Sony HDD recorder upgrade

[philKS2]

Hi all

I bought a Sony HDD and DVD recorder RDR-HX510 with an 80 Gb hard drive when they first came out... it was a great piece of kit, and the ability to dub material from HDD to DVD is still very useful.

BUT... I'm about to get into HD (Hi Def) TV... and I'm trying to keep the cost down by staying with some of my existing kit... so a couple of questions:

1- my 80Gb hard drive just won't hold much HD TV... so how easy will it be to replace it with a larger drive ? Is all the operating system loaded on the existing drive?

2- If I get a Panasonic Viera with built-in Freesat tuner, will I be able to record the output of the TV (ie the HD programmes) onto my HDD recorder, or any other device?


Phil

[Jamo]

45 mins is about 1 gig so you 80 gig drive is still good

[Ross]

Do they compress the transmission like hell or what?? Recently purchased a HD recorder for my uncle, that was getting about ~7gb per hour albeit in 1920x1080...

I guess take whatever length you can record now and divide it by 3-4x

[Jamo]

Do they compress the transmission like hell or what?? Recently purchased a HD recorder for my uncle, that was getting about ~7gb per hour albeit in 1920x1080...

I guess take whatever length you can record now and divide it by 3-4x

Ah yeah if you record in 1920x1080 it will be fooking huge!!!

[HPmuirt]

45 mins is about 1 gig so you 80 gig drive is still good

Standard freeview output is around 1.6Gb per hour
HD output varies but a typical value is around 8Gb per hour

1- my 80Gb hard drive just won't hold much HD TV... so how easy will it be to replace it with a larger drive ? Is all the operating system loaded on the existing drive?

This is possible in most HD recorders although the early Sony's were known to put restrictions on the disc size either in firmware or internal jumpers/resistors as they sold several variants with different disc sizes so wanted to stop people buying the small one and then home upgrading. You will to Google your unit and see how people dealt with any such restrictions.

2- If I get a Panasonic Viera with built-in Freesat tuner, will I be able to record the output of the TV (ie the HD programmes) onto my HDD recorder, or any other device?

NO - most of this early type of recorder have a TV tuner in and can only decode and record vai the tuner. They do not normally allow for the recording from other sources but I do not know this unit in particular.

Secondly, it will NOT handle HD content - only SD (720x576). Also, remember that the DVD format is only designed for SD not HD so you could not record it onto the DVD in HD format even if you could get it onto the hard disc in the first place.

Newer DVD recorder systems which have HDTV decoders in simply downscale to SD for recording onto the DVD so you can watch HD but onlt record SD (just like the old VCR days eh?)

To record HDTV onto disc, you need either a Blu-ray or HD-DVD recorder.

Cheers n

Si