A lot of folks are writing to ask how I like my new Pioneer DVR-810H — the unit that combines a TiVo with a DVD burner. I've been burning DVDs for a day and a half…and so far, I'm very glad I bought the thing. Still, it is not without its downsides. Here are some thoughts…
- You record shows on the TiVo and then you burn them to blank DVDs. You can put multiple programs on a DVD up to the capacity of the disk, and the machine will build a little menu on the DVD for you. The main way to get a show onto the TiVo is to record it off the air. Last night, I set my new TiVo to record a movie off cable. Then this morning, after it was recorded, I had the machine copy it to a DVD. Then, I erased the movie from the TiVo to free up space.
- The other way to get something onto the TiVo is to input it through the analog connection. I have a lot of things on old 3/4" videotapes so I hooked the output of my 3/4" player to the TiVo input, copied the shows over and then used the TiVo to copy them onto DVD. The resultant DVD has a picture quality only a teensy fraction below the original tape. You could input the signal from a Betamax, a VCR, a video camera or even another DVD player as long as it wasn't playing a copy-protected DVD.
- A home DVD burner like this one can only burn so much info to a DVD. If you want the top video quality, that means an hour. The next quality level down (a slower speed) will give you two hours. The next level down is three and so on, down to six hours. If you record a two-hour show at the top quality, you have to save it to two disks, and the machine will prompt you when to insert the second one. The speed at which you record a show onto the TiVo is the speed at which you have to burn the DVD. For instance, the movie this morning was 1:47 so I recorded it at the second level speed, the one that gets two hours onto a blank DVD. I could not have changed my mind and burned the DVD at a different speed.
- Obviously, we like the top quality. This makes it frustrating when a show is 62 minutes long. You either have to put the last two minutes on a second DVD or do the entire show at the second level speed.
- As we've mentioned here before, networks have gotten very sloppy about starting shows on time. Some start early, some start late. Ordinarily, if something's on that you simply must record, you pad the beginning and the end to make sure you get it. But this TiVo/DVD unit has no editing capability so if you start your recording five minutes early, what you burn to the DVD will have all that extra stuff at the beginning. If you record a film from Turner Classic Movies, you can't cut off the Robert Osborne intro. Eventually, I'm sure I'll get the software and hardware to do editing on my computer but for now, what you TiVo is what you get.
- Some folks have asked about getting a standalone DVD recorder without TiVo capability and linking it to TiVo when necessary. The advantage of the Pioneer DVR-810H is that its TiVo capability records a show off the air in digital format so it remains digital as it's transferred to the DVD. If you record on a separate TiVo and feed the output into a separate DVD burner, you're going from digital to analog and back to digital, and there will be some loss of quality in there. The TiVo also lets you build little libraries of stuff to burn to DVD as many times as you like. Mine holds 80 hours but that's at the lowest-quality speed. At the best speed, that's about 14 hours.
- I've also been asked about the price. The DVR-810H lists for $1,199 but can be purchased for $750 to $800 if you shop around the Internet. (By the way, here's a link to Pioneer's website about the machine. As you'll see, there's also a higher-end model.) You will also need to pay for the TiVo service. The machine comes with what they call "TiVo Basic," which is a stripped-down, bare bones version that is so simple as to be near-useless. They also give you a free 45-day trial of what they call "TiVo Plus," which is the next level up of TiVo service. I don't see how you can really use this machine without it. This will cost you $12.95 a month or $299 for "lifetime service." This refers to the life of the machine and cannot be transferred to the next TiVo you purchase. If you want to hook your TiVo (or TiVos) into a home network and make use of even more features, that's another $99. The TiVo website will tell you more. Blank DVDs run from a buck to about three bucks each, depending on whether you buy in bulk.
That's about everything that comes to mind so far. I'm going to do some experimenting with different speeds and with dubbing Beta and VHS tapes, and I'll report here after I do. I ordered 100 blank DVDs but I have a feeling I'm going to go through that many in a week. I've got a lot of old tapes, and there a number of good movies on TV in the next week or two.