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I have an existing home ciema system with DVD player and 5 speakers (an
LG make, a few years old).

The DVD player cannot now play the latest DVDs so I wish to replace it with
a DVD player/recorder, but try to keep the existing speakers.

Most 'stand alone' DVD players do not come with built in amp to plug my
speakers in, so one choice is to buy a DVD player or recorder, and then
buy a stand alone audio/visual amp.

Comet have a Pioneer deal at the moment (DVD420PACK) which consists of
DVR 420H DVD recorder (with 80gb hard disk) and VSX C402 A/V Amp, with
5 speakers, all for 400 quid (reduced).

I guess one advantage of a stand alone A/V amp is that you can easily
replace the DVD player/recorder, but keep the A/V amp.

I do need top of the range, it is only for the family TV, so can anyone
suggest some options.

Thanks Guilbert

You may already have thought of some of these, but if you haven?t, here are just a few points to consider before buying a DVD or HDD/DVD Recorder.

If you buy just a DVD recorder, what disks does it use? If it just records to DVD-/+Rs then you will be forever buying disks. Ideally you want a recorder that also uses DVD-/+RWs, then you can at least reuse them again when you get fed up watching the program you recorded. This is why, although initially more expensive, I think an HDD/DVD Recorder is a better idea. You record everything onto the HDD, then transfer anything you want to keep onto DVD.

A word of warning about DVD+R/RWs. The DVD+R format is not an officially recognised DVD format. You will still find that a lot of Computers/DVD Players will not accept them. That said some Computers/DVD Players have a hard time accepting DVD-RWs as well.

Does the DVD or HDD/DVD Recorder accept Firmware Updates? If it does, can you carry them out yourself, or do you have to take the machine to a dealer to have the updates done. You may not believe it, but firmware updates can make a big difference to the way the recorder works.

I have a Philips DVDR 520H HDD/DVD Recorder. I was initially very disappointed with this machine. The quality of the picture was very poor, and it would frequently freeze up. After downloading and applying the latest Firmware Update from the Philips web site myself, the machine has improved 100%. Although still not perfect it is a vast improvement over the machine that I first had.