Several ads seem to say that if your DVD recorder will record on DVD-RAM that you can record and watch TV at the same time and fast forward past the commercials. Am I reading these ads correctly? The Pansonic DMR-ES10S at about $199 will record on DVD-RAM. There are DVD recorders that also have 60 and more gigabite hard drives.I guess this is not a requirement to record and watch simultaneously? This Pansonic will also record DVD-R and there are these DVD's available for about 50 cents for about 4.5 GB. So 80GB could be stored for about $10. I guess storing on a hard drive might be more convenient; until the hard drive was full. Is there another advantage to the hard drive?

LTheobald

What will happen is that the DVD recorded will be playing a recorded show from some inbuilt memory (hard drive for example). At the same time, it'll be recording onto a DVD. So yes, you should be able to watch one while recording another. Don't expect to be able to watch and record from the same DVD at the same time. That would be a big strain on the machine.

As for the advantages of having a hard drive based recorder:

• More storage room
• No need to keep buying DVD's - you can keep things on the hard drive.
• DVD's can get scratched quite easily. Corrupting the data on a hard drive is harder. So programs on the hard drive based player are safer.
• No need to get up, change DVD etc.

fredg

Hi,
Here is a link with the top 10 DVD recorders, both CD-RW recording and harddrive recording. If you wish to view it, click on "Read Reviews" which also shows everything each of these can do, step-by-step.

http://hometheater.about.com/cs/topp...vdrecorder.htm

I would definitely go with the harddrive recording, if I were buying one.

ScottGem

I've never read anything about using DVD-RAM disks to fast forward past commericals during recording. You can during playback. In fact, many DVD players have a commercial skip button which will jump ahead 30 seconds with each press.

The main advantage of a hard drive equipped recorder is that it allows for pause and replay of live action. The recording continues while you review what has already been recorded. The other advantage is that it allows you to record a lot of stuff such as while on vacation. But eventually you will want to erase or burn to DVD and then erase.

Press2Esc

Nicg, not too sure about the DVD-RAM... unless the mfg'rs are thinking that everyone has the bank account of your run-of-the-mill millionaire, I suspect the mfg'rs are really talking cache memory.

Case in point. Encoded MPEG-2 for NTSC (30fps) is minimal 210Mbps. Alternately, for 1 second of uncompressed video info is approx 30MB (640x480) or 80MB (1280x720). A Gig of RAM will store approx 10-30 seconds of video data. You do the math - then multiply the total GB/TB by the cost per GB of RAM and you roughly estimate the max amount of RAM needed to store your video data... Oh yeah, dont forget to add room for audio.

One can easily begin to understand why digitally compressed audio/video is the only realistic choice for consumer.

P2E