4KUS DVR-230

my 4KUS DVR-230 has never been that good ,maybe the disks i was using? recording from a vhs cassette the picture would freeze or slow down after say 20 mins etc rrrrrruubbbbbbish

I bought a 4KUS DVR-230 from ASDA for £99.98, I went to buy a Widescreen TV, but saw a large pile of 4kus DVR boxes at the end of the Aisle; I've wanted a DVR for ages, as my efforts to use PC based video input etc have mostly ended up with poor results or driver and PC problems with these cards installed. The price of DVR has always put me off, but £99.00? I had to get one.

I spent about 15 minutes reading the manual, which was well written and good enough to get a novice going.

Out of the box, there is no scart but there is a fly lead and a long comp video/audio cable (even though the manual said none of these are supplied) you also get a single DVD+r to record on. On the back of the unit there is 1 input and 1 output Scart, which means you can throughput your video. There are also composite video out and component RGB video out phono sockets, the front panel has composite video in and audio input phonos.

We have a large collection of X-Files vid's that I want on DVD, so I did a test in Standard, SP, mode (2 hours per DVD) The quality was no different from the video output, so I was impressed, but wondered if quality would suffer if I recorded in Long, EP (4 hours) Mode (as all the videos are 3+ hours) and again I was impressed, there was a very slight loss of sharpness/detail, but nothing that would matter too much.

What I really want is to record/edit some home movies to DVD, I'm a bit confused about the use of DVR types, and found out that the 5 DVD-r's I bought are not supported to write on this DVR, it said "Supports DVD-r) on the box, but in the manual it says "DVD-r Play only"

I'm probably going to have to get a grip and learn how to write on DVD+R RW discs then edit via my PC, I don't want to sit in front of the recorder waiting to set Chapter or edit points etc.

The only downside: This unit is very wide and I cannot fit it into my cabinet, guess I'll have to put it on top of the TV for now.

On the whole I'm very impressed.

Walking round Asda one day and I spied this for £60 but got to checkout and found that someone had moved box to another self, it was in fact £160 but brought it anyway and pleased I did, it now retails for £130. Not found a disc that it won't play yet. Copied all my tapes with no problems and put stuff on dvd-r and dvd-rw both from tape, telly, freeview and via firewire input on front from camcorder, "guider" button on handset makes this easy without refering to the somewhat lacking instructions. Playback is easy and after a few weeks of use it even seems easier to use than the old video, timer function is idiot proof. If like me you don't want to spend hours reading what seems like a new language to do what you used to do with the video and just get on with it then I can recomend this product. A few weeks earlier I was thinking of spending hundreds on a more well known brand and since have discovered from others that some of these are a bit choosey on what they will play. A lucky spontaineous buy.