End of the VCR

[Dudley7]

With Dixon's no longer selling VCRs (and others likely to follow suit) and DVD recorders getting cheaper it looks like a major change from tape to disk. However, unless DVDs can be re-recordable, it will be very expensive to record one off programmes which you would not want to keep. Are such DVDs available (or likely to be) or will we have to move on to hard disk storage such as Sky+?

[ursula62]

DVD-RW Recorders are already available. Boots have one on offer for �199 instead of �299 at the moment. It's a Panasonic one. It records on standard DVD-R and DVD-RW disks. They use the same DVD RW or DVD RAM disks as computers use. The rewriteable DVDs start at about �3 each.

[Dudley7]

Thank you Ursula. Are there likely to be ongoing machines which will transfer old tapes to DVD? I have some great sporting recordings from the past twenty years which I would not wish to lose the ability to watch.

[caramba22242]

There is a shop in Falkirk selling recordable DVD players for �200. You can record (it was either) 500 hours or 7 days of  programs ( can't remember which but it was  a lot) on the hard drive. 

[tomd]

You could record from tape to DVD using a video player and a DVD recorder, just wire it into the DVD instead of your telly, play the video, and record away. There's no reason it'd need to be done on a single machine.

[Mattk]

sky+ is brilliant - i definitely recommend it !! 

[romko]

Dudley7: if i were you i would keep the original tapes too - optical video media 's longevity has not yet been proven, whereas I still have 20 year old tapes which have stood the test of time and play back fine. optical is a less forgiving medium- if you scratch a disc you generally can't salvage anything, at least with tape you can splice it and recover stuff. i have had to do this a few times. So if it is precious - don't discard the original!

the way things are going, in a few years dvd will also be obsolete in favour of the next money making format the big companies will put out and you will have to copy them to the new format yet again!