Can DVD record from VCR/TV/etc?
Short Answer: No. (Not in this century.) Long answer: The minimum requirement for reproducing audio and video on DVD is an MPEG video stream and a PCM audio track. (Other streams such as Dolby Digital audio, MPEG audio, and subpicture are not necessary for the simplest case.) Basic DVD control codes are also needed. At the moment it’s difficult in real time to encode the video and audio, combine them with DVD-V info, and write the whole thing to DVD. Even if you could do all this in a home recorder, it would be extremely expensive. Prices for DVD production systems are dropping from millions of dollars to thousands of dollars, but they won’t be in the <$500 range for home use for several years yet. In June 1997, Hitachi demonstrated a home DVD video recorder containing a DVD-RAM drive, a hard disk drive (as a buffer), two MPEG-1 encoders, and an MPEG-2 decoder. No production date was mentioned. It's possible the first home DVD recorders will require a digital source of already-compress
Yes. When DVD was originally introduced in 1997 it could only play. DVD video recorders appeared in Japan at the end of 1999, and in the rest of the world at the end of 2000. Early units were expensive: $2,500 to $4,000. DVD recorders are still quite expensive (typically $500 to $2000 as of fall 2002), but will eventually be as cheap as VCRs. DVD recorders are already being added to satellite and cable receivers, hard-disk video recorders, and similar boxes. A DVD recorder is just like a VCR — it has a tuner and A/V inputs, and it can be programmed to record shows. An important difference is that you never have to rewind or fast forward — recordings on a disc are instantly accessible, usually from an on-screen menu. Note that DVD video recorders can’t copy most DVD movie discs, which are protected. Unfortunately there is more than one recordable DVD format, and they don’t all play together nicely. It’s nothing like the old “VHS vs. Betamax battle” as many in the press would have you
Short Answer: No. (Not in this century.) Long answer: The minimum requirement for reproducing audio and video on DVD is an MPEG video stream and a PCM audio track. (Other streams such as Dolby Digital audio, MPEG audio, and subpicture are not necessary for the simplest case.) Basic DVD control codes are also needed. At the moment it’s difficult in real time to encode the video and audio, combine them with the control codes, and write the whole thing to DVD. Even if you could do all this in a home recorder, it would be too expensive. Prices for DVD production systems are dropping from millions of dollars to thousands of dollars, but they won’t be in the <$500 range for home use for several years yet. It's possible the first home DVD recorders will require a digital source of already-compressed audio and video, such as DBS. Other obstacles: Price of blank discs may initially be as high as $50 for record-once, and even higher for erasable. The first generation of recordable media will hol
