Sumvision SV-1001 Recorder with DivX/Xvid Compatibility

I've been on the lookout for a standalone dvd-recorder for my parents for a few months now and what I essentially wanted from a dvd-recorder, was a drop in replacement for the VCR. I didn't need a hard disk for recording hundreds of hours of tv, or timeslip modes or anything like that, and while this recorder doesn't have these functions, it's not exactly short on features in any case. This one happened to catch my eye as I was browsing on the website ...
...a manufacturer I recognised offhand and there wasn't a lot of extra information available online, but I decided to take a chance and order it anyway, and I've got to say, I'm glad I did. Given the lack of info online, I've tried to make this a detailed review for other buyers. ( so yes it's long :) )



Connections:

First off, this recorder comes with an impressive number of connections, front and back.
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I've been on the lookout for a standalone dvd-recorder for my parents for a few months now and what I essentially wanted from a dvd-recorder, was a drop in replacement for the VCR. I didn't need a hard disk for recording hundreds of hours of tv, or timeslip modes or anything like that, and while this recorder doesn't have these functions, it's not exactly short on features in any case. This one happened to catch my eye as I was browsing on the website of my favourite dvd media suplier. It wasn't made by a manufacturer I recognised offhand and there wasn't a lot of extra information available online, but I decided to take a chance and order it anyway, and I've got to say, I'm glad I did. Given the lack of info online, I've tried to make this a detailed review for other buyers. ( so yes it's long :) )

Connections:

First off, this recorder comes with an impressive number of connections, front and back.

On the back it has:

- 2 Scart sockets, one input and one output, which carry RGB signals as well as composite
- RF-In and RF-out for your TV aerial. This allows it to record TV from an RF turner inside. However, it should be noted that the recorder does NOT output its own picture through the aerial cable, like a VCR might have. This means you cannot just tune a channel on your tv to watch DVDs: your tv *must* have a scart input socket (or one of the other types of input sockets) to be able to use this recorder.
- Composite video input and output sockets
- S-Video input and output
- Stereo audio input and output
- Component/Progressive scan output, which if your tv supports it, is the highest quality picture output
- A coaxial Digital Audio output
- an Optical Digital Audio output
- 5.1Ch audio output for surround sound speaker sets (dolby decoding in the unit)

On the front-left of the unit behind a flip down panel it has:

- Composite video input (the ones usually coloured yellow)
- S-Video input
- Stereo audio inputs
- A USB port
- A DV-In port (aka Firewire or i-link port)

I'm reasonably sure there's something for everyone on there....

Appearance:

Physically, the unit is a standard silverish colour with dimensions as follows: 5.5mm(H) x 430mm(W) x 320mm(L)
The lcd display panel at the front lights up with blue lettering, with a small flashing red item when recording. The power button on the left is backlit in red when the unit is in standby and turns green when it is switched on. The buttons on the right are also backlit, this time with a fairly bright blue when the recorder is brought out of standby. These backlights are quite bright really, so it may not be to everyones' taste

Recording and Playback Media:

Records to DVD+R and DVD+RW, with +R being the write once variety of DVD and +RW being the rewritable variety. The +RW discs can be written and erased like VHS tapes, for up to about 1000 times or so, but unlike VHS the picture quality recorded will not degrade over time as the disc is used and reused.
This unit will NOT record to the DVD-R/-RW discs but it does however read them with no problems.

In addition to playing standard dvds, the SV-1001 will also play:

DVD-R/-RW *
DVD+R/+RW *
Music CDs * including HDCD
CD-R/CD-RW *
VCD / SVCD *
MP3 music files on CD and DVD *
JPG photo files stored on CD and DVD *
Kodak Picture CD
DivX / Xvid (MPEG4) *

It will also play .MPG files (mpeg1 or mpeg2) that are just written to a DVD or CD like a normal file, which means you can watch them without having to author them into DVDs or (S)VCDs.

HDCD appears to be a higher definition version of normal cds, which is supposed to give better sound. Which is handy if you have CDs mastered using that process I suppose. You can read about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/hdcd/hdcdabout.aspx

DivX / Xvid (MPEG4) playeback is one of the features that really attracted me to this unit. It is a form of video compression that can achieve smaller files than mpeg2(DVD) while retaining most of the video quality. For example, you could fit about 90 minutes of high quality video onto one 700MB CD-R/-RW. On a DVD, you could fit much more. ( DVD-R/+R hold about 4.3 gigs of data). You could potentially make backups of your DVD movies to Divx/Xvid and get 4 or more on one DVD for easy watching. There are plenty of uses for this feature. I should note however, that the unit does NOT record to mpeg4, it only plays it.

The media types that I have marked with a * above, are ones that I have personally tried and found to playback successfully. I want to note though, that an anamorphic SVCD that I tried, failed to playback in the correct aspect ratio, which is a slight minus.

Setup:

I found the setup procedure to be fairly easy really. The manual contains plenty of clear illustrations on how to physically connect the unit up in various configurations with all its connectors. However the recorder only comes with a scart cable and a composite video/stereo audio cable (the cable with yellow, red and white connectors). This means that if you are going to use unit's other input/output connectors (S-Video, component, digitial audio etc), you will need to buy or have those cables yourself. The manual also has decent, labelled illustrations of the remote control and front of the unit, with explanations of what each button does.

The setup menu is reached by simply pressing the "setup" button on the remote control and I found this to be quite easy to follow and the manual does describe each menu and menu item, and the menu itself also displays its own mini help at the bottom of the screen. During the course of this setup procedure, you can have the unit automatically scan for all the tv stations and store them. It doesn't however name them, so that's something that has to be edited in the next menu item. You may also find that the order of the stations needs to be changed, and that too is possible from the same menu. I did find that I wished naming the channels was easier, plus there was a lack of suitable length, characters and punctuation available. Not a big issue, but I think it could be improved.

Recording:

There are 4 possible recording quality modes on this unit:

HQ - High Quality :about 60 minutes (1 hour)
SP - Standard play quality :about 120 minutes (2 hours)
EP - Extended play quality :about 240 minutes (4 hours)
SLP - Super long play :about 360 minutes (6 hours)

You can set the default recording quality in the setup menu, but you can also change it via a button on the remote to cycle through them when you are about to record something.

In terms of picture quality, HQ gives the best, with SLP giving the worst. In practical use, I find it hard to tell the difference between HQ and SP. EP delivers very watchable quality, so I find that it is a good default to use, although some people may prefer to use SP as a minimum. SLP, while still watchable, does visibly deliver the worst picture by far. I noticed quite a few compression artefacts and blocking on what I recorded. I suspect it might be better for low action shows if you are going to use this quality.

To record something, you simply select where you want to record from, using the buttons on the top of the remote, eg to record from the tv tuner, just press the tv button, pick the channel and then press record and it will record using all available free space on the disc. The on screen display will show how much space is left on the disc as it records which I found helpful to see.

The other recording sources are the front and back composite/S-Video in ports and the front DV-input/firewire port (useful if you have a digital camcorder, you can record straight off it to dvd). The buttons for selecting those inputs are on the remote beside the tv tuner selector button. I have not used the firewire port since I don't have a digital camcorder, but I have used the front composite inputs to record some old vhs tapes from a VCR onto DVD+R, which worked very well.

If you want to set a timed recording, pressing the timer button on the bottom of the remote takes you to the timer menu. From there it is a case of pressing select on a blank line and being taken to the item editor menu where it is possible to select the recording source, quality (HQ, SP etc), the mode (once, daily, weekly), the date and the start and end times. Move down to ok and recording is set. Very clear and simple in my opinion. Of course it lacks videoplus functionality, which would have been even better and easier.

Once a recording has been made, the recorder adds an item to a simple blue backgrounded disc menu with a still thumbnail image of what you just recorded. Each menu item also has displayed a title, the date and time of the recording, and the quality and length of the recording. Its very easy to see what you recorded and when. The thumbnail image and the title text can be changed by pressing the edit button while that recording is highlighted in the menu whereupon a title edit menu is displayed. Text is entered using an on-screen "Keyboard" navigated using the direction buttons. You can also add new chapters (by default the recorder inserts them every 5 minutes) and hide chapters (useful for getting rid of adverts). I think it should be noted that hiding a chapter doesn't actually free up the space it uses on a DVD+RW.

Once something has been recorded onto a +RW, it should be possible for most other dvd players to read the disc and play it. With a +R, the disc needs to be finalised before it can be read in any machine other than the unit that did the recording. Finalising a disc means that nothing else can be written to it afterwards whereas DVD+RWs can be erased and recorded on again. You can erase the whole disc or just one particular recording on a disc if you want to keep some of the other recordings on it. Any futher recordings will use whatever free space is on the disc, so its quite flexible. Theres also a button on the remote control that allows you to "protect" a DVD+RW disc, in much the same way as removing the tab on a vhs tape would have. It just stops the unit from recording or erasing that disc. You can "unprotect" the disc later with the same button. This again is a useful feature.

Playback:

The SV-1001 operates much like any other dvd player, with all the usual playback functions (pause, step, slow motion etc). I was pleased to find that the unit has multiregion playback support out of the box as it played the Region 1 DVDs I had with no problems. Picture and audio playback of dvds looks and sounds good to me.

As for playback of MP3, JPG and Divx/Xvid, the experience was equally as pleasent. For those types of files, the SV-1001 presents its own scrollable file menu, which you can scroll down using the direction keys on the remote control. You can navigate through folders on the discs using this menu too, so you can organise the contents that way if you want. The full filename may not display in the scrollable file list if it is very long, but the sv-1001 will display the full filename underneath the file list in a spearate panel at the bottom so you can read the full name there. This too is something I liked about the unit as other dvd players I've used in the past have no support for displaying long filenames at all.

In the case of mp3s, pressing select or play on the currently selected file, will start playing that file and all files that follow that one in the file list. The panel bottom of the screen will also cycle through the song id tags inside mp3 files if they are present, as the file plays (These tags can contain extra information about songs such as album, year etc).

JPG photo files can be navigated in much the same way. When you insert a disc with jpgs on it, a slideshow of the images begins. You can navigate through them by using the dvd playback controls. (this oddly is not mentioned in the manual, but I found that pressing the dvd chapter buttons would skip the images back and forward, while the fast-forward and rewind buttons would zoom in and out). Images can also be flipped and rotated using the direction buttons.

Divx/Xvid files (with a .avi file extension) are listed in the same kind of file browser as described above, you simply select the one you want to play and press the select button, or the play button and they start playing. Video and audio is again very good. As mentioned ealier, the sv-1001 will play .mpg files, and those are displayed in the file browser too and can be selected and played in the same way.

[update now that I have a usb flash device]
The SV-1001 will apparantly also play JPGs and MP3s from a USB flash memory device that is plugged into the usb port behind the front panel. This device is accessed by pressing the usb button on the remote control upon which the file browser is displayed, showing all the files on the device. Sadly, long filenames are not shown, instead being truncated to the old 8.3 style. And unlike as in the case of files on cds and dvds, the long filename is not displayed a panel at the bottom (as described above). Nor do the mp3 id tags get displayed when playing mp3s. Other than that, playback of the mp3s and photos works as on cd/dvd.

Conclusions:

I think it is a good buy. There are only a few minor niggles, such as the text entering and also that the device is a little slow coming out of standby mode. Theres a good 10-15 seconds during which it just flashes "hello" at you on the lcd display before it becomes fully operational. Worth mentioning too, is the lack of long filename display when using the usb flash memory devices, which seems curious as they do display on cds and dvd. There was also the problem of it not playing anamorphic SVCDs in the correct aspect ratio. SVCDS are probably not that common anyway, but if its something you need from a player then you should be aware of this. Other than that it has played everything I've thrown at it so far and the recording feature has functioned impeccably, although I think it might have been nice to have another quality mode in-between SP and EP (for 3 hour recording). Furthermore I do think the manual could do with some spellchecking ;). but it's not unintelligible and is mostly easy to follow (the company that makes the recorder is Chinese I believe). I would definately recommend this recorder. It's simple to use as a replacement for a VCR, yet has advanced features not found on other more expensive units. I consider it to be a good buy for the money ( £124.98 online at the time of writing, you should be able to find a number of stores online that sell it)

In case you are interested, we use Verbatim DataLifePlus 4x DVD+RW and TDK Scratch Proof DVD+RW discs for recording. We have also recorded successfully to Datasafe 8x DVD+R media. 

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