DVD Recorders: A Hands-On Reaction
When the DVD first hit the market, nobody anticipated it
would be the runaway success it has become. For one thing, conventional wisdom of the time
held that no new video format could really take off unless it had a recording function,
like that of the VCR. And that was considered to be a long way off, due to the difficulty
of encoding an MPEG-2-compressed signal.
Electronics engineers like nothing better than such a
challenge, however, and workable encoding techniques soon appeared. Trouble is, there are
some five different ways to record a DVD signal, each with its own distinctive type of
disc, and the amount of compatibility between these and a conventional DVD player varies
widely. Eventually, this situation will no doubt clarify itself, but for now we are faced
with one of the most confusing sorts of choice in the A/V world.
Even the terminology is confusing. One form of rewritable
disc -- probably the most common -- is DVD-RW; its main competitor is called DVD+RW, and
both claim a reasonable ability to be read by ordinary DVD players. DVD-RW has two
recording modes, Video and VR, the former offering a number of editing functions, the
latter fewer of those, but apparently with greater compatibility with existing players.
DVD+RW and DVD-RW in the VR mode usually do not need to be "finalized" after
completion; Video-mode discs do require finalization and -- just to make things more
complicated -- so do some VR and DVD+RW discs, depending on the player itself (and,
sometimes the length of the recording). Both DVD-RW and +RW have write-once equivalents --
DVD-R and DVD+R, respectively -- and these do seem to have good compatibility with regular
players.
Yet another rewritable format is called DVD-RAM. It offers
the greatest degree of editing flexibility, but can only play on a machine equipped to
record RAM discs, and apparently not all of those.
All five formats offer several recording speeds. As with
tape, the longer recording times do involve a sacrifice in image quality. Generally, SP
(standard play) mode allows two hours of recording on a single-sided DVD. A higher speed
is offered, called variously XP or HQ or Fine, allowing one hour of recording, and other
slower or intermediate settings let you put up to six hours on a disc.
Virtually all recorders can play back DVD-video, Video CD,
CD, and CD-RW discs. None of them can write anything other than their particular format of
DVD.
To make some sense of all this, I recently collected four
DVD recorders to experiment with, operating in most of the available formats (as it turned
out, none of them could write CD+R discs, very much a minority format).
My reaction was decidedly mixed. The technology definitely
works, and I had no problem making superb-looking recordings using any of the formats
available. The fears that DVD encoding would be difficult to achieve appear unfounded.
But the consumer electronics industry never learns, and
here we have five different formats for doing the same thing. Each has its advantages, to
be sure, but the public would be far better served if the various attributes were combined
in a single format, as was done with the original DVD-Video. It looks as though DVD-RW
might win out, but who knows?
Then there is the compatibility problem. Some of these
formats make no claim to be playable on an ordinary DVD player, but others shoot for some
level of universality. I used a mid-priced player of several years ago -- a typical
machine, I felt -- to try to play at least those formats that have some shot at
compatibility. The DVD-R (write once) discs played perfectly; DVD-RW discs (Video mode)
did not, no matter what recorder they were made on.
The biggest problem for the present formats is that they
are confined to 480-line standard-definition TV, in a world that is moving quickly toward
HDTV. There's no HD standard for DVD yet, but there definitely will be, and I believe it
will quickly dominate the market, leaving the current five formats out in the cold.
So, should you buy into DVD-R now? Yes, if you want to
archive your camcorder recordings or programs that are standard definition to begin with.
But a couple of years will probably see the prices drop sharply for the current formats,
and the advent of true HDTV recording. I’m guessing most videophiles will choose to
wait.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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