Video

My early-model DVD recorder just died again, so I searched every Wal-Mart in town to find Polaroid's current DVD recorder, since it seemed so cool. It's got a hard drive, USB port, SD card reader, and digital TV tuner. First disappointment was that the digital tuner doesn't output Dolby 5.1 sound when it's broadcast, it converts everything to 2-channel PCM. I already know that no recorders will record the 5.1 track, but some will at least let you hear it when you're tuned in live. There wasn't anything on but crap anyways, so I figured I wouldn't use it that much. What made me take this machine back to the store was its problem with bright video- as a test I transferred a laserdisc I have that was made to demonstrate Mitsubishi TVs- as you can see here, the recorder produces white interference lines when the picture content gets too bright and it shows up on the discs it records. I've read this is a problem inherent in the DVD recorder, so getting another one would probably have the same problem. The recorder's authoring is a little weird anyways, some discs would not play at all on my old Pioneer DVL-909, and those that did play had several glitches. It encodes the audio in MPEG rather than Dolby Digital, so that would make it harder to edit stuff together with things I transferred on the older recorder. I exchanged the Polaroid for a Philips which also has a hard drive, USB port and digital tuner, but it still won't tune in TV in 5.1, and while its picture quality is beautiful and better than my older model Philips recorder, the DVL-909 won't handle its disc menus properly. It skips to the top info screen and won't let you scroll down to select titles to play back. So sadly, it's gonna have to go back too. There aren't any other DVD recorders with hard drives; while I can't really see any practical use for it (maybe if there were anything worth watching on TV, but there isn't) it's sure fun to play with.