In article
1gptrht.h8dxyuog8ozkN%terry.e.verycommonnamebegin ,
Terry Jones m wrote:

I set up a Freeview box for my in-laws today and hooked it up the their
Philips DVDR70 unit. They have had it for about 6 months and I'd always
assumed that it would be an equivalent to my first generation Panny E20
but what a shock I got when I had a flick through the manual and fired
it up.

No record and play at the same time. Key feature is missing.

Well, when I bought my DVDR70 I did not assume it could symultaneously
record and play, and none of the information I'd seen on it said that it
could, hence my reaction was that it did what I bought it for at the time.
If your in-laws wanted symultaneous record and play they should have bought
something else, I'm afraid. But if they did not, then I assume they got
what they wanted.

Disk works like a 'virtual tape' meaning that you can mistakenly
overwrite recordings

Yes, if you allow the recorder to record for longer that a 'title' you have
cleared at the rate you have chosen.

and may not be able to record a program even if there is enough space on
the disk.

See below.

The DVD-RAM on the Panny just tells you how much aggregate space there
is and gets on with it. Is this a limitation of RW disks or just this
recorder?

My understanding is that RW allows you to record onto any free titles, but
does not act as RAM or HD. Since it does not have random access the
aggregate space isn't the relevant quantity when you want to make a
recording. The relevant quantity is the contiguous length free for a title.

Given that discs are now quite cheap, I just record films or programmes
onto discs, normally using the free space at the 'end' of the disc. This
seems to work nicely in my experience. I have half a dozen RW's for time
shifting purposes, but mostly use R's.

The Philips recorders do seem to have dubious reliability, etc. However the
one I have basically seems to do what I bought it for, so that seems fair
enough to me. In due course I'll probably replace it with a new unit with
its own DTTV RX, but as a first DVD recorder I've been reasonably happy
with it.

Slainte,

Jim

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