Humax DRT400 40-Hour TiVo with DVD Recorder
Sounds like a good idea - but maybe not.
I purchased one of these units as my first foray into the TiVo world when my 15 year-old VCR started to die.  I figured 40 hours seemed like a lot of TV to watch, and if I managed to get close to filling it I could download video to a DVD-RW and use those just like I used to use video tapes. <br /> <br />Alas, the \\"gotchas\\" were too much for me: <br /> <br />1) Video quality on the TiVo has 4 ranges: Best, High, Medium, and Basic.  Shows recorded with Best looked pretty good, but anything less than that I found the video artifacts rather noticeable when watching the programs.  I should note here that I was watching prime-time dramas, not sports (which, having more motion, should reveal more artifacts). <br /> <br />2) Recording time was not what I had hoped.  The stated \\"40-hour\\" recording time is for programs at Basic quality.  At Best quality the total storage was more like 13 hours.   <br /> <br />3) The DVD recording function was disappointing.  Not that it was difficult to do; it was really quite easy.  No, my problems were with storage capacity and video quality.  The first show I tried to move to DVD was an episode of The West Wing, and I found I couldn't store the entire show on one 4.7Gb DVD-RW (the one included with the unit, no less).  Seven minutes of the show had to go on a second DVD-RW.  Most of what I record is hour-long shows, so this wasn't going to work for me.  I tried recording another hour-long show (again, a West Wing episode) in High quality and transferring that to DVD-RW; it fit with room to spare, but the quality on the DVD was really poor.  Not impossible to view, but so noticeable that it was distracting. <br /> <br />I did record another hour-long show at Best quality and found I was able to get that on one DVD-RW (barely), so it looks like I was subject to the vaguaries of MPEG compression.  Some shows might compress enough to fit on a DVD, others might not.  In the long run that was not going to work for me. <br /> <br /> <br />Basically, if you're hoping to use this unit as a TiVo/quasi-VCR you're probably going to find it doesn't work as well as you expected.  You may want to consider going with a unit that has more recording capacity, and if you really need to put programs on DVD try using the TiVo-To-Go feature.  I haven't tried it and can't speak to the quality of the resulting DVDs, but I just can't imagine it would be any worse than using the DRT400.