Sony VRDVC20 DVDirect, Product does not work as..
| Overall Rating |   |
 |
Product does not work as advertised.
The digital i.link connection is not compatible with other Sony devices. I purchased the VC20 and the DCR-TRV480 in order to make high quality transfers of my old Sony Hi8 analog tapes over to DVDs, just as Sony advertises. Although both items have the digital i.link feature, they are not compatible with each other. I have spent two months sending each item back to Sony for testing: Each works fine by itself, but the TRV480 does not send a digital i.link signal that the VC20 will recognize. Sony Tech Support had me purchase another i.link cable, and when that didn’t work, they finally acknowledged the compatibility issue, but they have no remedy for it. I found nothing in the Sony literature that warns that these two Sony products will be unable to connect via i.link. I wasted a lot of time and $100 on the second i.link cable and in shipping for testing, and Sony Techs have walked away from the problem. Buyer beware!
Update (2/6/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.
The featured review for this product, Sony VRDVC20 DVDirect DVD Recorder Electronics, was written by John Bloom.
The average rating for this item is out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.
- Related posts on burner
- Beware Of Your Bathrooms And Kitchens | Fat Burner Supplement Central
- How do I remove a dvd burner from a Sony Vaio Desktop? | Sony Vaio …
- Catechin As The Fat Burner « From Classics to the New Age
- Related posts on digital vrc
- [HKnight] : UDP Port Number List
- [HKnight] : TCP Port Number List
Related posts:
- Sony VAIO VGC-JS410F/S, sony vaio all in one..
- Sony Alpha DSLR-A300K/N, Sony Alpha300k GOLD
- VGN-FW450J/H Sony VAIO, Great Machine
- Sony Cybershot DSCW80, Sony Does It Again
- VGN-SR420D/H Sony VAIO, Product Description
Tags: burner, digital vrc, dvd, dvd writer, external drive, external dvd burner, recorder, useless, vhs to dvd, video, video converter, vrd-vc20 dvd recorder
Posted on: May 10, 2010
Filed under: Reviews
Reviews (3)
John Bloom
April 13th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Product does not work as advertised.
Rated 1 stars.
G. Crain
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Mostly Pleased
I bought this solely to archive old, analog Hi-8 Camcorder tapes. (I don’t have any old movies or tv shows; I just have videos of my great and wonderful children.) The archiving of old analog tapes to DVD seems to be the sole purpose in life for the VRDVC20.
The time requirements and frustration levels of other methods had me pulling my hair out. Thus, I bought the VRDVC20 to save myself much, much time and bother.
For the most part, I am pleased with the device. I have only made four coasters (out of about 35 made), which is a better ratio than other methods I’ve used to archive. I did a little research and found that the device needed a firmware update, which I completed. Since the update, I have only made one coaster; otherwise it seems to be working fine.
(I do have a gigantic issue with any device going commercial, especially one that has such limited uses as this VRDVC20, and then the producer immediately sending out a massive fix for the device. Do these people do any in-house testing?)
The picture quality seems to be pretty good. I’ve played the archival DVDs back on 32″ tvs, and there is minimal pixellation (my family has absolutely adored watching these videos). However, whenever a shot is indoors, or in really low light, the pixellation is quite noticeable. I understand this is normal with analog tapes, so I haven’t expected much better.
I bought Sony CD-R DVDs for the archival process. After burning, those would not work in my Panasonic DVD player, which was on its last legs, anyway. A kind friend loaned me his Samsung DVD player, but these Sony CD-Rs will not play on it, either. However, my in-law’s Sony DVD player works just fine with these, so it looks like I’m being forced into a new Sony DVD player. I’m still not sure if I’m okay with that.
When I’m finished archiving my Hi-8 tapes, I’ll be sending this burner to other family members for archival of their tapes.
Heath G.
May 4th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Very Happy With This Product
I usually research products to death before making a purchase and I take the customer reviews very seriously. I just received the Sony VRD-VC20 from my wife for my birthday - and of course before I even opened the box I was checking CNET/PCMAG/Amazon reviews to make sure this was a good product. The reviews by the pro’s were generally good, the customer reviews were mixed - but I really wanted to turn these tapes into DVD’s and I couldn’t bear the thought of spending hours loading the tapes onto my computer, editing them, and then authoring them - only for the process to blow up in the ninth inning with nothing to show for it. So….I opened the box.
WOW - I really am glad that I did. This product is great. First of all - its one of the easiest gadgets I’ve used. Right out of the box I looked at the quick start instructions, hooked up my hi8 analog camcorder using an S-Video Cable, and the 2 audio RCA cables (red/white), plugged in the unit, popped a tape in the camcorder and it was ready to go. Once you have all that set up you just press play on the camcorder and record on the DVD Direct - it is that simple. When the tape ends - the DVD Direct recognizes that there is no longer a video signal coming through and it stops recording. You then have the choice whether to record more on the dvd (it tells you how much recording time is available) or you can close out the dvd so that it will play on a dvd player. To finalize the disc all you do is hit the eject button on the recorder and it prompts you to finish the disc. It really is that easy.
So far I have made 9 discs and no coasters. They have all played in my Sony DVD player (it’s a couple of years old). I have been using DVD-R Sony discs - I haven’t tried a different manufacturers disc yet.
The only thing that i wish the unit could do in stand-alone mode is give more flexibility in Titling the disc and in Chaptering the disc. I have yet to hook the unit to my computer as a burner - but at some point I’ll put aside some time to test it out. In the meantime I highly recommend this product for anyone who has old tapes they want to easily and quickly convert into DVD’s.
Leave a reply