Akai DVDRW120 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder
Easy to use DVD+R/W recorder
After reading the reviews of some other bug-ridden DVD+R/W recorders I decided to wait until something better came along.  Am I glad I did!  This recorder at just under $200 is the least expensive on the market.<br />Akai is a well known quality brand who exited the US market in the late 1980s or early 1990s.  I owned both a reel-to-reel tape recorder and cassette tape deck from them, and both were well built and reliable.<br />This DVD recorder is easy to use.  The manual is very simple.  It has a few translation errors (overwrited instead of overwritten) but the instructions are clear and I was up and running in no time.<br />My first endeavor was to copy 8mm home video tapes.  These transferred easily and there are simple steps to create multiple selection entries per DVD.  It also automatically inserts chapter markers everyone 5 minutes which is very convenient for quick scanning.  You can title each selection as well, and the selection picture shows the image from the start of the selection recording.<br />Picture quality was excellent, though I admit my 8mm tapes don't strain the limit of the 2 hour recording mode.<br />After burning some Maxell DVD+Rs, I tried them on several DVD decks.  The only one that didn't work was a new auto Panasonic DVD Player.  I suspect it was the player as Panasonic supports DVD-R.  The disks played fine in a newer Samsung and Toshiba DVD players as well as a 5 year old Panasonic DVD Player.<br />Overall, Akai has come through with a great product at a great price.  Akai distribution is spotty so I think Amazon may be the only source for this great buy.