DVD Recorder

[A4000_Mad]

Hi Guys,

My Sony RDR-HXD860 DVD Recorder has developed a strange fault and I wondered if you would have any ideas as to what could be wrong with it?

My two local Sony shops were baffled when I explained the fault and so was the person at Sony Customer services. I rang the repair shop number given to me by Sony Customer services, but they hadn't come across such a fault either.

Anyway, there is no problem with using the 160GB hard drive for recording and playback, but a problem has developed with recording to DVD-R's for some reason. I have a few unfinalised DVD-R's which contain recordings that I don't want to lose. But when I insert one of these unfinalised discs the Sony device displays "Formatting disc" followed by "Format complete" as if I had inserted a brand new DVD-R. The recordings on the DVD-R's are wiped off and the disc is made useless.

I've just done some checks again by making new recordings onto new DVD-R's. When I insert a new DVD-R the device displays "Formatting disc" and then "Formatting complete" as it should. But if I record to a DVD-R, eject the disc and then re-insert it, the device displays "Formatting disc" and then "Formatting complete" again (it should only display this when a DVD-R is inserted for the very first time). If I record programs to the disc and finalise it without ever removing it from the device, the DVD-R can be taken out, re-inserted, played and even played in other devices and all the recorded programs are present.

So basically it is treating unfinalised DVD-R's (that it has already written to) as if they were new ones when they are re-inserted again.

Any ideas please?

[A4000_Mad]

@ bloodline
 
Thanks. I'll see if my PC can recognize the unfinalised discs at all, but I'd still like to know what is wrong with the DVD Recorder as it is an excellent machine.

@ pyrre

Thanks. When recording episodes of a series (The Simpsons for example) you wouldn't finalise the disc until it was full. Meanwhile, it should be possible for other discs to be going in and out of the machine like they have been for the past 18 months. When I record a 3 minute music video from the Sky music channels, I don't want to finalise the disc straight away and waste 1 hour an 57 minutes of dics space. I agree that it is good to dub many recordings from HDD to DVD and then finalise all in one go, but unfortunately it isn't always possible to do that. My 160GB HDD is in fact completely full, so the DVD-R's have been being used for recording instead.


@ moto

Thanks. Nothing has changed at all. The problem just started a few days ago. I'm using the same DVD-R's from the same stack of 100 from Staples which have been fine so far. And there has been no firmware upgrades. Which brings me to another question: The machine has built in Freeview which receives the upgrades, but I'm not at a location to receive them. I'm wondering if it would be possible to obtain and get firmware upgrades into the machine in some other way?

[A4000_Mad]

Hi Guys,

I just tried some DVD+RW's. They work great with *no* finalising required. They are a just like using giant Amiga floppy disks :-D

You can record, delete and add more recordings etc to your hearts content. I can just eject them and play them in my PC's and other DVD players too :-)

[A4000_Mad]

Thanks. I've also just noticed that you can use 'A-B Erase' with a DVD+RW as well as with the HDD. Great for removing adverts from a recording and for removing the videos that you don't like from a 2 hour recording from the Sky music channels 8-)

To think that I used to record Sky TV onto a camcorder tape, play that captured footage into a laptop and then mess about trying to write it to a DVD-R. Transferring family video camcorder tapes to DVD is now just a simple case of pressing 'REC' and 'REC STOP'. These DVD Recorders are must have gadgets in my opinion :-)

@bloodline

None of my computers could read the unfinalised DVD-R's but it looks like IsoBuster will be able to recover the data from them :pint: