“I believe this is the first machine of its kind in New Zealand.” Er, no, actually. The JVC HM-HDS1EU has been out for well over a year and, for a video recorder, offers way more features. Like the Samsung, it has a 40GB hard drive, but includes a video cassette recorder as well. Furthermore, there is the Sony HARD1000. While not offering the video side of things, its same-sized hard drive will record up to 600 hours of audio, and will hook up to a PC. I’m not too familiar with this product, though.
The major negative point of the Samsung is that it does not do away with the need for a video tape recorder. For purposes of archiving, storing of unwatched films, and transcribing TV programmes or home movies to video tape for others to watch, you must have a second VCR and the ability to hook them up.
Not so with the HDS1. It offers up to 35 hours recording on its hard drive, plus a further nine hours on a 180 video cassette, in normal or S-video mode. While the hard-drive offers the same live recording pause and time-shift mode, it also allows transfer to the VCR.
It seems to me that the Samsung is purely transitionary in that the DVD player will change to a DVD recorder before long, making it a proper substitute for a VCR. I still wouldn’t be interested in it, though. Not until it includes a Blu-ray Disc recorder with its five and a half times greater recording capacity than a DVD.
Now that’s progress!
Regards
Chris
Nice, but …. $1,600 !!For those many who already have a PC with a fat HD, it would perhaps have been useful to mention that you can get almost all that functionality by adding a TV Tuner card – for less that one tenth the price – ie $100 – $150. No G-code facility but at least overseas, there is internet based programme scheduling (not certain about NZ). Even adding the cost of an extra 40GB of HD space, the total should be less than NZ$250.Have just ordered the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe TV Tuner for one of my sons (birthday) – $146 incl GST at Paradigm seems a good price. They have cheaper options but we felt more comfortable with this – plenty of reviews (has > 60GB of his 80GB HD spare so no extra cost there … at least for now!). Will hopefully arrive tomorrow, so will see if it is all it is claimed to be. Another son has an older model, “generic” brand TV card in his PC. That seems to work fine, though I think it does not have all the facilities on the Leadtek card. Bought it about 2 yrs ago. Be interesting to see how much the technology has moved.
The ULEAD video editing software that comes with the Leadtek is full current version stuff. Combined retail cost of the s/w alone is > than the cost of the TV card
Cheers
David
Can you watch the resulting signal on a TV
rather than a PC monitor?
[You] Can watch on a TV screen if the video card has TV out. My son’s PC’s do,
but the son who currently has a TV card has never bothered & I am sure the
other one wont either. A 17″ monitor is not “large screen” viewing, but
$1,600 or thereabouts is simply not an option for them (apart from which,
the largest TV in the house is only 21″).
The son currently with the TV card often has chat sessions running at the
same time, or is using a drawing / 3D modelling program, so has the TV in a
window (but does have it full screen for “more serious” TV watching). BTW
full screen output from this older card is OK, but not as good as a good TV
set, so he does watch some programs on the TV rather than on his PC (the
more somewhat comfortable seating in the lounge, may be a factor though).
The main “selling point” for the other son, is the time-shifting / Live TV
capability & easy recording – has a few favourite programs that he does not
like missing / having interrupted. However, in both cases, the PC /
internet is normally a higher priority! (fwiw – ages are 18 &16).
David
In “H40A take 2″ you comment on input from a video camera via RCA
connections, and presumably thence to record on the hard drive.At this stage we are wholly non-digital, in TV, VCR and video cameras. Your
comments suggest that you can take the camera signal to the hard drive, with
editing capabilities. Is it as clever as to accept analog and save as
digital ? Or does one have to have a digital video camera ?And yes, we do have trouble recording on our existing VCRs. With a Saturn
top-box feeding a signal to L1 or L2 on the VCR, and thence to the TV using
the AV channel, none of our attempts to preset the VCR to record will
succeed. The VCR isn’t connected to any sort of aerial from which it can
tune to any selected station. It relies entirely on what it is fed from the
top-box and the VCR can’t send a switching signal to that top-box to point
it towards a particular Saturn channel. I can’t see that programming the
H40A would work any differently. In fact I wonder if some of the features of
the H40A would in fact work properly under our cable-TV set-up.
Can you comment briefly ?
Many thanks
Mike
All signals for TV, in New Zealand, are still analog, despite the fact
that some devices accept digital input/output. This facility is provided
for those people who have digital cameras, and DVD equipment.
You should find on your video camera, output sockets for audio/video, I
presume that this will take the RCA plugs I mention. You plug these into
the line inputs on the Samsung DVD-H40A that are RCA inputs.
The editing functions provided are basic and may not provide the full
range of function that you could be looking for. It may be better to use
a PC based editing system, assuming you have a suitable PC for the task.
Saturn Box Connections With A VCR
I assume that you have the
same model as we do, a Jerrold ICFT-2000. My box is connected in the
following way.
The incoming cable connection, of course, goes to the set-top box.
On the back of the set-top box are three outlets:
One is marked “TV set” and has a rather large adapter thing plugged into
it. A coax cable from the TV aerial socket on the wall is plugged into
this adapter. Coming out of the adapter is a cable that is plugged into
the RF input socket (where the old TV aerial would have gone) on the
VCR.
Another is marked “Video”, and is an RCA plug this has a cable that is
plugged into the “video in” (may be marked “ext in” or “line in”) on the
VCR.
The third one is marked “Audio”, and is an RCA plug that is connected to
the “audio in” on my VCR. (Note my VCR is not a stereo model) The audio
output from this socket on the set-top box is mono only. Stereo sound is
only possible from the “TV set” socket. I will ignore this stereo sound
problem for now.
The TV is connected to the VCR by the usual RF sockets, and also has an
RCA connection from the “Video out” socket on the VCR to the “Video In”
socket at the back of the TV. The “Audio Out” RCA socket on the VCR is
connected to my stereo amplifier using a special cable that splits the
mono signal into two signals thus giving a signal for the left and right
channels (Note this is in mono only).
The VCR is tuned to the normal TV channels 1,2,3,4,7 and Prime. One
extra channel is tuned into the signal that come from the Saturn set-top
box via the RF signal. This is somewhere in the UHF band. The RCA cables
from the set-top box provide a signal to the, what is described by my
VCR as, external (EXT) channel. This may be described a “Line 1″ etc on
your VCR.
The TV is tuned into to channels 1,2,3,4,7,and Prime as normal with an
extra channel for the signal from the VCR (0), and another for the
signal from the set-top box (6).
When we watch TV we normally watch by switching the TV to channel 6 and
changing the channels via the set-top box.
When we record a programme on the VCR we will set the VCR programme
timer to 1,2,3,4,7, or Prime if that is where the programme is on. If
the programme is one of the Saturn-only channels, say SKY1, we will set
the VCR programme timer to “EXT” and then use the Saturn set-top box VCR
timer functions that are available by pressing the menu button on the
remote control,see the instruction book for more help. The menu guide
shown on the TV screen is self explanatory. To tape from the Saturn box
does require the setting of both the VCR timer and the set-top box
timer.
What does all this allow us to do.
- We can watch TV (1,2,3,4,7 and Prime) using the TV channel selector,
while taping any channel. - We can tape any channel, be it free-to-air or cable, on our VCR.
- We can watch a Saturn channel as long as we do not want to tape
another Saturn channel. i.e. We can’t watch SKY1 and tape SKY Movies.
But we can tape any free-to-air channel, while watching a Saturn
channel. We can also watch any free-to-air channel while taping any
Saturn channel, or watch any free-to-air channel while taping any
free-to-air channel. - We can playback the VCR through the stereo system, giving a false
stereo sound, by using the TV set to “AV”.
Saturn Box without the adapter.
Saturn Box with the adapter.
