Standalone DVD recorders, alongside Blu-ray recorders, have been relatively scarce in the United States due largely to "restrictions on video recording" and piracy concerns.[2][3]
The first DVD recorders appeared on the market in 1999–2000.[4][5]
Technical information
DVD-RW optics
Originally, DVD recorders supported one of three standards: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW (using DVD-VR), and DVD+RW (using DVD+VR), none of which are directly compatible. Most current DVD drives support both the + and - standards, while few support the DVD-RAM standard, which is not directly compatible with standard DVD drives.
Recording speed is generally denoted in values of X (similar to CD-ROM usage), where 1X in DVD usage is equal to 1.321 MB/s, roughly equivalent to a 9X CD-ROM. In practice, this is largely confined to computer-based DVD recorders, since standalone units generally record in real time, that is, 1X speed.
Recorders use a laser (usually 650 nm red) to read and write DVDs. The reading laser is usually not stronger than 5 mW, while the writing laser is considerably more powerful. The faster the writing speed is rated, the stronger the laser. DVD burner lasers often peak at about 100-400mW in continuous wave (some are pulsed).
Computer-based DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) drives
DVD recorder drives are standard equipment in many computer systems on the market, after being initially popularized by the Pioneer/AppleSuperDrive; aftermarket drives can cost as little as $20.[6] DVD recorder drives can be used in conjunction with DVD authoring software to create DVDs near or equal to commercial quality, and are also widely used for data backup and exchange. As a general rule, computer-based DVD recorders can also handle CD-R and CD-RW media; in fact, a number of standalone DVD recorders use drives designed for computers.
More recently, manufacturers have begun to phase out DVD drives from laptop computers in favor of portability and digital media.[7]
Most internal drives are designed with SATA interfaces, with parallel ATA becoming increasingly rare. External drives often use the USB standard for connectivity.
DVD recorder drives manufactured since January 2000 are required by the DVD consortium to respect DVD region codes when reading a disc. The drives are incapable of assigning region codes when writing a disc as this is stored on a part of the disc to which PC based and standalone video recorders do not have write access.
DVD duplication systems are generally built out of stacks of drives, connected through a computer-based backplane.
Standalone DVD recorders
When the standalone DVD recorder first appeared on the Japanese consumer market in 1999, early units were very expensive, costing between $2500 and $4000 USD. More recently, DVD recorders from notable brands have dropped in price. Early units supported only DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs, but newer units can record to DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL. Certain models include mechanical hard disk drive-based digital video recorders (DVRs) to improve ease of use. Standalone DVD recorders generally have basic DVD authoring software built in.
In 2009, Panasonic introduced the world's first Blu-ray disc recorder which was capable of recording both DVDs and Blu-ray discs and featured built in satellite HDTV tuners. A year later, Panasonic introduced Blu-ray disc recorders with terrestrial HDTV tuners.
DVD recorders have technical advantages over VCRs, including: [citation needed]
Superior video and audio quality
Easy-to-handle smaller form-factor disc media, and higher durability compared to magnetic tape
Random access to video chapters without rewinding or fast-forwarding (serial access)
Onscreen multilingual subtitles and labeling not available on VCRs
Slow initial access/load times due to the optical nature of the disc
Limited rewritability on DVD-RW/+RW discs (typically around 1000). DVD-RAM is better suited for high frequency re-recording (around 100,000 rewrites)
Relatively short life of the laser diodes (average of about 2 years depending on usage).
In addition, DVDs recorded with DVD recorders in the standard DVD format must be finalized to view in other DVD players. This disadvantage does not apply to discs recorded in the newer and more flexible DVD-VR format or the DVD+VR format - the latter (but not the former) also being compatible with DVD players. The implementation of MPEG-2 compression used on most standalone DVD recorders is required to compress the picture data in real time, producing results that may not be up to par with professionally rendered DVD video, which can take days to compress.
Standard definition VCR replacement DVD video recorders typically has a set of standard recording modes for fitting 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 hour modes (XP, SP, LP, EP, SLP, SEP, respectively) on single layer 12cm discs (DVD5).[8] These modes are comparable to those found on VHS VCRs using standard 120-tapes, having SP, LP, SLP modes of 2, 4, 6 hour.
The United States converted its over-the-air television broadcasts to digital "ATSC" in June 2009. This will have a limited impact in ending the need for DVD recorders to perform realtime MPEG-2 encoding or transcoding. The only setup where ATSC could eliminate MPEG-2 encoding/transcoding in a DVD recorder would be where an antenna is hooked directly into a DVD recorder that has an integrated ATSC tuner. However, the DVD recorder will have to transcode the ATSC MPEG-2 into DVD-Video-compliant MPEG-2 if the ATSC MPEG-2 stream isn't already DVD-Video-compatible. This would require transcoding for all high-definition broadcasts and some if not all standard-definition broadcasts. The same general situation applies to digital cable service; only DVD recorders with integrated digital cable ("QAM") tuners can avoid transcoding, and then only if the digital cable system is already sending a DVD-Video-compatible MPEG-2 stream, which again requires transcoding of all HD content and some if not all SD content. All other setups (digital cable box's analog outputs to DVD recorder, satellite box's analog outputs to DVD recorder, DVD recorder tuning and recording analog cable channels which are still permitted after 2/2009, etc.) usually always involve an analog step with MPEG-2 encoding being necessary inside the DVD recorder.
A number of manufacturers have combined DVD recorders with mechanical hard disk drive-based digital video recorders, allowing for recording to large fixed disks, and the ability to view these recordings off the hard disk at a later date.
In Japan, AVCREC recorders, which are able to record MPEG-2 or AVC high definition video from ISDB broadcast with or without re-encoding, get increasingly popular. Initially, AVCREC recorders use DVD recordable discs, but newer models are able to record onto Blu-ray discs as well onto hard disk drives.
This has caused most new VHS recorders to be implemented as DVD/VCR combo units, or to be manufactured without tuners. The US requirement of ATSC compatibility forces inclusion of MPEG-2 decoding hardware, which is already part of all DVD players but which otherwise would be unnecessary in an analog-only VCR.
An ATSC-capable DVD unit can also serve as a more-powerful alternative to digital television adapters, which allow DTV reception with older NTSCanalog televisions. The DVD recorders offer additional capabilities, such as automated VCR-style timeshifting of programming and a variety of output formats, that are deliberately not included in the most common mass-market US ATSC converters.
Unlike the more common digital television adapter boxes, newer DVD recorder units are able to tune both analog and digital signals - an advantage when receiving low-power television and foreign (analogue) signals. Some, however, do suffer from many of the same design limitations as the less costly converter boxes, including poorly designed signal strength meters, incomplete display of broadcast program information, incompatibility with antenna rotators or CEA-909smart antennas and inability to add digital channels without wiping out all existing channels and rescanning the entire band.
A DVD recording of an over-the-air HDTV broadcast is at DVD resolution, which is inferior to the original broadcast with 720p or 1080i resolution. Some units also provide limited USB or flash memory interface capability, often only supporting viewing of digital camera still photos or playback of MP3s with no ability to write video to these media.
A number of DVD recorders are also capable of recording to SVCD, VCD and Audio CD formats. Recording to DVDs can be done at different speeds that may take between 1 and 6 hours (even up to 8 hours on certain models) on a standard (single sided 12cm) blank DVD. A trade off exists between recording time and video quality.
MiniDVD recorders
8cm miniDVDs are used on some digitalcamcorders, primarily those meant for a consumer market ("point and shoot"); such discs are usually playable on a full-sized DVD player, but may not record on a full-sized DVD recorder system. Though popular for their convenience (in the manner of VHS-C), DVD camcorders are not suitable for professional use due to higher levels of compression compared to MiniDV and the difficulty of editing MPEG-2 video.
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) systems, which, in turn, were replaced by flat-panel displays of several types.
An optical disc is a flat, usually disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side.
Video CD is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm (4.7 in) optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and West Asia, superseding the VHS and Betamax systems in the regions until DVD-Video finally became affordable in the first decade of the 21st century.
A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to watch the DVD content, which could be a movie, a recorded TV show, or other content.
In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from certain discs, while other drives can both read and record. Those drives are called burners or writers since they physically burn the data onto on the discs. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives.
A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swappable battery facing towards the user, hot-swappable recording media, and an internally contained quiet optical zoom lens.
A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canada and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes (STB) with direct to disk recording, portable media players and TV gateways with recording capability, and digital camcorders. Personal computers are often connected to video capture devices and used as DVRs; in such cases the application software used to record video is an integral part of the DVR. Many DVRs are classified as consumer electronic devices. Similar small devices with built-in displays and SSD support may be used for professional film or video production, as these recorders often do not have the limitations that built-in recorders in cameras have, offering wider codec support, the removal of recording time limitations and higher bitrates.
D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in December 1997, it uses the same physical cassette format and recording mechanism as S-VHS, but requires higher-quality and more expensive tapes and is capable of recording and displaying both standard-definition and high-definition content. The content data format is in MPEG transport stream, the same data format used for most digital television applications. It used MPEG-2 encoding and was standarized as IEC 60774-5.
MPEG transport stream or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast systems such as DVB, ATSC and IPTV.
Optical storage refers to a class of data storage systems that use light to read or write data to an underlying optical media. Although a number of optical formats have been used over time, the most common examples are optical disks like the compact disc (CD) and DVD. Reading and writing methods have also varied over time, but most modern systems as of 2023 use lasers as the light source and use it both for reading and writing to the discs. Britannica notes that it "uses low-power laser beams to record and retrieve digital (binary) data."
DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs are able to be erased and rewritten. Data is written ('burned') to the disc by a laser, rather than the data being 'pressed' onto the disc during manufacture, like a DVD-ROM. Pressing is used in mass production, primarily for the distribution of home video.
Optical disc authoring requires a number of different optical disc recorder technologies working in tandem, from the optical disc media to the firmware to the control electronics of the optical disc drive.
TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder (DVR) models that TiVo Corporation designed. Features may vary, but a common feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service and use its operating system.
The first attempt at producing pre-recorded HDTV media was a scarce Japanese analog MUSE-encoded laser disc which is no longer produced.
The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind of digital data and has been widely used to store video programs, software and other computer files. DVDs offer significantly higher storage capacity than compact discs (CD) while having the same dimensions. A standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data, a dual-layer DVD up to 8.5 GB. Variants can store up to a maximum of 17.08 GB.
Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs, resulting in an increased capacity.
HD DVD is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format, but lost to Blu-ray, supported by Sony and others.
As of 2021, multiple consumer-oriented, optical-disk media formats are or were available:
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other AV sources and can play back the recording after rewinding. The use of a VCR to record a television program to play back at a more convenient time is commonly referred to as time shifting. VCRs can also play back prerecorded tapes, which were widely available for purchase and rental starting in the 80s and 90s, most popularly in the VHS videocassette format. Blank tapes were sold to make recordings.
AVCREC is a format for recording and playback of high definition video in BDAV format using conventional DVD recordable discs as recording media. Presently, AVCREC is tightly integrated with ISDB broadcast standard and is not marketed outside Japan.
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