Catchy name, I know. This is a device which incorporates a HDD-based video recorder of 250gb, a dvd recorder, and a vhs recorder.
When I was looking at one from eBuyer at roughly £160, I could find no good summary of what it did on the net, so after buying I decided to write a quick summary of what it can do. If you have any questions, please contact me.
It can record incoming video from RF (Analogue only, though) signals, from SCART input, from VHS, DVD or HDD to VHS, HDD or DVD. I have a digibox on AV2 (SCART Input) for recording digital channels, though the channel must be set manually on the digi-box.
For example, you can insert a VHS tape, and copy the contents in one easy button press to the internal HDD or a DVD. you could also copy a VHS in multiple sections to the HDD, re-order and label them and produce a repeatable DVD of that video - for example dubbing and editing your home videos, re-ordering the removing unwanted scenes, then making multiple copies of the "playlist" of HDD-based videos.
Copy Protection: According to the manual, this has a copy protection system, and will simply stop dubbing if a copy-protected source is found.
This might work on DVDs, and might work on external inputs.
I can report that it does not seem to have any bearing on whether it will copy a commercial VHS to a DVD, though I am converting old VHS into DVDs which might not have the latest copy-protection.
| Input | Output |
|---|
| Media | Media |
| DVD | VHS (SP and LP) |
| VHS | DVD-R (Single-Layer) |
| HDD | DVD-RW (Single-Layer) |
| CD/DVDs with DivX files on | HDD |
| CD/DVDs with Jpeg files on | |
| CD/DVDs with MP3 files on | |
| |
| Signals | Signals |
| RF (analogue) | RF (pass-through only - DOES NOT HAVE A RF MODULATOR) |
| SCART (Single input scart, auto-switches on pin 8) | SCART (RGB) |
| S-Video (Front panel) | Component, progressive |
| RCA (Front panel) | Component, interlaced |
| S-Video |
| Audio Phono |
| Audio Digital Coax |
| Audio Digital Optical |
Note this can't record NTSC, and also can't record dual-layer DVDs, DVD+R/+RW or to a CD-R/RW. The VHS Player is 6-Head, and you can override the automatic tracking (which seems to help). Annoyingly, you can't override the VHS tracking while dubbing - sometimes I'd had to offset the tracking slightly before recording as it improves the quality further down the tape.
Speeds are DVD-R recording up to 16x, and -RW to 4x. Also, if you are copying from HDD to DVD (and not changing the compression), it can run much faster than real-time (claimed up to 32x - not tested, but certainly much much faster than real-time)
The menu system it puts on a finalised DVD is simple but effective, and works in all other dvd players (or at least the 4-or-so I've tried)