Page 1 of anyone to recommend a good dvd recorder?

i want to buy one but too confused with mixed reviews. it will be my first one so i dont know much about them. my budget:250-270pounds

Richer Sounds are offering a superb deal on the Pioneer 420.Just £299,thats multiregion and 80Gb HDD.Pay the extra-you won`t regret it

If its a DVD Recorder only that you want then there is plenty to choose from within your budget. Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony & Toshiba all make good DVD Reccorders. Just depends on what your requirements are. If yo can stretch to a bit more you can get a DVD/HD Recorder which gives you more flexablility. I personaly have a Panasonic E85 which is giving me excellent results in terms of quality on recording.

DVD recorders use different formats for recording i.e DVD-r/RW DVD+r/RW & DVD-RAM. This can semm to over complicate things so I will try and simplify it.

DVD + or - R discs are record once only media.
DVD + or - RW discs are re-recordable media - much like VHS tapes
DVD-RAM - Re-recordable with the added advantage of time slip i.e you can pause live recording whilst you answer the door/make a cup of tea/put the cat out :)

www.avforums.com has a wealth of knowledge if you want to look into it a bit further.

In the reviews in this month`s What Entertainment (think it was that mag) of DVDR/HDD - the Panasonic out did all the others - but they`re still quite pricey.

I have a E55 (multi-region) and it`s the best £186 I`ve ever spent. RAM is so easy and I`ve had no errors - unlike using my RW disks on PC - half the time they end up being unusable after you`ve written to them a few times. May not be a fair comparison, but I can`t find a single flaw on the E55/RAM system. I`m not really worried about lending out disks..and if I do, I burn them to a 25p DVD-R. And as for 2nd room viewing - you can get a Panasonic S27 player for £40 from RS - it`s a damn fine picture and will play back your RAM (and finalised -R) recordings from the Panasonic DVDR.

This item was edited on Friday, 4th February 2005, 17:26

after a week of intense searching i finally decided to go with the panny e85. however another problem, a bigger one arose! i live in cyprus and i was gonna buy it from england cause its much cheaper there. but i found out that we use PAL B/H/G whereas in england they use PAL-I. from what i understand, the TUNER will NOT work. im new in this area and i dont understand much. is this the case? is it gonna work or not? is there a way to "change" the tuner from PAL-I to PAL B/G/H?

please help!!!!!!!!

i have a 4KUS DVR-230 and they are real good and cheap. You can choose between NTSC and PAL - i dont know if that will fix your problem though, but maybe all different types of PAL will work. they are like £120. but in the US they are made by ILO and have a different name. they are around £80.
they use DVD+R and DVD+RW discs

I bought the Sony GX300 (it came out top in the digital home magazine I bought)

It records +R, +RW, -R and -RW for best compatibility.

You can time slip the -RW discs (i.e. watch a disc whilst it is still recording).

Picture and sound quality are superb. RGB in and out (to allow best quality connection from sky / freeview box to TV via DVD recorder) - plus progressive scan outputs.

Only thing it doesn`t have is a DV input - if that is important get the GX700 (which is the same but with DV input)