Live Longer, Stay Younger: Put Yourself on DVD!

By Rod Eime

Panasonic's DMR-HS2 DVD Recorder is jam-packed with useful features

If you're anything like me, you have around twenty years worth of VHS, Beta, VHS-C, Hi-8, Digital 8 and Mini-DV tapes piling up in boxes or on shelves.

Mountains of accumulating video tapes present two major problems.

1) The recorded material is prone to degradation, particularly after about ten years unless it is stored in controlled archival conditions, and
2) Where do you put them all?

Here's one solution; enter the Panasonic DMR-HS2 DVD Recorder.

This shiny, versatile device offers a whole host of handy features that the modern digital image and video gatherer will find invaluable.

Your vast array of video material can be plugged in via several common input types, namely;

RGB video by convention RCA plugs
S-Video by dedicated single cable, and (wait for it!)
DV via IEE1394 (Firewire)
Still images can also be fed via PC Card slot (Flash card, microdrive etc) for DVD archiving.

As you've already begun to fathom, the recorded quality on DVD is staggering. There is virtually no loss in quality. Even so, the DMR-HS2 has four levels of recording quality; XP, SP, LP and EP, where SP is normal 1-1 recording. Some loss in quality is detectable in LP and is quite apparent in EP, but at least you have the choice.

The DMR-HS2 supports two of the current formats (yes, there is more than two and, no, they're not all compatible) DVD-R and DVD-RAM. The first is a write-once format similar to CD-R and the latter is a rewritable format similar to CD-RW.

So if you want absolute optimum quality, you'll get one hour of razor-sharp DVD (Mpeg-2) video on a 4.7 Gb DVD-R disc (XP mode), but two hours on SP mode is sufficient for most purposes. Conversely you'll get four hours on LP and eight hours on EP for marathon performances where quality is not paramount.

Techno-nerds will, no doubt, be quick to alert me to the existence of DVD Writer Drives (burners) available for your PC. But have you tried creating even a humble video CD on your PC? I'm reasonably switched-on, but let's face it; CD burning is a 'black art'!

Just like the DVDs you buy or hire, the DMR-HS2 will also create title menus from the various chapters you have recorded on to the disc. You can type in, via the multi-purpose remote control, short chapter titles for the menu. You'll want to keep them short too because selecting each character individually gets to be a bit of a drag. I'm betting new models will have a QWERTY keyboard facility somewhere.

Some other issues you should be aware of:

Once you've filled up a DVD, you 'finalise' it just like you would a CD. Namely you close the disc off once and for all and it becomes read-only thereafter. However finalised discs are not readable on all home DVD players, especially older ones.

DVD-RAM discs are only currently readable on a few high-end home DVD players.

Like blank CDs, not all blank DVDs are created equal. Buy the manufacturer's recommended brands for maximum reliability.

Apart from these valuable archiving tools, the DMR-HS2 is actually sold as a VCR replacement. In tandem with the DVD writer is a 40Gb hard drive which will record up to 52 hours of television programs so you'll never miss an episode of 'Days of Our Lives' while you're on that Round-The-World trip.

When you get home, you can even watch the beginning of a program while you're recording the end! It has a stereo TV tuner and in-built decoder for digital audio. But as far as I'm concerned, these are just bonus features.

Nevertheless, you'll need to put a few weekends aside to transfer all your old tapes and, no, it won't repair already degraded vision.

The RRP of the DMR-HS2 is currently A$1449. Blank DVD-Rs can be had for as low as $2.95 and DVD-RAMs are more expensive. Prices may decrease in time, but how much longer can you afford to wait?

Links:
Panasonic Australia