Panasonic DMR-E20S Vs any other DVD Burner Questions

[lepus]

Hi all I should have ask on the forms first about this. But anyhow I bought the Panasonic DMR-E20S DVD recorder last week wonting to copy DVDs. Well copying the DVD’s is no problem since I have been copying movies for some time using Divx and getting great results with it I think I have around 500 movies now. Well to make a long story short I wont to copy the hole movie. I heard about the new Panasonic DMR-E20S, how you could copy TV shows and video taps to DVD and that it had variable bit rate and a bunch of other thing. So I went shopping and found one at Best Buy. I asked the guy at Best Buy what is there to stop me from copying a DVD to DVD with this unit? He said that you can copy everything but DVD’s and that they have some kind of protection on it to stop you form copying a DVD. Well guys I have copied a DVD and it plays great, I used was my Apex A600 yes the one that they left the back door open on and I just turned the macrovision off on it and it works great. Now for the questions I was wondering did I waste my money? Can I just buy a DVD burner and copy a movie on a DVD and will that DVD play back on my Apex? Can I fit a whole movie on one DVD like I can with the Panasonic using the Apex to copy the DVD? Why am I asking this? Because the Panasonic is 999.99 bucks and a burner is around 350 to 450 bucks. If I can do the same thing with a computer burner I would like to know A dvd burner is much cheaper. Any insight on this would be great I have 30 days to return the Panasonic-DMR-20S. By the way so far I can not play the DVD movie that was maid on the Panasonic on my Apex at all any help on this would be great to. I can only play the dvd on the Panasonic or on my computer using Power DVD 4.0, other wise it is a great picture you can’t tell the movies apart at all.

[int 21h]

http://doom9.org/mpg/dvdr-guides.htm

In short, unless you plan on converting a bunch of VHS tapes or any other analog sources into DVD, yes, you did waste your money. A Pioneer A03 will do the exact same thing for you (copy dvds), at about a third to one half of the price.

[Ollie W. Holmes]

Folks use standalones not only to copy vhs and macrovision-free dvds, but laserdiscs as well. You can't do this on a PC unless you buy a capture card. The Panasonic DMR-E20 can be purchased for $799 through yahoo shopping. The Pioneer standalone recorder (don't remember model number) is nearly twice the cost. The Pioneer DVD-A03 DVD-R/RW burner may be less than $499, but does not include a capture card. Now for a synopsis of the benefits of each.

DVD-Ram is far more reliable than either DVD-R or DVD-RW. It's only drawback is that there are only 3 players that can read it. The recording quality is very good.

DVD-R recording on the E20 is slightly compromised by the brightness (black level) shift Panasonic adds to the Y-component to increase S/N. You have to compensate for this on playback by lowering the black level on your TV. The Pioneer standalone does not have this problem with DVD-R.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not easy replicating a DVD-V on a PC burner. Every dvd is a new challenge, and I defy anyone to complete a burn successfully in less that 2-3 hours on some of the more recent discs. Any new wrinkle in the layout and you are forced to burn a trial DVD-RW disc before committing the final burn. So for an expert like you, this is worth the effort. Maybe you have gotten so good at it that you no longer generate dvd-r coasters. But for the average consumer, who can de-macrovision the analog signal, the standalone is the simpler choice. He can put a 90 minute movie easily on a DVD-R and have room left over for a trailer, some outtakes, and a featurette.

Just my 2 cents. I own a standalone recorder and two dvd-burners, and use each for whatever task it does best.

[ikkir]

G'day guys, can you record more than 2 hours on a 4.75gb DVD-R disc using Panasonic DMR E20 (LP mode or something?) I am about to get my Pioneer DVR-7000 in 5 days time and I was wondering if this maybe the case. If it can, I'd probably cancel the order and get the Panasonic instead as this will save me some cash for the media (DVD-Rs are waaay much cheaper than the re-writables). As for the Pioneer, the maximum is only for 2 hours on DVD-R and up to 6 hours on DVD-RW.

Infos would be greatly appreciated.

Cheerio..

[EiGuscheMa]

ikkir,

with the DMR-E20 you may record:

LP: 4hrs @ 352x576 (PAL) 320x480 (NTSC)
EP: 6hrs @ 352x288 (PAL) 320x240 (NTSC)

using DVD-R. After finalizing these discs will also play on a standalone. (I have tested with Samsung N505, Sony NS400D, Sampo 620)
LP quality is (if at all) comparable to VHS, EP comparable to VCD.
Both LP and EP are MPEG2-VBR video and AC3-2.0 audio.

greetings

[Mosaic]

Am I to understand that once u exceed the 2hr limit on the DVD Video Recorders .....that they encode at a half to a quarter full DVD spec?

So a movie like Starwars etc ...will not be encoded at DVD quality?

This applies to alll DVD video Recorders or Just the DMR e20s and the Pioneer?

[EiGuscheMa]

mosaic, you got it!
We have panas, pios and phillies here in germany and basically they all switch to half/quarter res if you exceed the 2h limit.
Please note that for 4h on a 4.24GB RAM-disc there is only 1.9MBit/s left, which is below SVCD!
For my DMR there is a trick using FR (flexible recording), however.
It only works in timer recording mode and is hard to set up, but I have reached 150mins in SP (704x576) quality with it (did not try more)
Maybe there are such tricks for the others, too.

greetings

[DaMacFunkin]

Not true, the pioneer can increte in 40 different quality steps in VR Mode, although the amount of players that can read this mode are liited at the moment, but you should be able to read them back on your A03/04 once finalized to say re-author, i have an A03 and A Panasonic E20, like the guy said before it's horses for courses, but the pioneer is the outstanding Standalone on the market, but way to pricey yet, save your money and wait for standalones with 5.1 recording which should be appearing before the end of the year.

[dvd_master]

You can get the DMR E20 for only $500 at an online store i found.

Personally, i think this machine seems great. Once i save up a little more, I will transfer all of my VHS and LD's to DVD.

And Macrovision prevents DVD from being recorded on this? I don't think so... because Macrovision is supposed to not allow you to copy from DVD to VHS, but if you hook the video outputs of your DVD player to your video inputs in the VCR it will work without any macrovision. Doing the same to the DVD recorder should work.

You can fit your movie on the DVD, just the lower the quality the more movie you can fit on.

My two cents.

[DaMacFunkin]

Yes macrovision will give you high and low brightness all the way through, you obviousley have a DVD player with macro disabled, this unit also doesn't have rgb input capabillity coz rgb doesn't carry macrovision. Also this machine carries a serial copy protection system simular to that found on mini discs which will stop you recording some pay per view and premium tv shows. Havn't come across a dvd with this sort of copy protection on yet but i'm sure it is only a matter of time.

[EiGuscheMa]

Here´s what I found out about the pio DVR-7000:
It has 32 manual quality settings numbered MN1 to MN32 in addition to 8 automatic modes. Resolution and recording times in manual mode are:

MN01-MN06 285-360 mins @352x288
MN07-MN11 220-270 mins @352x576
MN12-MN16 170-210 mins @480x576
MN17-MN20 130-160 mins @540x576
MN21-MN25 95-120 mins @720x576
MN26-MN32 61- 90 mins @720x576
(Please correct me if I´m wrong here)

So it supports SVCD(2/3 D1) and DVB(3/4 D1) which the pan doesn´t. But basically the same thing: if you want more than 2hrs on a 4.xx Gig disk using MPEG2 you will have to leave D1 format.

greetings from hot summer city