jack

These days, I suspect a new video player would cost a lot more than a DVD player...

Yep, agree with both (though DVD recorder may cost slightly more, which comes with VHS automatically?). FWIW, if you were commenting on "cheap", I was referring to buying films/shows, I probably should have made that clear.

can be avoided with the right software

Yeah, I really should get round to searching that out for mine. I had a quick google once but there wasn't a trivial answer and I never sorted it out.

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Small storage space
That depends on the bitrate... It can easily be more than a VHS tape can be (I have DVDs that are 4 or 5 hours long).

Built-in ability to skip stupid intros, piracy ads, menus, etc
DVDs do this too with an appropriate player (e.g. VLC)

Low hassle recording
But... there are DVD recorders that work in exactly the same way as VHS recorders AFAIK

Cheap
For blanks? DVD-R's are typically < 10p ea.

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Small storage space

Sorry, that was unclear, I meant each list as a list of pros, as in small in physical real life shelf space.

But... there are DVD recorders that work in exactly the same way as VHS recorders AFAIK

*shrug* I'm sure. Just that my limited experience is that it works but you can't record over a DVD infinite times, and needs to be fiddled to play on other machines, whereas videos just worked. But I'm probably behind the times.

Cheap

Sorry, I meant for films/shows, I should have said.

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DVDRWs can be recorded over again and again. When you get blanks for 8p ea though, I'm not sure it matters.

Nowadays people seem to use hard disk based recorders anyway.

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DVDRWs can be recorded over again and again

Hm, I see the figure often quoted is a 1000 times, thoughI had the idea it was low enough to matter, so it looks like you're right, never mind.

Nowadays people seem to use hard disk based recorders anyway.

Well, I'm not sure that's universal, but I agree it's definitely the right way to go and is becoming more common.

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How long can you go on recording on a hard disk without having to delete stuff? I'm the sort of person who wants to keep things pretty much forever, which is why I find both VHS and DVD-R useful :)

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I think it's a different mindset. That with DVD/VHS you have to know when the program is going to be to put the tape in, and most of the time record things you know you want to watch, but with a tivo, you can say "record everything that looks even vaguely interesting", build a collection of shows, and triage everything that's not relevant.

When I was younger, one would say "Ah, I see film X is on TV. I will record it, so I can watch it later." Now that idea is basically lost to me: if a film happens to be on right now, I'll watch it, (or record it if I want to watch it again and again) otherwise it'll get rented to be watched at a time of my choosing.

A brief google says big hard disks might be a bit more expensive than DVDs, but a big modern hard disk might be a thousand GB, ie. nearly a thousand films. Which is getting impractical on DVD simply from sorting through them!

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Yeah - a really fancy home media centre setup that is backed to disk will use something like MPEG 4 H.264 to store the video, so you get a lot more video of the same quality for the amount of storage. Whereas DVDs are all MPEG2.

I believe most of the cheaper disk based recorders (e.g. the Sky+ box) just dump the off the air MPEG2 stream to disk. They don't recompress it or anything... and if my bouts of downloading MPEG2 off the air video is anything to go by the bitrate is a lot higher than the bitrate used on DVDs.

As an aside: All the BBCs stuff is (temporarily) on their iPlayer website, and with an appropriate program you can download the MPEG4 video for safe keeping.

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As an aside: All the BBCs stuff is (temporarily) on their iPlayer website, and with an appropriate program you can download the MPEG4 video for safe keeping.

Ooh, now *that* is interesting!

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(how to do this left as an exercise for the reader...)

Actually there are some Python (I think) scripts knocking around that do it. I use a Mac OS X only app that does it.

I'd google for the scripts and stuff - but it's sufficiently complicated to do on non Mac platforms atm (AFAICT) that unless you're really committed it's probably not worth doing. (and you can download everything on UK television through USENET or Bittorrent at much higher quality than what the BBC provides...)

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Now that idea is basically lost to me: if a film happens to be on right now, I'll watch it, (or record it if I want to watch it again and again) otherwise it'll get rented to be watched at a time of my choosing.

Oh no, that's so sad! I hope I never lose the recording instinct :)

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*shrug* When something actually comes out new, it's nice to watch it live. I lose out on the sense of community I used to have if I lived with someone and we'd all have an artificial reason to sit down with a film together, because it happened to be on then. But then I'm so busy, why should I let TV schedules dictate my schedule, and not aim to watch things when I have an evening free and feel like it?

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Something far more insidious occurs in fact...

I was one of the first people in the UK to get on to the hard disk recording band wagon. The first week that Tivo was released in the UK I got hold of one...

Tivo has an interesting feature where it learns what you're watching (because it knows which channels you choose to watch and what you ask it to record), so it records things it thinks you might like based on what you have watched in the past... then there is a "TiVo suggests.." option on the menu which has stuff in it has recorded that you might want to try watching.

It was a really really good feature actually. I suspect if I had TiVo today, what with the number of channels there are now - it'd trap me with so many cool things I didn't know where on TV that all I'd do would be watching television.

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Where do you get them for 8p each? I'm after a supplier before James runs out... :)

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Some random website I googled had them for 8p ea...

Personally I'd use SVP to buy such things, and the cheapest ones they have there are 10p ea ... http://svp.co.uk/

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Thank you! :)

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Do you know whether you want + or - media?

- is older, slightly more compatible (really old players only support -). + is newer and slightly better technically.

All modern DVD recorders / players will support both formats.

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The only type I've used is -, possibly because when I first got used to the type of CD/DVD I wanted to buy, I knew that + wasn't universally supported. But that's more of a habit than anything. Is - still more common?

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I would expect anything made in the last 5 years to support + as well as - (note: some players exist that support + only, it's not that everything supports - and some things don't support +).

Wikipedia tells me - is probably more common, although it's not sure - and it suggests that almost all players that are around today are multiformat + and -.

+ is slightly better technically. - has slightly more supported players around. In real terms it probably makes no difference which you choose.

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simont

Also...

DVD: does not gradually degrade in quality when left in the same room as a small magnet.

Video: tape position naturally stores information about where you'd got to, so it's easy to stop watching and resume some other day or even in someone else's player without losing your place.

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Good call.

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