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My dad's VCR broke, what should he replace it with?
Treeloot
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However, that seems like a pretty solid choice, it's quality will be much better than VCR, but don't expect DVD quality on those things when you record.
This is pretty cheap and Magnavox is a pretty good brand.
Does it have to have a hard drive? Would he be recording that much?
Hard Drive based recorders don't suffer from this problem since they're considered "time shifting" rather than "place shifting" (i.e. you won't take it to someone else's house, or sell it, like you could a recorded DVD)
my dad recently went through a similar process, and found several DVD recorders to be basically useless for anything but basic cable
Are these do not record signals sent out through analog broadcasts or just through digital broadcasts? My dad only gets basic cable, but he'd be really disappointed if he couldn't record anything from Turner Classic Movies.
But now they have a DVR box from our local cable place and just LOVE it. They love it so much they convinced me to get one.
My dad is pretty against getting a DVR from the cable company because he doesn't want to pay an extra monthly fee for one.
Here is a list of DVD recorders for your consideration:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdrecorders
This. Is like, five or ten dollars a month.
Otherwise, he might as well just get another VCR, as everything else is either unreliable, or comes with a suscription fee that will be far more expensive.
You'd be surprised. Some people are so horribly cheap that $10 a month is a high price to pay to completely untether themselves from the TV schedule with nearly zero effort.
Personally, I think it's about the best money you'll ever spend if you watch several shows on a regular basis.
But whatever.
My mom went for DVR this past all and has not looked back. It is so easy to set things to record every week and have them indefinitely not to mention it beats recording over the same tape over and over again and watching the quality turn to shit.
That being said, I'm not sure about the non cable box options. Maybe another VCR would be best.
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Man, it's even better than that (but you know this). You don't even have to set the time. You find the program once in the guide, tell it to record any new (and only new) episodes that come on, and you're done. What, Lost is on at a special night and time? It's a two-hour episode? No problemo!
The only annoyance I ever had was with Showtime, who calls episodes "new" all week long...so I'd delete Dexter or Weeds after watching only to have it record the same damn episode again the next day.
And yeah, I have to agree that if you're on a fixed income it's not like standalone DVD recorders are cheap or anything.
You can get a VCR for like, 15$.
Yeah, used ones at least are pretty cheap. Also, I think I've still seen some VHS/DVD combo players on shelves. I wouldn't be sure, though, I walk right by them and look at the Blu-Ray shit. :P
Tapes are a pain in the ass to find, but still not particularly expensive. There's still plenty of stock lying around, if you poke around online you can find some cheap. Might get harder in a few years, of course, but a used VCR might be all he needs to get through until DVR fees go away or HTPCs are cheaper.
Yea, that's where my opinion about prices came out off. Around september I moved and can't get DVR in my place, so I started looking around and kept coming up with those prices in the big box stores.
They make combo units, though. That's $79.99, new from amazon.
Just make sure it has a tuner...some new ones don't. I don't know if there are any with digital tuners. You can find a handful of different models of DVD/VCR combo units at any Wal-Mart or Target, ranging from about $50 to about $150.
EDIT: Correction...after looking at five different models, most new ones don't have tuners. That Phillips I linked is the only one of the five that had one.