Posted by MarMac1 on 09/15/06 21:30

Perhaps a gripe, more of a call for advice!

Can anyone here answer a question for me? Over the past year, I have
purchased 4 DVDRecorder/VCRcombos. Three of them are GoVideo machines. One
is a Sharp. Each one of these have quit working on the DVD recording side.
One of the GoVideo machines lasted a year and it just messed up today. Two
of the GoVideo machines quit within 60 days of purchase. The Sharp machine
quit working 7 months after I bought it. It is in the shop now. It is still
under the "parts" warranty, but I will have to pay between $60 and $100
labor.

I have owned about 25 VCRs over the past 20 years and each of them has
lasted several years before just wearing out. Just kissed them goodbye,
thanked them for their service and threw them in the trash. Five of these
have been GoVideo dual deck machines. I still have two of them, each one
about 5 years old. Work great! What is up with DVD Recorders?? Why the sorry
service on these??

I've been transferring about 1200 hours of VHS to DVD and have been using
them a lot, but not nearly enough that they ought to quitting on me. I've
probably only done about 400 hours total over the past few months on two
machines. I might just have to wait a while and keep using my VHS machines
and tapes.

I do copy some DVD-DVD from time to time, not for resale, but for time
shifting purposes. One of the nice things about the GoVideo machines is that
I was able to "trick" the machines Copyguard by using a DVDPlayer/VCR combo
unit as the source machine. If a disk was playing and it popped on screen
that it could not record because it was copyrighted material, I could just
push the "VCR" button on the source machine which would let the recording
start on the recording machine and then push the "DVD" button and start the
DVD player. Worked on a number of disks. The Sharp will not let me do this.
When the movie would start playing, it would stop the recording process.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to a good, RELIABLE brand of
DVDRecorder/VCR? Do you know of any that use the same type of copyguard
system that would let me do what the GoVideo would?


Thanks.

Marty

[Back to original message]