Why Americans Don't Buy DVD Recorders

Ant writes "CNET News.com reports on the reasons behind the unpopularity of DVD recorders in the US. The devices, which have seen heavy support in Europe and Asia, fall flat in the United States. The biggest reason is the penetration of Cable television. With cable, the same show can appear on a channel several times. In Europe and Japan, viewers need to grab copies of shows when they can, as it could be some time before the episode is broadcast again. TiVo also took off more rapidly in the States and elsewhere. TiVo is also one of the reasons selling TVs with embedded hard drives in the States remains a challenge."

Comments

What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[elrous0]

The big problem with DVD recorders for me (as an American) is that getting a show off my DVR and into a recorder is a pain in the ass. I have to play it off in realtime and I can't watch anything else while I'm doing it, since it all has to be done manaully.

There was a time for me when this was much different. I used to have a Humax Tivo/DVD-recorder combo unit that let me burn off shows from my Tivo to DVD-R at faster than real time and still watch other stuff while I did it (it burned in the background). But, thanks to the paranoia of the studios/networks/cable-companies and the DRM-laden standards for digital cable and HDTV, there is now no such combo unit made that can take a cablecard or record HD programs (sadly, I had to abandon my old Humax when I got digital cable a while back).

Thanks MPAA, cable companies, and networks!

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything this commenter says is also applicable to the High Def Recorder. Combining a TV tuner and a hard drive is not technically difficult. Yet, you cannot buy an off the air HD DVR unless it is a Sat TV or Cable co rental box. The short answer is that "they" don't want you to be able to cache programming in any way "they" don't absolutely control. Witness the move for "video on demand" which is really a remote cache of programming delivered to your house by their servers.

I hope someone comes out with a new HD DVR by 2009, as my Sony gets it's time stamp from analog programming signals, and I really don't want to pay a rental fee for a new unit.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Korea, "down under", and much of Europe, there are not only DVR's, but HD DVR's that BURN TO BLU RAY.....Why can't I buy one of those ???? I have money, and there are thousands, possibly millions of me out there.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[yuna49]

I have an LG DVDR/VCR combo unit, and like it quite a bit as well. I bought it primarily to dub old VHS recordings onto DVD, but I use it for off-air recordings as well. It even supports the S-VHS format, which a few of my tapes were in. Using the DVD recorder produces quite acceptable quality even at the 6-hour speed, especially for live programs like sporting events. Unless I want to archive something, I use DVD+RW disks and just write over them. As fewer amd fewer people have VCRs, it's nice to be able to share a program with a friend using standard-format DVDs.

Being able to play DivX/XviD files was another big plus for me since I watch fansubbed anime. I would write the files to a DVD on my computer, then play them on my TV using the LG. Even in the current generation of upscaling DVD players, there are manufacturers who still don't support DivX playback, notably Sony. I bought a Sony upscaling player and immediately exchanged it for a Panasonic S53 when I discovered the Sony wouldn't play DivX. However, the value of DivX playback has faded somewhat since I bought an HDTV and connected a computer to it directly. This method has the additional advantage over the DVD player of letting me play shows in the Matroska or standard (non-DivX) MPEG4 containers.

My positive experiences with this device made me wonder about the initial topic.

Where to plug it in?

[dazedNconfuzed]

In considering getting an HDTV, my wife casually asked about recording shows. Aghast, I had to admit I wasn't sure how that could be done! In the HDMI world - as the cartels intended - there just is no place to plug in a recorder, and DVRs don't come with disc writers. Yeah, I could hack up something involving a PC, HD tuner card, ill-supported software, bittorrent, etc. but it just would never meet the "insert blank, choose channel, hit 'Record'" it-just-works paradigm.

Re:The Real Reason

[Beardo the Bearded]

Not at all.

I bought a Daytek HDD recorder from Costco. I plug in cable and power and attach it to my TV. I then set up the recording sequence just like a VCR. It records the shows I want it to. I've noted one exception with a broadcast flag (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, wtf?), but other than that it works almost perfectly. I've currently got about 65 hours recorded that I've got to watch.

It also plays DivX or VixD disks. I got the Torchwood finale off Limewire (stupid CBC shifted it, and only announced it ONCE during the previous show, which we watched off "tape".) and it played with no problems.

I can watch a recorded show or a DVD while it's recording.

I can burn disks off the shows recorded onto the HDD.

I have no idea what or where the original poster bought. Apparently it's crap.

Also, it's technically difficult.

[maillemaker]

I bought a DVD burner for my PC. I also bought a TV tuner card for my PC. My plan was to watch episodes of Battlestar Galatcia on cable, piped into my PC, record it, edit out the commercials, and then burn it to a DVD to watch later.

Not only did the burning take a long time, but I never got DVDs that reliably played in either of the 2 DVD players we had at the time. They would play for about 2 minutes, then the video would pixellate while the audio kept going for a few minutes, and then it would stop.

After dinking around on the support forums for a while I was told that burning DVDs was a black art, not to burn at the full rated speed of the drive, yadda yadda yadda.

Eventually I gave up. It was easier and much faster to just save the raw video file on a hard drive, and go buy a 500GB hard drive to store all my video on. Now I watch all videos off of my hard drive. Burning to DVD was time consuming, tedious, and unreliable.