Philips DVD Recorder

DVDs are fast becoming popular in India. Around the world, they’re known for their better quality and higher density of storage space compared to VCDs. Here’s a DVD Recorder that will not only allow you to play DVD movies, but also record your own. It can even play audio CDs and VCDs, thus making it an all-in-one solution. The recorder can be connected directly to any composite or S-video source as well as analog audio. There’s an IEEE 1394 FireWire port for directly recording from camcorders having the same port. Hence, you can record from a VCR, VHS tapes, camcorders or even your local cable TV. It records on both write-once and re-writable DVD discs. 

The player comes in an attractive silver casing with a large LCD display for

monitoring its activities. The various video input sources are neatly hidden behind a motorized fold-down panel that opens and closes at the push of a button. It has operational buttons for search and skip, manual audio recording level and channel search as well. It has a built-in TV tuner for using cable TV transmissions, and coaxial optical sockets for digital audio output to an amplifier. Some other highlights of the DVD recorder are Dolby digital encoder, Real time Mpeg-2 variable bit encoder and video encoder. It supports index picture screen for instant overview of disk contents and comes with a 10-inch long remote control for all settings. An on screen display (OSD) pops up when you change the settings. 

The player supports four recording modes for various picture qualities, which include HQ (high quality), SP (Standard Play), LP (large playback) and EP (Extended Play). These vary in the resolution and duration of recording. You can record video over multiple titles and name them using the remote control. It even has a child lock that protects DVD-RWs from being accidentally erased. Recording from video sources was quite simple, and playback quality was very good. It took just 43 seconds to record a 20 min title and we were able to playback the recorded DVDs on a Pioneer PC

DVD—drive. 

The Bottom Line: Overall, it’s a good solution considering its price and feature rich set.

Sanjay Majumder at PCQ Labs