Page 1 of Matsui DVDR100

Would someone please give me an honest opinion of the Matsui DVDR100 from Currys? I use my pc DVD recorder all the time. The MATSUI is going to be a present from my lady, is it any good?

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Just got one of these and so far I ahve mixed feelings. I can`t compare it to any other model on the market as this is my first "under the telly" dvd purhcase, but here are my humble thoughts so far.
Right first off I`ve been wanting to get my home vhs bits onto DVD, and up till now found doing this on a PC a real pain in the butt. With the dvdr100 it couldn`t be simpler. plug in the old camcorder press play, hit record, hey presto, job done. Quality is as far as I am concerned as good as the source tape in HQ mode. (up to 1 hour)
So I am more than happy with my first purchase reason. Second reason for buying was to record NFL games that are on at ridulous hours of the morning. As they 3 hours long I pout the machine into EP (up to 4 hours recording) and left it to do it`s thing.
Sadly this is not that good. Blocky shimery playback images that while watchable you wouldn`t want to keep it. The picture quality in this mode is a bit lie watching a giant webcam.
On SP (up to 2 hours) however I recorded a film off Sky and that was very acceptable quality to me.
This machine has a lot of functions I haven`t even tried yet, but my overall advice to you is if you need 4hours or above of good quality playback look elsewhere. If not and you`re happy with a couple of hours recording time, then this is not a bad starting point for DVD recorders, pound for pound. Hope that helps!

The 4 hour (LP) mode is more than exceptable on my 42" plasma TV. But that`s using a Pansonic E55. I had the chance of the Matsui at £99.00 & turned it down.

I note the panny e55 is dvd ram and dvd -r. Quk question, if you have recorded in DVD Ram and then want to get it on to DVD R is this easy to do. The reason I ask is I usually watch my NFL suff on a friends laptop which isn`t DVD Ram compatible.
I was going to get the panny e55 it was just the compatibilty that made me get the Matsui.
However if getting what you have recorded from Ram to ordinary - R disks is easy I might just take the matsui back.

Cheers for any help!

Wouldn`t it be wonderful if we could record onto RAM then edit & put onto DVD-R. But we can`t. We have ro record onto DVD-R direct, then of course it will play on anything. It is a big shame that even if some machines don`t record in RAM that they could at least play back RAM as it is the supierior system. The problem is Panasonic want royalties for people to put RAM on & to keep things cheap other makes often don`t put it on. This is not a problem for me & most RAM users as I record everything in RAM then (if I want to send copies to friends) I use TMPGenc author (there are others) & in less than an hour it can be copied to any format on the computer. The shear fact that we are talking on this forum sugests that we have computers & burners with ram readers are now available at less than £40.00. Just to add I can`t compare the 4Xs on the Matsui with the Panasonic but what size TV do you have.

I have a 32" cheapo matsui i`m afraid, only because i`m loathed to spend big bucks at the mo when the standards are changing so fast. Can`t make my mind up on plasma, or projector for a big screen image, then hdtv is just around the corner etc.
Thanks for letting me know about the DVD ram side of things. This is probably not the way to go for me even if the pic quality was to be better than the matsui at 4 hours. This is simply because i just want to record and then be able to play back almost anywhere.
I have tried the TMPGenc route, but for me it is just another step I would rather do without, espically as most of the NFL stuff I do record is watched once then dumped.
Lastly I just checked out the 4 hour quality of the matsui playing it back on a ps2 and via a 14" portable RGB mode. There was improvement, I guess due to the smaller screen size, however the 4 hour playback is definately lower than vhs, but only within the game of football. (strange, must be due to fast moving images) any studio comentary sceens were vhs comparable imho. Hope any of this helps peeps decided what to buy.
Once again thanks for all your help.

Quote:
but only within the game of football

Ahhhhh, just to be specific, you mean you recorded football, from what source?

A lot of football is low grade pictute quality & this may be the reason for the poor show. Try outputing RGB into the Matsui with a movie or studio picture & let us know the results then.

Well I am using a scart lead out from my sky digibox straight into the matsui. This is the only way I can go with my digibox as it has no other video outputs.

Turn the Sky onto `RGB out`. Turn the Matsui onto RGB in. This will give you the best picture. The Panasonic has this & the improvement in picture is lot.