DVD Recorders

Welcome to our DVD recorders page. As with most advances in home electronics products, DVD recorders started off being rather expensive, but now prices are falling rapidly, making a DVD recorder a realistic choice to replace the old faithful VHS video recorder. The main technologies for recording TV are now DVD and hard disk. As well as pure DVD recorders, you can now also buy DVD recorders which also contain a hard disk drive. These products are explained further below.

Top Brands for DVD Recorders

Brands we like at the moment are: Sony DVD Recorders, Panasonic DVD Recorders, Pioneer DVD Recorders and for value for money, Philips DVD Recorders and LiteOn DVD Recorders.

Explanation of DVD Recorder Formats

See our page on DVD formats.

Useful Features to Look for in a DVD Recorders

Digital TV Tuner - DVD recorders will be equipped with a standard terrestrial television tuner. However, a great feature to look for, which is becoming increasingly common, is a digital TV tuner. Then you can also record Freeview. There are now an increasing number of Freeview DVD recorders on the market.

Hard Drive - If you can afford the extra expense, then it's worth looking at hard drive DVD recorders (or HDD DVD Recorders). The hard drive is the future of TV recording, and offers the convenience of not having to find a spare DVD disc each time you want to record something. The benefit of having the DVD recorder as well is that you can then back up your recordings from the hard drive onto DVD to free up space. If you are happy to rely on just having a hard drive without a DVD, then such products are known as Personal Video Recorders.

JPEG Playback - Allows you to view photos stored as JPEGs on a CD-R or CD-RW, so you can show everyone your digital camera snaps on your TV.

MP3 Playback - Allows you to playback MP3 music files copied onto disc from your computer.

CD / CD-R Playback - So you can playback your music CD collection.

Editing Features - DVD recorders that use a rewritable DVD format such as DVD-RW can provide editing functionality. This can be particularly useful if you can connect your digital camcorder to your DVD recorder as you can then edit your home videos.

Inputs:
- It's useful to have analog video inputs for recording from older analog video equipment.
- If you have a digital camcorder, find a DVD recorder with a FireWire (or iLink / IEEE 1394) port so you can connect up your camcorder to make DVD copies.

Scart Sockets
Two or more Scart sockets will make connecting other equipment easier.

Outputs:
- Component Video Outputs. For a particularly high quality video connection to your TV.
- S-Video Output. For a high quality video connection to your TV.
- 5.1 Channel audio outputs for surround sound output to a home cinema amplifier.
- Optical Audio Outputs. If you're an audio buff, you'll want these to connect to your surround sound / home cinema amplifier for the ultimate in sound quality.

DVD Recorder Categories (In approximate order of popularity)