set-top dvd recorder vs pc burner advice

[dcass]

I am trying to decide which way to go. I currently lease a Dish 522 and simply want to accomplish two things. 1. Transfer VHS home videos to DVD and 2. archive recordings from the 522 to DVD.

What is the best way to accomplish this and which is better - set top or PC burner?

 

[dfergie]

Set top is easier and unless you have a really good video card and Pc the best...

 

[jameskris]

I am thinking about getting a set top box to port some of my stuff off the DVR to DVD. Does anyone know if the shows are right protected and if it is going to be a waste of time to try to port the shows from DVR to DVD?

 

[Pepper]

I've had good luck recording stuff off the 522, connected to a DVD Recorder with the S-Video cable.

 

[Ray S]

I am thinking about getting a set top box to port some of my stuff off the DVR to DVD. Does anyone know if the shows are right protected and if it is going to be a waste of time to try to port the shows from DVR to DVD?

It won't be a waist of time if you purchase "GoDVD" Model CT-2 from Sima. Put the S vidio from the DVR in one end and onther S cable from the other end to the DVD recorder. They refer to these models as "Video Stabalizers" not copywrite by passers.

 

[phat_bastard]

What is the best way to accomplish this and which is better - set top or PC burner?

I've never attempted to capture from a VHS source, but I have had very good results capturing full D-1 (720x480, 29.97fps, mpeg2 @ ~6mbps) from my 522 with an ATI TV Wonder Pro on a dual PIII 933mhz box. I'm not familiar with the capabilities of standalone DVD recorders, but I can say that I wouldn't be satisfied with anything that didn't allow me to clip the commercials out.

For hardware I would recommend getting either a relatively recent ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon, or a Hauppage PVR150 or PVR250. Personally I like the ATI products, but opinions vary wildly on this topic. For capture software, ATI's capture application does the trick, although it's not without it's quirks. The other application I tried was called VirtualVCR, but I had better results with the ATI software. I then clip the commercials out using Womble MPEG editor, and then compile the DVD using Mediachance DVD-Lab. An indispensible resource for learning about PC capture can be found at http://doom9.net.

 

[jameskris]

It won't be a waist of time if you purchase "GoDVD" Model CT-2 from Sima. Put the S vidio from the DVR in one end and onther S cable from the other end to the DVD recorder. They refer to these models as "Video Stabalizers" not copywrite by passers.

So does the GoDVD do the encoding itself or does the computer CPU do the encoding when you are copying fromt he DVR?

 

[Ransack]

If you want to just burn an entire program and not have to deal with editing, then just buy a set top box and hook it up using s-video. Considering how cheap DVD media has become, you may not need/want to remove commericals.

I have a VAIO Media Center 2004 PC, P4, 2.8ghz, 2GB RAM, 500GM HDD space. I use this to record tv shows (in DVR-MS format) and then use either Sony's built in "Click-to-DVD" app to edit out commercials and burn to DVD, but it is verrrrrrrry slow. Case in point, i am right now burning a part 1 of Battlestar Galactica (90 minutes). I edited out the commericials and started the burning/encoding at 7am est this morning and as of right now (6 hrs later) it's not done yet. On the other hand, my buggy Easy Media Creator 7 recently added support for DVR-MS files and would have been done by now, but it's buggy as hell and would have probably locked up.

I guess what i am saying is get a set top DVD recorder as it has to be a lot less of a hassle

 

[andrews777]

How do you record anything useful from the 522 when it gets out of sync (audio) so often now?

Brad