dvd recorder with hard drive?

[ChrisGreaves]

I've labored hard and long ("CD/DVD R/-RW/+RW and all that stuff" ) with my Magnavox DVD+RW device.
My good friend wants to record Coronation Street each night, so she is thinking of buying a recorder.
I see that one can buy a DVD recorder with a hard drive.

Given that Ms B would have more problems than I with DVD disks, a resident hard-drive seems like a good idea for her.
Program to record CBC at 6:30pm-7:00pm every night, and just play back the episodes she missed by e.g. meeting me for supper.
Has anyone here any experience with hard-drive DVD recorders?
Thanks in keen anticipation.

[John Gray]

I could suggest some that work with the Noble British PAL system in the UK, but I presume they would be fairly useless for Toronto...

[HansV]

Er, PAL was developed by the German company Telefunken...

[PaulB]

Is your friend's TV reception over-the-air, satellite or cable? If satellite or cable, who is the provider? High definition or standard? There are various solutions depending on the provider.

[John Gray]

Er, PAL was developed by the German company Telefunken...

Indeed. We have used it in the Uk for yonks!

[ChrisGreaves]

Is your friend's TV reception over-the-air, satellite or cable? If satellite or cable, who is the provider? High definition or standard? There are various solutions depending on the provider.

Thanks Paul.
Cable ("Rogers Cable" in Toronto).
Toronto is switching over to digital? high-definition? next year.
I'm afraid I'm not "up" on all this because I rarely watch TV.
Ms B will subscribe to whatever is "the best that money can buy", even though she watches only Coronation Street and reruns of Larry King Live.

I was mostly interested in how the hard-drive technology fares against my current situation of formatting and swapping 4.7 GB DVD disks.

Ms B is a technophobe. She would treat me to supper if I programmed the beast for her, and she'd leave it to record Coronation Street until the show closed or the reruns ended, which ever came later.

[ChrisGreaves]

I could suggest some that work with the Noble British PAL system in the UK, but I presume they would be fairly useless for Toronto...

Thanks John. I'm assuming that the hard-drive DVD recorders sold in Toronto would work for whatever system is planned for Toronto.

[PaulB]

There are DVD recorders with hard drives, but they seem to be getting harder and harder to find. My wife used to have an LG recorder to record programs that she couldn't watch 'live'. She recorded to the hard drive and almost never transferred those programs to DVD unless it was something really special that she wanted to archive. It was mainly record, watch, delete. We now have a combination digital set top box/PVR that records to disk but has no DVD player.

As your friend is on Rogers, she may have (or could upgrade to) their digital VIP service and rent or purchase a Rogers PVR and record away to her heart's content. Thanks to Rogers' predatory practices, though, the devices are quite expensive to rent or buy. They sometimes can be found on sale at Best Buy, Futureshop, Walmart or Costco.

Despite all your research, I'd forget about ever using the DVD device in one of these boxes for anything other than playing a prerecorded program or movie. It's otherwise too complicated.

[ChrisGreaves]

... recorded to the hard drive and almost never transferred those programs to DVD

Thanks Paul; that's how I envisage Ms B operating.

... Rogers, ... digital VIP service and rent or purchase a Rogers PVR and

Thanks for this too. She is in the process of stripping the Bell call-answer service ($11/month?) in favour of the mailbox built in to her new mobile phones.

Which fascinates me.
We have gone from owning our own voice-mail devices, through subscribing to a service, and back to our own devices, albeit now embedded in the phones.

[JoeP]

If your friend has a PC running Media Center you could add a cable card to her PC (if Rogers supports cable card) and have Media Center record the show(s) to any HD on the PC. Media Center is a terrific DVR that everyone including Microsoft under appreciates.

Joe

[ChrisGreaves]

If your friend has a PC running Media Center ...

That's what I like about you, Joe, so Optimistic.

My friend doesn't have a PC, let alone a Media Center, but she is going to buy a personal Computer once the Christmas sales start. Next year. And This year. And Last Year.
That's why I'm looking for (on her part) a minimal interaction solution. My thinking is that an inbuilt hard drive means she won't have to dive into technical complexities about "which is the right way up", which those of us still using plastic DVD discs have struggled to master [/sarcasm].

[PaulB]

I agree with Joe that Media Center does have great PVR capabilities. Rogers, however, does not offer cable cards. Media center will run well on Rogers' analogue service.