Editing DVD recorder (section)

=== ATSC standalone DVD recorders ===

As a result of the [[North America]]n [[DTV transition in the United States|digital switchover]], tuner-equipped devices manufactured or imported into the [[United States]] are now required by the US [[Federal Communications Commission]] to include digital tuners.

This has caused most new [[VHS]] recorders to be implemented as [[VCR/DVD combo|DVD/VCR combo]] units, or to be manufactured without tuners. The US requirement of [[ATSC]] compatibility forces inclusion of [[MPEG-2]] decoding hardware, which is already part of all DVD players but which otherwise would be unnecessary in an analog-only VCR.

A tunerless recorder does not have [[coaxial cable|RF coaxial]] connections and can only be used to record from an external device, such as a [[cable converter box]] with a [[composite video]] output.

An ATSC-capable DVD unit can also serve as a more-powerful alternative to [[digital television adapter]]s, which allow DTV reception with older [[NTSC]] [[analog television]]s. The DVD recorders offer additional capabilities, such as automated VCR-style timeshifting of programming and a variety of output formats, that are deliberately not included in the most common mass-market US ATSC converters.

Unlike the more common digital television adapter boxes, newer DVD recorder units are able to tune both analog and digital signals - an advantage when receiving [[LPTV|low-power television]] and foreign (analogue) signals. Some, however, do suffer from many of the same design limitations as the less costly converter boxes, including poorly designed signal strength meters, incomplete display of [[PSIP|broadcast program information]], incompatibility with [[antenna rotator]]s or [[CEA-909]] [[smart antenna]]s and inability to add digital channels without wiping out all existing channels and rescanning the entire band.

A DVD recording of an over-the-air [[HDTV]] broadcast is at DVD resolution, which is inferior to the original broadcast with [[720p]] or [[1080i]] resolution. Some units also provide limited USB or flash memory interface capability, often only supporting viewing of [[digital camera]] still photos or playback of [[MP3]]s with no ability to write video to these media.

A number of DVD recorders are also capable of recording to [[SVCD]], [[VCD]] and [[DVD-Audio|Audio CD]] formats. Recording to DVDs can be done at different speeds that may take between 1 and 6 hours (even up to 8 hours on certain models) on a standard (single sided 12&nbsp;cm) blank DVD. A trade off exists between recording time and video quality.