[jedo1507r]

To nocusr: You might have to figure out what DVD players your family members use. I had a Panasonic DVD-A120 from 1999 that only played DVD-R discs, it refused to play DVD+R. Every other DVD player in the house and what my friends had played both finalized +R/-R video discs flawlessly. If you think their DVD players are recent, it could be safe to use either format. Just pick a good quality disc manufacturer.


To bgadow: I have a refurbished Toshiba DKVR60 (Funai) that I used for most in-house tapes in my school's department (around 300 recordings, most tapes were over 90 minutes), though I never used the VHS side of the machine, as most of the tapes were linear mono/stereo and that deck was not up to par on reproducing linear tracks (background noise), let alone the less than stellar reliability of modern Funai VHS decks. I used external video recorders to play back the transfers (Kenwood KV-905, Sony SLV-M91HF, a couple of JVC SVHS machines, a couple of multisystem decks and others--as those were cheap thrift finds). The DVD recorder section is very reliable, more so than the Samsung unit I had used before it got a bit "picky" with the discs and glitchy firmware. We also used a really ugly looking Emerson (Funai) DVD recorder from 2005 or so, which had been very beat up and used it for a while before getting the combo, though it was very picky on certain discs, as it preferred Verbatim DVD-Rs, and no problems. It was retired after many recordings, but it still works. The only downside is that the recorded disc menus cannot be bypassed, let alone be customized (no preview images/clips, just a list of titles). If you need or want a proper DVD menu, you may need a capture card and personal computer. I think you can also rip the disc and work a menu on the computer-end, though I haven't done that. I do recommend Funai-made DVD recorders (Toshiba, Emerson, et al.) for high volume recordings, as they have been very reliable for what we had used them for.

Also, I have used a 2005 Panasonic DMR-ES10 and a 2003 Sony RDR-GX7 for a couple of recordings and both have produced good results. The GX7 has a few available picture tweaks, though the GX7 has known reliability issues with the original IDE drive (I haven't used it much, so it works fine). The ES10 can be set to bypass the title menu and change the frame of the preview before finalizing, but for full control, you may need to use a computer.

I have used the computer solution, though I only have notebooks and a Sony DCR-TRV340 D8 camcorder to do the A/D conversion and edit from there. The results were nice and very tweakable, but was impractical for our needs.