OTHER TECH

DVD Recorder with Hard Drive A DVD recorder with a built-in hard drive is a nearly perfect combination of technologies.

Time-shifting Ease of recording ranges from being about the same as a VCR (if the deck has VCR Plus) to slightly harder than using a TiVo (on decks with an EPG). If you have cable or satellite, you'll need a model that has an IR blaster so that the recorder can change cable and satellite channels.

Archiving With hard drives, you can decide after the program is recorded (and edited) whether you want to save it to DVD. You can make copies using one of the cheaper write-once formats (DVD+R or DVD-R) instead of the more expensive erasable discs (DVD+RW, DVD-RW, or DVD-RAM). And you can trade off picture quality for DVD recording time if you just want to cram as many episodes of Cheers onto a disc as possible.

Editing DVD/hard-disk recorders offer the most editing versatility short of using a computer. Along with removing commercials, with most models you can freely re-order program segments when editing camcorder footage. Best of all, you can do your edits while the footage is stored on the hard drive and make a DVD copy when you're done - which saves you both time and blank discs.

Making Copies Whatever you edit remains on the hard drive until you erase it, so making multiple DVD copies is easy. On some models, it takes only a couple of button pushes.

They can be pricey (around $400 to $1,000), but a DVD recorder with a built-in hard drive will repay the investment. You'll save time and be able to use cheap write-once discs for your keeper programs.