As you may know I have been looking at buying a HDD/DVD Recorder recently. I have been looking around to try and find which units had the best features, ease of use and best quality of sound and picture, all for a reasonable price. I went to a few stores and checked out what was available and prices then looked around online for reviews as well as comparisons between brands. I must say it is a minefield out there at the moment.

In terms of systems, and media types, the possible combinations of components available are endless. To really be sure that you are buying what you need and not spending money on features you can’t or won’t use, you really have to know what you already have and what formats it supports as well as think ahead as to any additions you plan on making to your home theatre. As I see it now, the digital home theatre market is in a transition stage where there is alot of new formats as well as connectivity systems that are coming and going, which makes it hard to mix and match your system with new and old components. At the moment there is broad support for a mixed digital and analog theatre system, but I think give it a year or 2 you wont find anything that will accept input from or output to the analog dinosaur of yesteryear.

Weighing up all my options, I bit the bullet and ended up buying the Sony RDR-HXD970 250 GB HDD/DVD Recorder. I chose this unit for a few reasons:

• Firstly because my existing system is all Sony. I am always open to new brands but I guess I was a bit biased when other brands had similar features for the same money. I stuck with familiar territory. Sony has always given me a great run in terms of reliability and ease of use. The existing home theatre is now getting a bit old at an average age of 7 years but I have never had a single problem with any of it. Recently the video player died but only because my 2 year old filled it with pencils and coins -  8 years is a pretty good run for a video player in my books.
• The recorder has a good mixture of digital/analog inputs and outputs ensuring a wide range of compatibility with any future additions I make to my system.
• Reviews on both the 160GB and 250GB unit are unanimously positive.

I havent included buying price as it would be obsolete in a few weeks anyway. Everyone is willing to do deals at the moment and I did manage to pick it up cheaper in a physical shop than I could online for once.

Initial Impressions

Straight out of the box the HDD/DVD recorder is very impressive, with clean lines and an unassuming front panel. As far as connecting it in with the existing system, it integrates easily. The hardest bit is deciding which way I wanted to connect everything. As my amp doesn’t have any digital inputs I had to use the analog outputs from the unit. I know its not the ideal way to connect a new digital unit, but I do plan on trying to pick myself up a digital decoder unit like the Sony SDP-E800 which you can find cheap second hand if you look hard enough. In a perfect world I would already have my big screen plasma and I would be able to connect everything with 1 single lead from the HDMI output and enjoy the 1080p upscaling for better picture quality.

When you first turn the recorder on it goes through an initial setup which covers everything like digital channel setup and output formats. Dont stress too much about these settings as they can be easily accessed later if you dont quite get it right. From there it was time to play.

TV progams are clear and crisp. The auto tuner was spot on with picking every channel, even to the point where we now have a clear channel 10, which has been fuzzy ever since we moved into this house no matter what I tried to clear it up. Recording of TV programs to either HDD or DVD is simple as pressing the record start button. Select either HDD or DVD and thats where you will be recording to. I mainly played with the HDD at first. Chase play, where you can start watching a program from the beginning while recording the end is excellent. You can fast forward the ads and once you reach where it is up to recording it returns to live television.

Our Sony Handycam which records direct to 8cm DVD’s is easy to copy to the hard drive with direct dubbing once you insert the disc into the unit. It also allows you to watch what you have just recorded without finalising in camera first. I havent got around to trying to burn a few discs onto one 12cm DVD yet, but I’m sure it should be pretty easy. There is also the option to connect direct via the iLink on the front panel and have the unit control starting and stopping the camera for you.

One of my big plans with the unit was being able to backup our 2 year old daughters movies onto the hardrive so we didnt have to worry about changing discs, as well as preserving the originals. Unfortunately the unit wont let me do this. It appears as though the HDD/DVD recorder honours the discs copy protection, and wont allow us to record from a DVD movie. This is a good thing as far as copyright protection goes, but I would love to see a movie backup feature that would allow you to copy to the harddrive but then prevents you from recording off the hard drive onto DVD’s. That way your originals can be kept safe from the fingerprints and scratches that come along with having toddlers. I guess that would present a whole new array of copyright infringements somewhere in the world so it is easier from Sony’s point of view to just not allow it.

The photo hub is a bit ordinary, but I guess I am comparing this to my current photo editing computer. Copying direct from camera, as well as from a USB 2.0 compatible card reader is slower than a wet week. I started to copy a few photos across to check it out and it took more than a few minutes for about 12 photos so I cancelled out. Come on. If you have a spare hour to copy a 1GB memory card to the hard drive then go right ahead, but there are better ways to view and organise your photos. Once the images are on the HDD the image rendering onscreen is nothing short of poor but in defence of it all my television is only standard resolution. I am sure it would be much better on a high definition big screen. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to try backing up the 4GB memory card in the the Olympus 1030SW direct to DVD thinking it might be a bit quicker. Bad idea. Over 2 hours later it finally finished and decided to create a slideshow to boot just to frustrate me more.

The music jukebox is a little clunky but it works. If you are going to upload song to it I would recommend doing it from a thumbdrive where all the songs have been named and organised. It took me long enough to name 1 song. I envy anyone with the patience to rename a whole album. If you have an Ipod then just connect its headphone jack direct to the input on the front panel and play from there as it saves you having to setup playlists and organising songs on the hard drive.

Wrapping Up

In my opinion you are best served to just use the Sony RDR-HXD970 HDD/DVD Recorder as a television program recorder as well as for easy organisation and backup of your home movies from your Handycams. I am sure there is a way to be able to backup DVD movies to the hard drive for watching over and over to save your originals from destruction. AS far as the music and photo ‘extras’ go then use them at your own peril. They are frustrating to use if you have an alternative way to view or listen to them. I dont currently have pay TV so I couldnt trial recording any of that across but that is on the cards for the near future. Over the coming weeks I plan to give the recorder a bit a work out and really get into its inner features and see how it fares. But my initial reactions to it are extremely positive and I am happy with it overall.

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Well it has come time to finally invest in a hard drive recorder or a combo HDD/DVD recorder. Our VCR has finally shat itself and we have no way of recording stuff from TV to watch later. I was originally going to just replace it, but why bother. I cant stand the quality of video now that I’ve had DVD for so long and I cant remember the last time I watched a video anyway. I dont want a standalone DVD recorder as I dont want 10,000 DVD’s that will never be watched again so I figure a HDD recorder is the way to go where you can delete stuff you dont want and burn off what you do.

My biggest problem is that I love my gadgets and I have been in a gadget black hole for some time now so I have got cravings for toys. The problem is that I have not been keeping up on my home entertainment technology like I used to so I dont know who or whats good anymore and thats where you guys come in. I need some help from people in the know or other people who like their home theatres as well.

What brands are currently the better ones, which major features are MUST HAVES in HDD recorders, which features really make life easy and which recorder is the easiest for my wife to use but has the flexibility for me to really get in amongst its nitty gritty’s?

Thats the start of it I guess so come on peoples let me know.

In the mean time for those of you in the same situation I have compiled a small list of starting resources for you:

• CNET – Seven tips on buying a DVD recorder
• Smarthouse – DVD recorder Buyers Guide
• The Age – Hard Drive Value – Good beginners guide to Hard Drive Recorders
• PC World – PVR and Hard Disk Video Recorder Buying Guide – A bit more in depth and a good read
• Choice – Test DVD/HDD Recorders – A free test for mid market hdd/dvd recorders

I am open to suggestions as well as sponsorship of products for testing and review.

Part 2: I finally decided on a Sony HDD recorder. You can read all about it in my post : Sony RDRHXD970 HDD/DVD Recorder Review

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The time has come to vote on the Win a RuffPC Laptop. My entry has been included and I am entry no 59 to so get along to vote for me so I can win a laptop:

The Thinking Blog

Please cast your vote for me so I dont have a repeat event of being stuck without a computer. There are some pretty good votes been made so far but if you feel like I deserve it then please vote for my entry.

Update

As the win a laptop cometition has now ended I am supporting another win a laptop competition. follow the link to see more details.

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Flickr

For all of you Flickr addicts out there who upload mountains of photos all at once, you will be able to set titles, descriptions, keywords and sets all before you click the upload button. No more having to manually edit individual photos once they are on the server. It still has the great drag and drop interface from the original version.

Heres what the Flickr Blog has to say about it:

The all new version for Windows and Mac OS X makes it easy to add titles, tags and descriptions to photos, add them to sets and adjust each photo’s privacy settings. Plus, for the first time ever, you can reorder your photos before uploading by simply dragging them into place!

When you start Uploadr for the first time you’ll have to authorize it with Flickr (just like the old Uploadr). But, you don’t have to do this right away. Version 3.0 lets you work offline while adding and organizing your photos. When you’re ready, you can click Sign In and you’ll be taken to Flickr to finish up. When you get back, you’re all set and Uploadr will remember your account for next time.

Drag your photos into the Uploadr to get started tagging and describing. When you’ve got everything just so, click the big Upload button and away they’ll go. Once you start an upload in version 3.0 you can immediately add more photos and start to tag and organize them, all while the first batch is being sent to Flickr. You can continue to upload new batches like this to your heart’s content!

I have already downloaded my copy and cant wait to upload new photos. I have had a look at it all and it looks great but since I have been so busy lately with the blog I havent been out to take any new photos. Tomorrow night I am off to see the Christmas lights and plan to take my camera along so I will test run it with those. Expect a tutorial on Photographing Christmas Lights as well.

Another great addition to Flickr Tools is the addition of Stats for Pro accounts. I have activated mine but wont be live until tomorrow so I will let you know how they go while I’m at it. To activate yours go to your Flickr homepage and hover you mouse over the ‘You’ heading. In the dropdown menu click on your stats. Just follow the prompts and you will have your Flickr Stats up and running in no time at all.

Update:

Stats are up and running quite successfully. As it happens it only took about an hour instead of the day that they estimated. The results are quite interesting too. The majority of my views come directly from Google Images while Flickr itself sends me the majority of the rest. The statistics go into quite a bit of detail as well being able to see graphs of viewing trends for individual photos as well as search terms and referrers. Excellent addition Flickr, I am very impressed.

Interestingly though I did find that the Chairpage.com forums for Silverchair fans has sent quite a bit of traffic my way for my ‘hotness’ photo of Daniel Johns from the Groovin The Moo Festival in Maitland last year. Its amazing how far your images can make it across the globe from downtown Newcastle.

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RSSHugger is a website to help bring you the reader closer to blogs that provide post about information you are interested in. Blogs are submitted and your feeds are listed allowing people to go straight to the info they are after. I have only played with it for about 15 minutes and was able to find some great new blogs about photography and making money off your blog.

 The top 100 list is reset every month so anyones blog is able to make it there driving more traffic straight to your door.

If you are looking for bringing readers closer to the content you provide I really think that RSSHugger is well worth a look 

I will monitor my traffic and let you know how it has helped improve my stats next month

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As a person always on the lookout for great little inventions that make life easier I have to say that the FOZI Tripod is one of the handiest I have come across in a long time. The convenience and functionality is brilliant and its Cheap! For something so simple and compact, it really has the potential to change peoples lives and make it so much easier. For those of you with point and shoot cameras it will really improve your photography as well by reducing dud photos due to camera shake.

For as gadget that is the size of a credit card, that you can carry in your wallet, I think that the small price you pay is a bargain for great photos. As well as that you no langer have to ask some stranger to take a photo for you. Sit your camera in the FOZI and set the timer.

For a complete review head over to my mates blog Mathewpacker.com and check it out in action. He has one in his hot little hands and just loves it as well. He proves its not just good for for cameras but also your iPod Touch and Playstation Portable. I’m sure heaps of people will come up with other great uses for it as well.

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For those of you who read my last post about how My Computer Has Died I had decided it is time to buy a laptop. In my efforts to start looking around for a new laptop I came across a competition to win a laptop. Now that suits my needs in two ways, cheap and solves my problem. In my original post I was entering a competition to win a laptop but that has ended so to keep information up to date I decided to support a fellow bloggers win a Macbook AIR competition instead. This post has been rewritten to best maximise an old post and build on the win a laptop traffic I have been getting.

So over at Shoemoney.com he is having a Win A Laptop Competition. Its really easy to enter, just leave a comment somewhere on the Shoemoney website and if you are randomly chosen you can go in the monthly draw to win a laptop – a MacBook Air to be exact.

Thanks to sposnorship by ACS Consulting the Macbook air will be given away on the 1st September. So get in ASAP and leave a comment (dont leave a crap comment cause thats not cool) somewhere on his blog where you think you can add to the conversation.

After this competition has ended in September I will update this post again with a new Win a Laptop competition

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The final decision was made to take it over and put it on the bench. So A few days later it was confirmed that the power supply, for absolutely no reason, had died. I guess in the grand scheme of things that it was the best possible thing that could have died as it cost me the least to fix. $55 later, 3 days down time and I’m back. I must pay my absolute highest regard and eternal thanks to my mate Mick who fixed my computer for me in record time while still running his own business. With out him I might have just crawled up into the foetal position and lived in the corner chanting random dribble about all the photos needing finalising, and blogs to be written and feeds to be read…… u get the idea…….. for a few days while I got over my loss. Well, it wasnt that bad but damn I missed the metal box that lives in the corner of my desk.

For those of you who only have a single computer and no backup would surely understand my problem. I have a backup camera, but never considered getting a backup computer. My theory has always been:

1. Computers dont break – People break them.
2. The blue screen of death is just a chance to find out more about how your computer works ( I have only ever seen it once waaaay back in the days of Win95)
3. I only backup to ensure that I have an original in case I stuff up.
4. Computers have feelings – Get cranky at them and they get cranky in the worst possible way as revenge.

Now for those of you who work in IT service departments may be cringing and thinking this is a bit naieve but these theories have served me well over the years, and I dont plan on changing. In the fifteen years I have calmly been playing with computers I have never had any major problems…. Touch wood!

But 3 days without a computer has made me come to a major turning point in my life, days of soul searching and spare time on my hands has made me realise…. I need to buy a laptop!!!!! I have survived without one till now but just in case this happens again I had better get out there and get one. The prospect of days away from the keyboard sends chills down my spine. Hint Hint Santa!

Seriously though, I have realised that I think Im a bit attached to the computer. I dont know if there is such a group as Computers Anonymous but it might be a good idea for us all to wean ourselves off the metal boxes that make the world go round. I have made it my new years resolution to learn how to become more efficient at photo editing (read refine my workflow!!), manage my time on the computer alot better and for one day a week not even press the on button. There is life away from computers, my blog will run itself while I maybe watch telly or do something ‘normal’ and I need to spend more time with my family. Never fear though I will still post on a regular basis and hopefully the posts will be more meaningful than just dribble.

Life is good! I’m back out in the big wide world again, World Wide Web that is

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 In the mean time heres a link for you to check out.

 John Chow Dot Com

Everyone else is linking to his site so while I am down for maintenance I thought I might get on the bandwagon. This guy got shafted by Google bigtime because he beat the system, but hey who cares, he now has the most popular blog on the internet and makes over $27,000 a month to boot. Hows that for stickin it to the man!

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After heaps of websites with inflated printing costs, and ridiculous fees that basically charge you extra if you know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, I came across VistaPrint. They only charged me an extra few bucks to supply my own design and was really simple to use. If you aren’t comfortable with doing it yourself then the online templates are really simple to use too.

I have ordered my business cards as well as some funky fridge magnets and nearly ordered all sorts of other cool stuff as well. The prices are great and really easy to get what you need. Cant wait till they turn up!

I ended up signing up as a referrer while I was there so follow the referral link below and get a discount on your first order.

http://www.vistaprint.com.au/frfau?frf=253099884786

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