD-VR format, but unfortunately DVD-Video format
> could only be written at real-time speed. Which meant another two hours'
> worth of copying (at least cutting out the ads saved time).
>
> Another thing is that the unit supports three different quality levels:
> "high", "standard" and "low" (HQ, SQ and LQ). This applies on both the
> hard drive and on DVDs. At "high" quality, a single DVD can only hold 60
> minutes' worth of footage; this doubles at "standard" quality. At the HQ
> setting, each DVD would only hold two episodes of the doco. However, it
> would happily let me try to write a third, then stop part way through
> when it ran out of space.
>
> Something else I found at this stage was each episode appeared as three
> separate "titles" in the DVD navigation menu: the divisions coincided
> exactly with the points where I'd snipped out the ad breaks. It looks
> like each video file was split into multiple files at those points, but
> the hard drive video menu continued to present them to me as a single
> item. However, it could not copy them to the DVD as a single item. The
> best I could do on the DVD was put names in only the first and fourth
> navigation menu items, and set the other button titles to blank--they
> were still selectable, but this was the best way I could think of to
> give the impression that they were not separate titles in their own
> right.
>
> The next tape I tried copying was one containing half a dozen "Get
> Smart" episodes, recorded during my brief foray into S-VHS-ET mode
> (S-VHS recorded on ordinary VHS tape) a few years ago. I left the tape
> playing, set the recorder's timer to go for three hours plus a few
> minutes, and went to bed.
>
> The next morning (Saturday), I pulled up the entire sequence on the
> menu, and set about snipping out the ads. This was actually quite easy,
> once I got the hang of the different steps. First you choose the start
> point: you can use all the trick-play functions, pause, single-frame,
> fast-play. Once you've found the right point (making allowance for the
> previously-mentioned imprecision of the editing process), you press the
> Enter button. Then you do the same thing fix the end point. After that
> you have the option of repeating the process to find another sequence to
> snip out. Selecting the Cancel menu option at any stage takes you back a
> step. Selecting the Done option commits all the edits you've performed.
> The fast-play goes in steps of 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 100x speed, so even
> though you don't have the option of going immediately to a selected
> hh:mm:ss time (which you have during normal playback), it is still quite
> quick to get to any point in a long video sequence.
>
> One odd thing was, at one or two points while frame-stepping to find the
> end points of the ad breaks, the unit displayed a message saying there
> was an error trying to read the disk, and abandoned the editing process,
> losing all the edits I'd entered in that session. Yet when I played
> through those problem points at normal speed, there was no error.
> Anyway, I was able to perform those edits by getting to the problem end
> points at a different playing speed, and I learned to commit my changes
> after doing fewer edits and before going back in again to edit some more.
>
> However, after all this work, I was dismayed to discover that the
> video/audio sync was out. It was quite obvious during scenes where the
> actors were speaking, that there was a discrepancy of maybe a third or a
> half of a second between their lip movements and the sound of the words
> they were saying. The original videotape was fine--the discrepancy only
> came in during the recording on the LG. I rechecked my previous
> recordings--the Jeremy Clarkson DVDs, the off-air test sequence still on
> the hard drive--and they were all fine.
>
> Mystified and disappointed, I deleted the wasted "Get Smart" recordings
> off the hard drive, and dug out my old "Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the
> Galaxy" tapes.
>
> I felt that there was a slight lip-sync problem in recording this too,
> but it didn't get too bad until I got to episode 6, where it was just
> too noticeable to be tolerated. Feeling quite annoyed, I called up
> Heathcote's this afternoon and spoke to one of their staff. Naturally,
> they'd never heard of this problem before, so I brought in the unit,
> with the problem HHGG episodes still on its hard drive, to show it to
> them. I showed one example sequence to the guy I spoke to, who then
> called out a colleague to see it again. They both agreed there was a
> problem. I played the off-air sequence for comparison, to show that that
> was OK.
>
> They said they would call LG tomorrow (Monday) to tell them about the
> problem, and find out if there was some software upgrade available to
> fix it. It seemed quite clearly to be a software bug--it was hard to
> imagine how hardware could fail in such a way.
>
> After I brought the unit home, I did another bit of off-air recording,
> just to ensure that was still working OK--which it was. And then the
> next bit of recording off tape I did was just fine.
>
> That's when I realized what could be happening: after several hours of
> recording through the AV input, the synchronization between audio and
> video would drift. But if I did just a bit of off-air recording, even
> just a minute's worth, probably less, it would be pulled back into sync
> again, and stay that way for maybe the next few tapes. Totally bizarre
> bug, particularly since I can't reconcile it with any reasonable
> conception of how the device's internal function units might be divided
> up.
>
> Anyway, I rerecorded HHGG episode 6, with quite satisfactory results. I
> then went back through the previous recordings, trying to decide which
> ones were bad enough to need rerecording. Episode 3 seemed quite poor,
> so I changed its name from "HHGG 3" to "HHGG 3§" to remind myself to
> redo it. Then, as I was checking through the other episodes, strange
> things began to happen. Episode 1 was no longer episode 1: it had
> mysteriously turned into another copy of episode 4, I think it was. And
> the second recording of episode 6 I had done had somehow become stuffed:
> every time I tried playing it, the unit displayed an error dialog and
> gave up. The only thing I could do was delete it. After wiping all the
> HHGG episodes, things seemed to be back to normal, for the moment.
>
> Filesystem bugs! What else? This, the previously-mentioned editing
> errors, and the audio sync problem, all add up to dismayingly lousy
> quality control, I must say. To put something into production with such
> obviously poorly-tested software is not something I would expect from
> any company that cared about its reputation.
>
> Anyway, I'll await what the Heathcote guy has to say tomorrow. It could
> be just this one unit (or one batch of units) slipped through the
> quality-control process without the necessary software upgrade, and the
> whole thing is easily fixed. Or not.
>
> We'll see.
You've barely had the thing. When recording can you change the audio
compression settings. Uncompressed audio should fix any edited lip sync.
It does on the PC. When making VCDs.
Goon show. Can't you bring up a time menu and then select 13 minutes into
it to goto and start playing from there?
Apart from that are you fairly happy with it? Would a more expensive
Panasonic be better overall value?
I've had someone complain tonight that the VCD I made for them doesn't sound
as good as their video tape. Recorded Irish singer in CD quality sound with
DivX high quality setting video. I wasn't surprised by the complaint.
There TV isn't stereo which means only one audio input. The sound problem
should be easily fixed in the audio settings menu of their DVD player, which
will send full 2 channel audio sound to the one channel that's connected.
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:43:50 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1105872779.317274@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>When recording can you change the audio compression settings.
No, there are only the three recording quality levels I mentioned--HQ,
SQ and EQ, and I think they affect video quality only, not audio.
>Goon show. Can't you bring up a time menu and then select 13 minutes into
>it to goto and start playing from there?
No, the display while an MP3 is playing already shows the time, I can't
enter a time search, and the scan buttons don't work. The skip buttons
do work--taking me to the next or previous MP3, but they always start
playback from the beginning.
>Apart from that are you fairly happy with it? Would a more expensive
>Panasonic be better overall value?
This is the first DVD HD video recorder I've used, so I don't know what
the others would be like. At the moment I'm feeling distinctly unhappy
with it, though I'm still holding out the hope that there is some
software upgrade that will fix its faults.
I called Heathcote today, and the guy I spoke to yesterday is on leave,
and of course the one who answered the phone didn't know anything about
the problem, but he assured me the guy from yesterday was dependable and
would have arranged something, though I wouldn't be able to find out
what until tomorrow.
|
|
| | From: | Big Bear | | Subject: | This is the Importers for LG Products here in NZ.. | | Date: | Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:02:45 +1300 |
|
|
|
L M. Rankine
04 499 2299
Or
service@rankine.co.nz
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence D'Oliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:24:37 +1300 |
|
|
| In article ,
Big Bear
>L M. Rankine
>
>04 499 2299
Thanks for that info. I'm working through the retailer (Heathcote) at
the moment, since they are the ones who sold it to me.
The replacement unit exhibited exactly the same problem. They've taken
it back and are trying to reproduce it themselves.
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:04:43 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-7E5396.10243620012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article ,
> Big Bear >
>>L M. Rankine
>>
>>04 499 2299
>
> Thanks for that info. I'm working through the retailer (Heathcote) at
> the moment, since they are the ones who sold it to me.
>
> The replacement unit exhibited exactly the same problem. They've taken
> it back and are trying to reproduce it themselves.
They can't have sold many if no one has come across the fault before. I bet
the Panasonics are better designed. Any purpose built recorder should be.
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:41:32 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-612ACD.10435017012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1105872779.317274@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
> >When recording can you change the audio compression settings.
>
> No, there are only the three recording quality levels I mentioned--HQ,
> SQ and EQ, and I think they affect video quality only, not audio.
>
> >Goon show. Can't you bring up a time menu and then select 13 minutes
into
> >it to goto and start playing from there?
>
> No, the display while an MP3 is playing already shows the time, I can't
> enter a time search, and the scan buttons don't work. The skip buttons
> do work--taking me to the next or previous MP3, but they always start
> playback from the beginning.
>
> >Apart from that are you fairly happy with it? Would a more expensive
> >Panasonic be better overall value?
>
> This is the first DVD HD video recorder I've used, so I don't know what
> the others would be like. At the moment I'm feeling distinctly unhappy
> with it, though I'm still holding out the hope that there is some
> software upgrade that will fix its faults.
>
> I called Heathcote today, and the guy I spoke to yesterday is on leave,
> and of course the one who answered the phone didn't know anything about
> the problem, but he assured me the guy from yesterday was dependable and
> would have arranged something, though I wouldn't be able to find out
> what until tomorrow.
It's a wonder the guy never told anyone else about your problems with it.
Mainly if they get anyone with similar problems themselves. No much point
keeping any product problems a secret from other staff.
It could well be the sync faults you've found after editing will happen to
all those same models of DVD recorders. Letting you try another one would
be a sure way to find out. No point in being stuck with it if you later
find that other brands don't suffer that problem.
Like a lot of things, there's no telling what you're really getting until
you've bought it in order to try it out properly.
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:19:56 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1105915436.205642@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>Like a lot of things, there's no telling what you're really getting until
>you've bought it in order to try it out properly.
True, but then again this represents a whole new order of complexity for
consumer devices. I've never bought a VCR, for instance, that required a
software upgrade.
I just discovered something else this evening. Previously there was
never any audio/video sync problem when recording off-air. Well, guess
what? Now it's started getting out of sync when recording off-air.
After several attempts with the same result, I decided to power the unit
down. When I switched it back on, off-air recording was back in sync
again. At the moment, I'm retrying a recording off the AV input to see
if that works OK, too.
So it could just be that, unlike any other electronic appliance I've
ever bought, this one doesn't work well after it's been left on for
extended periods of time. Maybe it is running Microsoft Windows after
all...
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:45:47 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-DDB339.19195617012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1105915436.205642@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>Like a lot of things, there's no telling what you're really getting until
>>you've bought it in order to try it out properly.
>
> True, but then again this represents a whole new order of complexity for
> consumer devices. I've never bought a VCR, for instance, that required a
> software upgrade.
>
> I just discovered something else this evening. Previously there was
> never any audio/video sync problem when recording off-air. Well, guess
> what? Now it's started getting out of sync when recording off-air.
>
> After several attempts with the same result, I decided to power the unit
> down. When I switched it back on, off-air recording was back in sync
> again. At the moment, I'm retrying a recording off the AV input to see
> if that works OK, too.
>
> So it could just be that, unlike any other electronic appliance I've
> ever bought, this one doesn't work well after it's been left on for
> extended periods of time. Maybe it is running Microsoft Windows after
> all...
It all sounds a bit too temperamental. You should think about exchanging it
for another well known brand while the thing is still fairly new and worth a
full refund. Perhaps it even overheats if left on too long. If it's not
going to give good results every time then you're going to waste a lot of
time playing round with the thing.
One could expect such hassles with a PC recording video and encoding the
thing to another format or whatever, but not on a purpose built standalone
product like that. What you're doing with it is what the thing was meant to
be designed to do. It doesn't sound like you're expecting too much of it or
anything. It might have a cheap gutless CPU in it. Perhaps they should
state what kind of power they have to do any tasks and size of memory etc?
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:50:32 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1105951548.309856@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>It all sounds a bit too temperamental. You should think about exchanging it
>for another well known brand while the thing is still fairly new and worth a
>full refund.
Yes, I'm coming to that conclusion too. I thought I'd give it a fair go,
but this is just convincing me that it's all too much trouble.
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:20:51 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1105951548.309856@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>You should think about exchanging it
>for another well known brand while the thing is still fairly new and worth a
>full refund.
To Heathcote's credit, they took it back without a quibble. The sales
guy has been trying today to recreate the sync problem, so far without
success, but he's been happy to let me have a different model anyway.
I looked up the models they had in the shop, but the Panasonic DMR-E85H
and the Philips HDRW720 couldn't read DVD-VR (which I'd used to back up
a few bits of stuff from the LG), and the Philips also couldn't do
copying from DVD to the hard drive. The JVC DR-MH30S could do all of
these things and seemingly frame-accurate editing as well (by creating
playlists, not by actually snipping bits off recorded footage). However
it was in a significantly higher price bracket.
Then he suggested the Pioneer DVR-520H. That seemed to do everything I
wanted. And its FireWire interface is an output as well as an input! So
I've now got that.
Of all these units, only the LG could physically copy MP3 and JPEG files
onto its hard drive. The others can only play them straight off CD/DVD.
But that's not a big deal. A slightly bigger deal is that none of them
seems to have a region hack that's as simple as the LG. Some require a
special remote or a special "update disc", and I couldn't find one for
the JVC at all. But I won't worry too much about that for now. If I get
into the habit of getting DVDs from overseas, either I'll try hacking
them on my PC, or else get a cheap DVD player-only unit.
If anybody's interested, I'll keep them posted on how I get on with the
Pioneer. For a start, it's got some amazing control over recording
quality settings: if you're not satisfied with the standard ones, you
can define your own.
|
|
| | From: | A | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:04:47 +1300 |
|
|
| On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:20:51 +1300, Lawrence DčOliveiro
wrote:
>In article <1105951548.309856@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>You should think about exchanging it
>>for another well known brand while the thing is still fairly new and worth a
>>full refund.
>
>To Heathcote's credit, they took it back without a quibble. The sales
>guy has been trying today to recreate the sync problem, so far without
>success, but he's been happy to let me have a different model anyway.
>
>I looked up the models they had in the shop, but the Panasonic DMR-E85H
>and the Philips HDRW720 couldn't read DVD-VR (which I'd used to back up
>a few bits of stuff from the LG), and the Philips also couldn't do
>copying from DVD to the hard drive. The JVC DR-MH30S could do all of
>these things and seemingly frame-accurate editing as well (by creating
>playlists, not by actually snipping bits off recorded footage). However
>it was in a significantly higher price bracket.
>
>Then he suggested the Pioneer DVR-520H. That seemed to do everything I
>wanted. And its FireWire interface is an output as well as an input! So
>I've now got that.
>
>Of all these units, only the LG could physically copy MP3 and JPEG files
>onto its hard drive. The others can only play them straight off CD/DVD.
>But that's not a big deal. A slightly bigger deal is that none of them
>seems to have a region hack that's as simple as the LG. Some require a
>special remote or a special "update disc", and I couldn't find one for
>the JVC at all. But I won't worry too much about that for now. If I get
>into the habit of getting DVDs from overseas, either I'll try hacking
>them on my PC, or else get a cheap DVD player-only unit.
Have you tried a region 1 DVD? A friend purchased a Panasonic with
region 4 stated on the manual etc... and spent a night looking up
hacks to multizone it until I suggested he try a region 1 disc first
and lent him one.
It played it fine. Even better, the region 1 disc was RCE protected
(which I forgot about)
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:37:26 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <4diuu0h208sjuarml551sgo2q2s8ponuq4@4ax.com>, A
wrote:
>>If I get
>>into the habit of getting DVDs from overseas, either I'll try hacking
>>them on my PC, or else get a cheap DVD player-only unit.
>
>Have you tried a region 1 DVD?
No, I haven't got any.
I have purchased VHS videos in the past from Blackstar (now
www.sendit.com). I might see if there's anything interesting in the
Region 2 world and try getting one sometime.
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:19:31 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-5397B0.16205120012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1105951548.309856@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>You should think about exchanging it
>>for another well known brand while the thing is still fairly new and worth
>>a
>>full refund.
>
> To Heathcote's credit, they took it back without a quibble. The sales
> guy has been trying today to recreate the sync problem, so far without
> success, but he's been happy to let me have a different model anyway.
>
> I looked up the models they had in the shop, but the Panasonic DMR-E85H
> and the Philips HDRW720 couldn't read DVD-VR (which I'd used to back up
> a few bits of stuff from the LG), and the Philips also couldn't do
> copying from DVD to the hard drive. The JVC DR-MH30S could do all of
> these things and seemingly frame-accurate editing as well (by creating
> playlists, not by actually snipping bits off recorded footage). However
> it was in a significantly higher price bracket.
>
> Then he suggested the Pioneer DVR-520H. That seemed to do everything I
> wanted. And its FireWire interface is an output as well as an input! So
> I've now got that.
>
> Of all these units, only the LG could physically copy MP3 and JPEG files
> onto its hard drive. The others can only play them straight off CD/DVD.
> But that's not a big deal. A slightly bigger deal is that none of them
> seems to have a region hack that's as simple as the LG. Some require a
> special remote or a special "update disc", and I couldn't find one for
> the JVC at all. But I won't worry too much about that for now. If I get
> into the habit of getting DVDs from overseas, either I'll try hacking
> them on my PC, or else get a cheap DVD player-only unit.
>
> If anybody's interested, I'll keep them posted on how I get on with the
> Pioneer. For a start, it's got some amazing control over recording
> quality settings: if you're not satisfied with the standard ones, you
> can define your own.
Does the Pioneer cost very much more?
MP3 and JPEGS can be done on CD with your PC. Save your recorder mainly for
recording, a cheap player will do everything else and save wearing out the
Pioneer.
It might only be your old video stuff that stuffed the LG recorder. Any
recording off the TV with it should be find. Do you have any trouble
recording new shows to the Hard Drive and then to a DVD?
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:49:26 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1106201968.248179@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>Does the Pioneer cost very much more?
They let me have it for the same price.
>MP3 and JPEGS can be done on CD with your PC. Save your recorder mainly for
>recording, a cheap player will do everything else and save wearing out the
>Pioneer.
Yeah, as I previously mentioned, the MP3 playback function on the LG was
pretty limited anyway, so no big loss.
>It might only be your old video stuff that stuffed the LG recorder.
I don't see why.
>Any recording off the TV with it should be [fine].
At one point I definitely did have sync problems with the LG recording
straight off air.
>Do you have any trouble
>recording new shows to the Hard Drive and then to a DVD?
With the Pioneer? Haven't done any DVD writing with that yet. It was
able to read the DVD-VR backups I'd done with the LG just fine. Also
I've recorded two Get Smart episodes from videotape, and the Pioneer has
done pretty much frame-accurate edits, which is amazing. One limitation
is, you can split clips, but you can't rejoin them. However, I believe
you can combine them as part of playlist-controlled copying to DVD. I'll
be trying that at some point soon.
I just want to say this Pioneer is a real geek's machine. It has way
more informational displays and settings than the LG, or possibly
anything else. For example, it has two different status displays that
can be brought up during playback, one of which even shows the clip's
bit-rate in Mbps!
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:46:30 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-49E077.19492620012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1106201968.248179@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>Does the Pioneer cost very much more?
>
> They let me have it for the same price.
>
>>MP3 and JPEGS can be done on CD with your PC. Save your recorder mainly
>>for
>>recording, a cheap player will do everything else and save wearing out the
>>Pioneer.
>
> Yeah, as I previously mentioned, the MP3 playback function on the LG was
> pretty limited anyway, so no big loss.
>
>>It might only be your old video stuff that stuffed the LG recorder.
>
> I don't see why.
>
>>Any recording off the TV with it should be [fine].
>
> At one point I definitely did have sync problems with the LG recording
> straight off air.
>
>>Do you have any trouble
>>recording new shows to the Hard Drive and then to a DVD?
>
> With the Pioneer? Haven't done any DVD writing with that yet. It was
> able to read the DVD-VR backups I'd done with the LG just fine. Also
> I've recorded two Get Smart episodes from videotape, and the Pioneer has
> done pretty much frame-accurate edits, which is amazing. One limitation
> is, you can split clips, but you can't rejoin them. However, I believe
> you can combine them as part of playlist-controlled copying to DVD. I'll
> be trying that at some point soon.
>
> I just want to say this Pioneer is a real geek's machine. It has way
> more informational displays and settings than the LG, or possibly
> anything else. For example, it has two different status displays that
> can be brought up during playback, one of which even shows the clip's
> bit-rate in Mbps!
Having the bit rate could be useful. Sounds like a good quality machine.
The problems with the LGs might have done you a favour in the long run.
That's bad if you had the sync problems recording straight off air like you
said (with the LGs).
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:47:02 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <1106207184.355595@ftpsrv1>,
"E. Scrooge" wrote:
>[The Pioneer] Sounds like a good quality machine.
>The problems with the LGs might have done you a favour in the long run.
I'm thinking so too. I'm just getting more impressed with the Pioneer.
You can set its frame-accurate support on or off: with it on, you
sacrifice the capability to do high-speed copying. But I figure the
trade-off is worth it, because with it on, I can remove ads with
surgical precision.
Remember how, with the LG, when I cut out the ads and then tried to
transfer the edited title to DVD, it would end up split into multiple
titles at the cuts? I had one of these shows left over that I hadn't
written to DVD-R yet. On the Pioneer, I was able to create a "copy list"
of all the hard-drive content I wanted to write to DVD, and it let me
rejoin those split pieces (restored from a temporary DVD-RW backup) into
a single title for the copy. Furthermore, the copy list let me queue up
a list of titles, and then leave it to copy them all in one batch.
Unlike the LG, where I had to copy titles one at a time.
The Pioneer also defaults to transferring the title names as
well--unlike the LG, which kept renaming the copies back to "Empty
Title", which I then had to laboriously delete to put in the correct
names. And the Pioneer also gives me a choice of several different natty
styles for the menus on the DVD, unlike the LG, which only had one style
that was not nearly as nice.
The biggest annoyance with the Pioneer's "Disc Navigator" user interface
is that, instead of selecting a video title and then specifying the
operation you want to perform on it (play it, edit it etc), you have to
specify the operation first, and then select the title. Not only is this
directly contrary to established GUI standards on practically all PC
platforms, it also leads to extra button presses. Having just edited a
title, I then want to give it a proper name: but instead of going
straight to the right operation in the menu, I first have to press the
Return key to get out of the title-selection mode, then switch to the
right item in the operation menu, then press the Enter key to get back
to selecting the title. Luckily, it defaults to selecting the same title
as I was at last time.
Another quirk is channel tuning. There was a "Ch Setup" field in the
tuning display that offered either "Western European" or "ID & NZ"
settings for the current channel. Naturally I switched it to "ID & NZ",
and then wondered why I could only select VHF channels, not UHF ones. It
took a few moments to realize that these settings actually meant "UHF"
and "VHF" respectively.
Another downside is that it won't read the non-finalized DVD-R disc that
I used to save another title that I'd recorded off-air on the LG. The
manual does warn that non-finalized discs are not compatible between
machines from different vendors.
Anyway, back to copying some more stuff off tape. It should just about
be getting to the point where the LG started exhibiting sync problems.
|
|
| | From: | Big Bear | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:40:07 +1300 |
|
|
| On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:47:02 +1300, Lawrence DčOliveiro
wrote:
>In article <1106207184.355595@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>[The Pioneer] Sounds like a good quality machine.
>>The problems with the LGs might have done you a favour in the long run.
>
>I'm thinking so too. I'm just getting more impressed with the Pioneer.
>You can set its frame-accurate support on or off: with it on, you
>sacrifice the capability to do high-speed copying. But I figure the
>trade-off is worth it, because with it on, I can remove ads with
>surgical precision.
>
>Remember how, with the LG, when I cut out the ads and then tried to
>transfer the edited title to DVD, it would end up split into multiple
>titles at the cuts? I had one of these shows left over that I hadn't
>written to DVD-R yet. On the Pioneer, I was able to create a "copy list"
>of all the hard-drive content I wanted to write to DVD, and it let me
>rejoin those split pieces (restored from a temporary DVD-RW backup) into
>a single title for the copy. Furthermore, the copy list let me queue up
>a list of titles, and then leave it to copy them all in one batch.
>Unlike the LG, where I had to copy titles one at a time.
>
>The Pioneer also defaults to transferring the title names as
>well--unlike the LG, which kept renaming the copies back to "Empty
>Title", which I then had to laboriously delete to put in the correct
>names. And the Pioneer also gives me a choice of several different natty
>styles for the menus on the DVD, unlike the LG, which only had one style
>that was not nearly as nice.
>
>The biggest annoyance with the Pioneer's "Disc Navigator" user interface
>is that, instead of selecting a video title and then specifying the
>operation you want to perform on it (play it, edit it etc), you have to
>specify the operation first, and then select the title. Not only is this
>directly contrary to established GUI standards on practically all PC
>platforms, it also leads to extra button presses. Having just edited a
>title, I then want to give it a proper name: but instead of going
>straight to the right operation in the menu, I first have to press the
>Return key to get out of the title-selection mode, then switch to the
>right item in the operation menu, then press the Enter key to get back
>to selecting the title. Luckily, it defaults to selecting the same title
>as I was at last time.
>
>Another quirk is channel tuning. There was a "Ch Setup" field in the
>tuning display that offered either "Western European" or "ID & NZ"
>settings for the current channel. Naturally I switched it to "ID & NZ",
>and then wondered why I could only select VHF channels, not UHF ones. It
>took a few moments to realize that these settings actually meant "UHF"
>and "VHF" respectively.
>
>Another downside is that it won't read the non-finalized DVD-R disc that
>I used to save another title that I'd recorded off-air on the LG. The
>manual does warn that non-finalized discs are not compatible between
>machines from different vendors.
>
>Anyway, back to copying some more stuff off tape. It should just about
>be getting to the point where the LG started exhibiting sync problems.
Whats the Model No..?
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:55:31 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <7bn0v050u9e5mtf0tmd7fgk2ti8d046fc1@4ax.com>,
Big Bear
>>Anyway, back to copying some more stuff off tape. It should just about
>>be getting to the point where the LG started exhibiting sync problems.
>
>
>
>Whats the Model No..?
It's the Pioneer DVR-520H.
Anyway, the good news is, I have now recorded about 5 Get Smart episodes
and all six episodes of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And it's
done them all without a hiccup--no sign of sync problems. The LG would
have started acting up long before all that was done.
Brilliant machine.
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 14:49:49 +1300 |
|
|
| In article ,
Lawrence DčOliveiro wrote:
>...I have now recorded about 5 Get Smart episodes
>and all six episodes of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And it's
>done them all without a hiccup--no sign of sync problems.
Last night I set it to tape--sorry, record--the Marx Brothers movie,
plus a bit of BBC World following. About 3 this morning I woke up, being
unable to sleep, and decided to watch some BBC World, as well as see
what it had recorded a couple of hours earlier, just for comparison.
Perhaps I haven't looked closely enough yet, but I couldn't see any
difference between the quality of the recorded video versus that
straight off-air. I don't think you can say that of any regular VHS
deck, possibly not even of S-VHS.
Pioneer seem a bit coy about the speeds of their scan modes. Other
brands will call them "2x", "4x" and so on, but Pioneer just call them
"Scan1", "Scan2", "Scan3" and "Scan4". Anyway, one interesting mode does
a 2x playback with the sound on. Instead of pitching things up an
octave, it resamples the sound so it still comes out at the same pitch,
just at double speed and sounding a bit chopped up. And speech is still
(mostly) legible! So it was great for skipping through bits of the
recorded news bulletin that were repeating parts I'd already seen in the
live broadcast, or were otherwise less interesting. And then switch to
normal play mode as soon as something caught my ear. I think I've
discovered yet another way to cram more information into my life. :)
The interface for assigning names to things is right up against the
physical limits of what you can achieve with a remote control held in
one hand. Similar to the LG (and no doubt other units), it shows a
picture of all the characters you can choose from, and you use the
navigation keys on the remote to move to the right character, then press
Enter to input that character. But it adds a few shortcuts: you can
quickly change the text insertion position using the forward- and
backward-scan buttons (instead of having to move to and select forward-
and backward-arrow symbols on the keyboard picture as with the LG). Also
you can use the number buttons to enter the most common characters,
cellphone text-message style. Though I couldn't find a shortcut button
for entering a space.
The end result is tolerable, but I wonder how long it'll be before
someone brings out a unit with a full alphanumeric keyboard on the
remote. There are already PDAs which have demonstrated the practicality
of such a keyboard, sized really small so that you operate it with your
thumbs. The other thing I would wish for is a Clipboard feature to
support cut/copy/paste. I couldn't be bothered typing in "Hitch-Hiker's
Guide tothe Galaxy" (note the missing space to keep within the name
length limit) 6 times, so I just named the episodes "HHGG 1", "HHGG 2"
and so on. Any tool that saves typing through such a narrow-bandwidth
interface must be a good thing, so a Clipboard seems a natural feature
to provide.
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 10:29:48 +1300 |
|
|
| As an inveterate channel-surfer, I have a couple of annoyances with
current TV-tuning gear. This applies to the Pioneer, but I think it's
characteristic of all current models of anything that can pick up TV
broadcast signals, of whatever brand.
The first irritation is the time it takes to lock onto a channel. My two
oldest VCRs (circa 1990-vintage) will start displaying a channel with
full picture and sound within just a fraction of a second after
switching to it--fast enough to switch between two news broadcasts in
the middle of a sentence while hardly missing a thing. Newer equipment
seems to take about a second. Perhaps it's because the newer gear is
built for the world-wide market, so it has to build in options for
locking onto more kinds of signals, including ones not applicable in NZ.
The other annoyance has to do with the number of buttons it takes to
select a channel. On my old gear, to select a single-digit program
number, you just press the digit. If the number has two digits, you have
to press an additional key first, followed by the two digits. On the
newer machines, you just press the two digits quickly enough, and they
get recognized as a single number. But the maximum pause between the
digits is, I think, far too long. I wish either it was adjustable, or
there was a setup option to default to only recognizing single digits,
for those of us living in disadvantaged countries with less than 10
channels.
I could use the channel-up and channel-down buttons, but then I run into
another annoyance that limits their usefulness for quickly cycling
through all channels: the fact that the Pioneer has 99 different channel
programs! I can't be bothered setting them all up. You can mark
individual ones as "unused" and to be skipped over, but again this has
to be done for each one individually, which is too much trouble. I wish
there was a shortcut to mark an entire range, or alternatively a whole
block of 10, as unused.
|
|
| | From: | E. Scrooge | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:19:07 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in message
news:ldo-51DBA3.10470121012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1106207184.355595@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>[The Pioneer] Sounds like a good quality machine.
>>The problems with the LGs might have done you a favour in the long run.
>
> I'm thinking so too. I'm just getting more impressed with the Pioneer.
> You can set its frame-accurate support on or off: with it on, you
> sacrifice the capability to do high-speed copying. But I figure the
> trade-off is worth it, because with it on, I can remove ads with
> surgical precision.
>
> Remember how, with the LG, when I cut out the ads and then tried to
> transfer the edited title to DVD, it would end up split into multiple
> titles at the cuts? I had one of these shows left over that I hadn't
> written to DVD-R yet. On the Pioneer, I was able to create a "copy list"
> of all the hard-drive content I wanted to write to DVD, and it let me
> rejoin those split pieces (restored from a temporary DVD-RW backup) into
> a single title for the copy. Furthermore, the copy list let me queue up
> a list of titles, and then leave it to copy them all in one batch.
> Unlike the LG, where I had to copy titles one at a time.
>
> The Pioneer also defaults to transferring the title names as
> well--unlike the LG, which kept renaming the copies back to "Empty
> Title", which I then had to laboriously delete to put in the correct
> names. And the Pioneer also gives me a choice of several different natty
> styles for the menus on the DVD, unlike the LG, which only had one style
> that was not nearly as nice.
>
> The biggest annoyance with the Pioneer's "Disc Navigator" user interface
> is that, instead of selecting a video title and then specifying the
> operation you want to perform on it (play it, edit it etc), you have to
> specify the operation first, and then select the title. Not only is this
> directly contrary to established GUI standards on practically all PC
> platforms, it also leads to extra button presses. Having just edited a
> title, I then want to give it a proper name: but instead of going
> straight to the right operation in the menu, I first have to press the
> Return key to get out of the title-selection mode, then switch to the
> right item in the operation menu, then press the Enter key to get back
> to selecting the title. Luckily, it defaults to selecting the same title
> as I was at last time.
>
> Another quirk is channel tuning. There was a "Ch Setup" field in the
> tuning display that offered either "Western European" or "ID & NZ"
> settings for the current channel. Naturally I switched it to "ID & NZ",
> and then wondered why I could only select VHF channels, not UHF ones. It
> took a few moments to realize that these settings actually meant "UHF"
> and "VHF" respectively.
>
> Another downside is that it won't read the non-finalized DVD-R disc that
> I used to save another title that I'd recorded off-air on the LG. The
> manual does warn that non-finalized discs are not compatible between
> machines from different vendors.
>
> Anyway, back to copying some more stuff off tape. It should just about
> be getting to the point where the LG started exhibiting sync problems.
Good to hear your findings on these recorders. Not too surprising that a
format will only work on the machine that recorded it.
Perhaps with the Pioneer there might be a format that's similar to
commercial DVDs, so that the recorded DVDs of that compresson format will
work on most players?
Unless you hope to share them with friends it hardly matters.
In the end you got a good deal. To anyone else paying more for the Pioneer,
sounds like they would get better value for the money as well. Since it
does do what people would expect of it.
E. Scrooge
|
|
| | From: | Dave - Dave.net.nz | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:25:55 +1300 |
|
|
| E. Scrooge wrote:
>>>[The Pioneer] Sounds like a good quality machine.
>>>The problems with the LGs might have done you a favour in the long run.
>>I'm thinking so too. I'm just getting more impressed with the Pioneer.
>>You can set its frame-accurate support on or off: with it on, you
>>sacrifice the capability to do high-speed copying. But I figure the
>>trade-off is worth it, because with it on, I can remove ads with
>>surgical precision.
> In the end you got a good deal. To anyone else paying more for the Pioneer,
> sounds like they would get better value for the money as well. Since it
> does do what people would expect of it.
Just to keep the info here for anyone searching...
Pioneer DVR-520H was the model from what I have read of this thread...
what was the cost of the Pioneer?
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence D'Oliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:52:56 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <35beikF4lckveU1@individual.net>,
"Dave - Dave.net.nz" wrote:
>Just to keep the info here for anyone searching...
>Pioneer DVR-520H was the model from what I have read of this thread...
>what was the cost of the Pioneer?
$1299.95, same as the LG.
I just keep discovering more features of the thing. For instance, you
can individually adjust the audio input level on all three of its analog
inputs, from +6dB to -6dB in steps of 3dB. Then there's the "Video/Audio
Adjust" menu, where you can tweak settings like noise reduction, detail
enhancement, black and white level, hue and chroma, with separate
settings for TV/AV inputs and disc playback. There are 3 presets defined
for each, plus you can create an additional 3 custom settings.
One feature it doesn't have, that the LG did, is picture-in-picture.
This lets you view the TV or AV input in a little window superimposed on
playback of a disc title. I have a similar feature on my 15-year-old
Sony VCR, which I use while watching a bit of a taped program during
live TV ad breaks, to keep an eye out for the end of the ad break. Ah
well, can't have everything...
|
|
| | From: | Big Bear | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:25:35 +1300 |
|
|
| On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:52:56 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
wrote:
>In article <35beikF4lckveU1@individual.net>,
> "Dave - Dave.net.nz" wrote:
>
>>Just to keep the info here for anyone searching...
>>Pioneer DVR-520H was the model from what I have read of this thread...
>>what was the cost of the Pioneer?
>
>$1299.95, same as the LG.
>
>I just keep discovering more features of the thing. For instance, you
>can individually adjust the audio input level on all three of its analog
>inputs, from +6dB to -6dB in steps of 3dB. Then there's the "Video/Audio
>Adjust" menu, where you can tweak settings like noise reduction, detail
>enhancement, black and white level, hue and chroma, with separate
>settings for TV/AV inputs and disc playback. There are 3 presets defined
>for each, plus you can create an additional 3 custom settings.
>
>One feature it doesn't have, that the LG did, is picture-in-picture.
>This lets you view the TV or AV input in a little window superimposed on
>playback of a disc title. I have a similar feature on my 15-year-old
>Sony VCR, which I use while watching a bit of a taped program during
>live TV ad breaks, to keep an eye out for the end of the ad break. Ah
>well, can't have everything...
What Model Sony was that..?
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence D'Oliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 14:28:46 +1300 |
|
|
| In article <3b73v0lgrdhacutrkbjluio4287e1ms0r0@4ax.com>,
Big Bear
>On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:52:56 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> wrote:
>
>>This lets you view the TV or AV input in a little window superimposed on
>>playback of a disc title. I have a similar feature on my 15-year-old
>>Sony VCR...
>
>What Model Sony was that..?
It's an SLV-757NC.
|
|
| | From: | GJ | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 19:57:31 +1300 |
|
|
|
"Lawrence DčOliveiro" wrote in
message news:ldo-5397B0.16205120012005@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> In article <1105951548.309856@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
> But that's not a big deal. A slightly bigger deal is that none
of them
> seems to have a region hack that's as simple as the LG. Some
require a
> special remote or a special "update disc", and I couldn't find
one for
> the JVC at all. But I won't worry too much about that for now.
If I get
> into the habit of getting DVDs from overseas, either I'll try
hacking
> them on my PC, or else get a cheap DVD player-only unit.
I have a JVC MHC30 and it is region free out of the box. Tried a
region 1 RCE DVD with no problems.
I was told that all DVD recorders sold in NZ are region free
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 20:45:17 +1300 |
|
|
| In article , "GJ" wrote:
>I have a JVC MHC30 and it is region free out of the box. Tried a
>region 1 RCE DVD with no problems.
>
>I was told that all DVD recorders sold in NZ are region free
Yes, the first salesman (the one who sold me the LG) said they all got
sent to some place here in NZ to be modded as soon as they came off the
boat.
I'm not so sure, though. If the LG was already region-free, why did it
respond to its region-hack button sequence with a message saying I'd
succeeded in making it region free?
|
|
| | From: | Robert Singers | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | 21 Jan 2005 21:23:20 +1300 |
|
|
| Out from under a rock popped Lawrence DčOliveiro and said
[snip]
> I'm not so sure, though. If the LG was already region-free, why did it
> respond to its region-hack button sequence with a message saying I'd
> succeeded in making it region free?
Because there isn't any logic in the device to detect whether it is region
free before making the change, so any successful attempt to invoke the
region free function returns that message.
--
rob singers
pull finger to reply
Credo Elvem ipsum etiam vivere
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 22:16:13 +1300 |
|
|
| In article ,
Robert Singers wrote:
>Out from under a rock popped Lawrence DčOliveiro and said
>[snip]
>> I'm not so sure, though. If the LG was already region-free, why did it
>> respond to its region-hack button sequence with a message saying I'd
>> succeeded in making it region free?
>
>Because there isn't any logic in the device to detect whether it is region
>free before making the change, so any successful attempt to invoke the
>region free function returns that message.
No, because if the region hack has been invoked once, then invoking it
again produces a message saying region protection has been re-enabled.
|
|
| | From: | roger.s at paradise.net.nz | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:34:48 +1300 |
|
|
| On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:43:50 +1300, Lawrence DčOliveiro
wrote:
>In article <1105872779.317274@ftpsrv1>,
> "E. Scrooge" wrote:
>
>>When recording can you change the audio compression settings.
>
>No, there are only the three recording quality levels I mentioned--HQ,
>SQ and EQ, and I think they affect video quality only, not audio.
>
>>Goon show. Can't you bring up a time menu and then select 13 minutes into
>>it to goto and start playing from there?
>
>No, the display while an MP3 is playing already shows the time, I can't
>enter a time search, and the scan buttons don't work. The skip buttons
>do work--taking me to the next or previous MP3, but they always start
>playback from the beginning.
>
>>Apart from that are you fairly happy with it? Would a more expensive
>>Panasonic be better overall value?
>
>This is the first DVD HD video recorder I've used, so I don't know what
>the others would be like. At the moment I'm feeling distinctly unhappy
>with it, though I'm still holding out the hope that there is some
>software upgrade that will fix its faults.
>
>I called Heathcote today, and the guy I spoke to yesterday is on leave,
>and of course the one who answered the phone didn't know anything about
>the problem, but he assured me the guy from yesterday was dependable and
>would have arranged something, though I wouldn't be able to find out
>what until tomorrow.
You could contact the Agents direct, they have been very good in the past
with other problems
L M. Rankine
04 499 2299
Or service@rankine.co.nz
|
|
| | From: | Lawrence DčOliveiro | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:31:56 +1300 |
|
|
| In article ,
roger.s@paradise.net.nz wrote:
>You could contact the [LG] Agents direct, they have been very good in the past
>with other problems
You mean LG in Sydney? I had a look on , and there
seems to be no NZ office.
|
|
| | From: | Big Bear | | Subject: | Re: DVD HD recorder impressions (long) | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 18:33:51 +1300 |
|
|
| On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:31:56 +1300, Lawrence DčOliveiro
wrote:
>In article ,
> roger.s@paradise.net.nz wrote:
>
>>You could contact the [LG] Agents direct, they have been very good in the past
>>with other problems
>
>You mean LG in Sydney? I had a look on , and there
>seems to be no NZ office.
No the Import Agents here, I posted all the Info for you.
LM Rankine are the Importers here.
|
|
|
