DVD Recorders....are crap

If you haven't already guessed, I do a fair amount of reading. Another article that caught my eye had to do with DVD Recorders and how everyone in the industry had been expecting them to replace VCRs and what not for the past two years and are expecting the same this year.

I bought a DVD recorder/VCR combo last year. It said something like, "Simple One Button Copying from VCR to DVD". I thought that was great since we have a few video tapes we wanted to copy and preserve.

Would you believe that my wife has a videtape of herself, on stage, singing with Barry Manilow at an old concert? She was the one called from the audience to join him for a song. She considers this item priceless and wants it copied and preserved forever. But I digress.

So I gave my wife this wonderful DVD/VCR for Christmas and replaced the old VCR and the old DVD - woo hoo, 2 boxes gone only 1 added, progress. I then pulled out the manual and started reading how to copy from VCR to DVD. Now, if I have to read about this then it is not one button copying. After trudging through several steps, most of which made no sense to me and must have still been written and Japanese or something, I decided to just give it a try. All those speed settings and what not would hopefully default correctly.

I put in the tape, put in the blank DVD and hit a bunch of buttons, not one mind you, a bunch. Soon the machine was whirring and out spit a DVD. How exciting. I put the DVD back in and played it, miracle of miracles, the video was playing from the DVD - SUCCESS.

Then a time came when my wife was going to see a friend. She wanted a tape of the two of them skydiving copied so she could take one with her. I once again managed to copy the video and all was good in the land.

When my wife and her friend put the DVD in her friends player.....nothing. The DVD said the disc was blank! I quickly took my DVD of Barry M. and tried playing it on my new Dell computer (the other piece of technological trash), nothing. Back into the DVD player, it played. how could that be? I still have no friggin clue.

Why don't folks buy DVD Recorders in place of VCRs? Because they are still too complex and don't work for crap. My wife hates the machine because it is too complex to figure out how to tell it when to record a show in the future which you can't really do now thank to the cable company........what a lead in for tomorrow.