DVD Recorder.

Trumpet

Well-Known Forumite
Thought this may be the best place to ask.
I've an old but still working well Panasonic DVD recorder. Of late the playback quality has been poor. I'm guessing the hard drive has been overwritten so many times it's suffering. Does anyone here know if there is any way to 'refresh' it?
 

gilesjuk

Well-Known Forumite
You mean a digital TV recorder box? I'd imagine you could replace the drive. Hopefully it would "just work" and there's no actual software on the disk to boot up the device. I'd imagine its just a normal 3.5" SATA drive in there.
 

gilesjuk

Well-Known Forumite
There were combo units with hard drives in too. A DVD-RW can only hold about 4 gig. Does it record anything without a disc in the drive? if so then it's an internal hard disk. Otherwise you need a new DVD-RW disc.
 
Thought this may be the best place to ask.
I've an old but still working well Panasonic DVD recorder. Of late the playback quality has been poor. I'm guessing the hard drive has been overwritten so many times it's suffering. Does anyone here know if there is any way to 'refresh' it?
There are a few steps you can take to try to improve the playback quality on your Panasonic DVD recorder.

Firstly, you can try cleaning the lens of the DVD recorder. Dust and other debris can accumulate on the lens over time, which can result in poor playback quality. You can use a lens cleaning kit or a soft cloth to clean the lens.

Another thing you can try is to clear some space on the hard drive of the DVD recorder. If the hard drive is nearly full, it can slow down the playback and affect the quality. You can delete any recordings or files that you no longer need to free up space on the hard drive.

If these steps do not improve the playback quality, you can try resetting the DVD recorder to its factory settings. This can help to clear any software issues that may be causing the poor playback quality. However, be aware that resetting the device will delete all saved recordings and settings.
 

Trumpet

Well-Known Forumite
DVD playback is fine, it's just the stuff that I record that's a bit iffy. I delete most recordings once watched but have a few films that I've kept.
 

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
DVD playback is fine, it's just the stuff that I record that's a bit iffy. I delete most recordings once watched but have a few films that I've kept.
Our Panasonic DVD recorder/player has starting playing up a few times since moving here last year . It behaves itself again when we retune the video channels.
 

FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
As pointed out there are combo DVD recorders that mostly use a hard drive but can dump to DVD on demand. But, hard drive quality won't affect picture quality, it will affect the ability to read/write information from the hard drive and would cause stuttering, severe pixellation, or partial or corrupted recordings, like you'd get from a bad freeview or Sky signal.
The more likely cause for picture quality issues is degradation of the 'analog' side of the internal components, in particular, its capacitors, which will affect the unit's ability to remove 'noise' from the processed picture.
 

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
I miss Darla.

One can't help wondering whether she had some links to other websites that might have been beneficial?
 
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