Goodmans GDVD300R

...player.

The Goodmans 300R is a +R/+RW recorder.

Features
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The 300R is a no-frills DVD Recorder. Having said that, there are some basic but nonetheless welcome additions to its feature set. The first is that it's a videoplus recorder. And it's here that you will immediately notice the difference between a DVD Recorder and a Video Recorder.

On a Video Recorder you have to wind and ...
...this DVD Recorder you don't. Whenever you record a programme it effectively gets stored in its own area on the disk. Then, when you want to watch it you press a button on the remote (the remote is ESSENTIAL so lose it and you're in trouble) and the 300R gives you a menu of all the programmes you've recorded ... but be careful here. If you want to record a program at 8pm and another at 9pm but decide to just switch the recorder onto 'record' and leave ... more

INTRODUCTION
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DVD writers have become commonplace now on PC systems. Just 18 months ago a standard 2.4x writer would have set you back £200 ... now you can get a 16x writer for less than £50. So it's perhaps a little surprising that DVD recording has yet to really catch on in a big way, or that standalone recorders are still relatively expensive, particularly since the DVD format was originally intended as a medium for movie storage and playback.

We recently decided to take a jump into the DVD recording market and decided upon this particular model on price. I was somewhat skeptical that such a device was needed or that it would be any better than a VHS and would have preferred a HDD combo unit ... but as we couldn't afford one of those we had to make do.

The DVD Recording Format
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First things first. No review would be complete without some word on the recording format used and comment from my long standing use of the format.

When CDs came out there was a big song and dance made about the durability of the discs. Many of us still remember the edition of Tomorrow's World where they famously tried to demonstrate the durability of the format by smearing jam on a disc and seeing if it would play again.

Of course, in the real world we all know how amazingly fragile they can be. Similarly with DVDs. No amount of error correction technology on a DVD player can compensate for the scratches that can occur simply by putting a DVD on a table for any length of time. But what is worse, experience has shown that recordable CD and DVD media are even more fragile in that they often seem to scratch for no apparent reason!!

Then there's the technology behind it. I can never trust a ReWriteable CD as they rarely seem to hold data for any length of time. Data errors crop up on them far too often for them to be of any use. On the other hand, matters seem to have improved with the advent of ReWritable DVDs and I've yet to encounter any serious problems ... on a PC at least.

There are two formats of writable and rewritable DVDs that you need to be aware of. The original format, known as -R and -RW, tends to have slower write speeds but is renowned for its compatibility when playing back on standalone DVD players.

The other format is the +R and +RW format. This format is supposedly less compatible than -R/-RW but in the 18 months I owned a Ricoh +R/+RW writer on the PC, I never experienced any compatibility problems when burning a DVD to play back on a standalone player.

The Goodmans 300R is a +R/+RW recorder.

Features
------------
The 300R is a no-frills DVD Recorder. Having said that, there are some basic but nonetheless welcome additions to its feature set. The first is that it's a videoplus recorder. And it's here that you will immediately notice the difference between a DVD Recorder and a Video Recorder.

On a Video Recorder you have to wind and rewind the tape to look for anything you've recorded. With this DVD Recorder you don't. Whenever you record a programme it effectively gets stored in its own area on the disk. Then, when you want to watch it you press a button on the remote (the remote is ESSENTIAL so lose it and you're in trouble) and the 300R gives you a menu of all the programmes you've recorded ... but be careful here. If you want to record a program at 8pm and another at 9pm but decide to just switch the recorder onto 'record' and leave it to record all the way through until 10pm, the two programmes will not be separated on the menu and you will have to fast forward to the end of the first programme to get to the second (as you'd have to do on a video recorder).

This is where videoplus comes into its own. With videoplus you can set it to record a programme at 8pm and then set it to record another at 9pm. Because videoplus automatically sets the timer to record two SEPARATE programmes, each program will be given its own space on the disc and so will be shown as separate menu entries on the playback menu. Got that? Good.

Another interesting feature is ... well ... have you a PS2, X-Box, Video Camera and other paraphanalia vying for control of the telly? Most tellies only have a maximum of 2 SCART sockets. So where can you plug everything into? Try the 300R. It has some 4 or 5 different inputs, including AV, SCART and S-Video (2 x S-Video to be precise). At the moment, we have the PS2 connected to the AV connectors at the front but could also connect the PC to the S-Video inputs if we wished.

Ease of Use
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Sadly, this is where you wish you hadn't thrown out your Video Recorder. Before a DVD can be used, it must first be formatted. However, one thing to be aware of is that you cannot use a DVD which has been formatted on a PC. It has to be a brand new one. The unit ships with a single DVD+RW disc but that has just failed after barely a month's usage.

You also need to prepare a disc ready for re-recording by going into the disc menu, and manually erasing one or more of the files on the disc to free up space for more recordings. You cannot simply just record over existing video on the disc.

Recording Quality
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A normal DVD+RW can hold about an hour of video. Not a great deal if you're used to VHS. This can be extended to up to 6 hours on the 300R by changing the recording quality. After the second setting the quality of the recordings do degrade quite a bit.

The biggest problem remains the playback of recordings, particularly if there's a speck of dust on the DVD! One of the graces of good old VHS, particularly in the last few years, has been the improvements in technology which have made the old 'tracking' (jumpy tapes) issues a thing of the past. DVD is still a young format and so hopefully there will be improvements, but data errors can cause severe playback problems - in the worst cases it can cause playback to fail completely.

Conclusion
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One last thing which should be mentioned is its size. Considering that the size of DVD players has shrunk since they first came on the market it is a surprise that the 300R is so big. In fact, I had to remove the doors of the video cabinet to get it in. Although the doors are back on, they won't close properly if the PS2 is connected to the front of the recorder.

Overall, the 300R is disappointing. There are some potentially useful features and videplus is definately more useful here than it is on a video recorder. However, my initial skepticism has I feel been borne out.

If you're seriously looking at a DVD Recorder then first ask yourself why! If you've thrown out, or are in the process of throwing out, every video recorder in the house and replacing them with DVD players then it's pretty obvious you're going to need something like this. However, you are likely to get much more enjoyment from a DVD/HDD combo unit - even if they are ridiculously expensive at the moment/ 

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