This is about 6 weeks after the fact, but Sony announced what may be a better DVD/harddrive standalone recorder, on May 20th.

It records and plays all DVD video formats except DVD-RAM. It has an i-Link
interface that can control a DV or Digital8 camcorder or VTR and is described as having improved features for copying digital video onto the 160Gb harddrive or to all the DVD formats. It should also have better functions for editing video onto the harddrive or to an RW DVD.

It is scheduled for a November release and based on the $1,000. MSRP, it would likely have a street price of about $800. in U.S. money, from a mailorder dealer.

There aren't a lot of details available yet, but I'm speculating that it may be more suitable for serious videomakers who need to make DVD copies, than many of the existing standalone recorders. It can also be connected by S-Video and this would allow adding alternate audio programs by audio connections from digital sources, without using a computer or digital A/V mixer. It has the usual collection of program tuning and timed-recording features.

The fact that it will record DVD-R/RW and +R/RW, is a bonus. Here's a link for the news release: http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4802

Steve McDonald

I need to add that the model no. of the DVD recorder I mentioned above, is the RDR-HX900.

Steve McDonald

Steve, thanks for the update!

If I am not mistaken wasn't Sony the one that came out with the +R version of DVD?

As it was explained to me Phillips and Sony wanted to compete with Pioneer and they created +R to the Pioneer's -R. I think Sony may have backed the wrong choice and now is trying to make amends by offering both choices in their DVD recorder.

So the fact that their new DVD recorder also offers +R is probably because Sony was behind that system form the get go. I wonder if their new box will default to +R instead of the more popular -R.

Does anyone have an opinion on the new JVC dual DVD recorder?

It's got S-VHS/VHS on one side, the DVD recorder on the other.
It seems well thought out, but it is priced as a professional product.

Sorry, I missed this thread the first time around. I bought a Sony RDR-GX7 DVD recorder last fall. I have not really seen any "dropout" problems on this machine, although my use has been light. Like most questions here at DVinfo.net, starting off with a search may be useful:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=24160
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=19013
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=17519
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=12927

If you set the quality level to the max (60 minutes/disc) on the Sony I think it looks quite good. The only problem I've had at this setting was some very noisy footage shot under dark conditions. The MPEG compression made that look very distracting, but the original footage was marginal at best. I have played the discs on a variety of DVD players, old and new, and several different computers; there were no compatability problems.

Only issue I can see for your application is that none of the consumer decks offer component INPUT, just output (AFAIK), so you would have to use s-video. I have not done any analog recording on my deck, but it features a number of settings to improve results from poor quality sources like TV and VHS. These are more consumer oriented than pro of course.

There are some very nice looking pro DVD recorders that have component input and 1394 output, but you'll pay big $$$ for those...