Posted by Citizen Bob on 12/11/06 16:05

On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:19:48 GMT, "videophile" <rayluca@shaw.ca>
wrote:

>I wanted to know what you were seeing on screen on playback that made you
>want to clean the machine.

In my case, with a now-retired ILO DVDR5MU1 unit ($99, WalMart), the
problem was that it would not open DVD discs that were otherwise good.
When it did it would freeze up when playing.

I managed to get about another month out of it using a Maxell Lens
Cleaner with a little brush at right angles to the disc surface. But a
month later the unit quit opening discs so I had to trash it. It was
about 1 year old and Cyberhome went out of business. I paid $100 for
it and got my money's worth.

Three years ago my wife bought an Apex player ($30, WalMart) and it
too stopped working about the same time as the ILO, so I cleaned it
and it worked for another month and then quit for good. It also went
in the trash. We got our money's worth.

Now I have a Polaroid DRM-2001G HDD DVDR ($220, WalMart) and the
3-year extended warranty ($24, WalMart Online). The factory warranty
is 3 months and the extended warranty kicks in after the factory
warranty ends so I am getting a 39 months of service for about $7.50
per month. The warranty company pays shipping both ways.

I also got a backup unit, an Insignia NS-DVDR1 (Best Buy Online, $110
on sale). It is a rebranded LG unit. I did not get the extended
warranty because it was too expensive. Since I use it only for backup,
I expect it will last as long as the Apex.

I have had the Polaroid freeze up a couple times with old dirty +RW
discs. Otherwise it works properly now that I am using new clean
discs. But I use the HDD mostly so I expect the laser will not burn
out prematurely.

People do not realize that despite the claims of 1000 erasures, the
+RW discs only last about 10 erasures and then become pretty much
unusable even when burned at 2.4x. Also the lasers are basically crap
so they burn out early.

HDD is the only way to do nowadays if you do a lot of TV recording.
The MPEG-2 chip in both the Polaroid and the Insignia are the latest
available and even the poorest resolution at 6 hours comes out quite
good on a 19" viewscreen. GSpot says the 6-hour resolution is 720x240
at 1,000 Kbits/per second. That's good enough for a small screen.
Since I have 80 GB and I erase recordings after we watch them, I use
2-hour resolution which is commercial DVD quality.




--

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a
few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,
regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
--Ronald Reagan

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