RCA DRC8050N Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder

RCA DRC8050N Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder
Manufacturer: RCA
Product Type: CE

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Product Description
Equally adept at creating DVDs and playing them back in crystalline quality, RCA's DRC8050N DVD player/recorder is a fully loaded, single-box answer to yesterday's VHS recording technology and today's high-resolution home theater displays. The progressive-scan player lets you record your favorite television shows and home videos straight to a DVD, cleaning up aged video footage in the process. Between the unit's convenient onscreen program guide and one-touch record ability, capturing off-air programs is easier than ever.

The DRC8050N records in 6 modes, storing 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 hours of audio/video programming on 4.7 GB recordable DVD+R (write-once) or DVD+RW (rewritable) media. And, when using timed recording, the DRC8050N can automatically set its quality level to the best that its available hard-drive space will allow. Time-base correction and digital noise reduction optimize incoming signals as their being written to disc.

The "RW" format offers numerous advantages. These discs can be played in most computer DVD-ROM drives and DVD players, and they let you append, edit, and overwrite video right on the discs themselves. This means you can record video using the DRC8050N and record data with a PC drive, all on the same disc. There's only one recording mode for both video and data, and the finalization time for a DVD+R is the fastest of all DVD formats.

Special features include simultaneous recording and playback; title and chapter creation for easy access to recorded materials; chapter hide/unhide, which lets you skip playback of selected sections of a recording; text title labeling; user-selectable disc write and title-write protection, and quick disc erase. Recorded discs will play on most DVD players, and the unit itself plays all types of DVD and audio CD.

TV Guide's handy onscreen interactive program guide greatly simplifies off-air recording--just select the "guide" button on the remote, find the program you want to record or watch, and select it. The guide looks 8 days out at all times.

More than just a recording device, however, the DRC8050N is also a first-rate media player, offering MP3 and WMA music file decoding, DivX video decoding (all variants), and Digital PhotoView, which displays JPEG files (from recordable CDs only) in a rotating slide show format--with MP3 playback during the slide show! A USB input lets you hook up a flash card reader enjoying digital photos and MP3 files right off your card--no need to first commit the files to CD.

The recorder also offers progressive-scanning when playing back prerecorded DVDs. Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DRC8050N is equipped to deliver the full potential of prerecorded DVDs. Progressive scanning, called 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.

The DRC8050N features Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround sound passthrough, SRS TruSurround simulated surround sound, and connections include 1 set of component-video outputs, an S-video input and output (2 inputs, 1 output), composite-video input and output (2 in, 1 out), stereo (left/right) analog audio in and out (2 in, 1 out), and a pair of digital-audio outputs (one each optical and coaxial).

What's in the Box
DVD player/recorder, remote control, remote batteries, user's manual, stereo analog audio interconnect/composite-video cable, RF cable, RF cable/splitter, S-video cable, 1 DVD+RW blank media, a user's manual, and warranty/registration information.