The new DVD: what I have learned in a week

First of all, the DVD is a Samsung SH895M model which is a pretty good machine. It comes with an internal hard disk with 250 GB capacity which can "record approximately 421 hours of video when in EP 8 hour mode". I don't need this capability as the Yes Max machine has the hard disk and can record two programmes at once.

The machine accepts both DVD+R and DVD-R disks, which is good as I have nearly 50 blank -R disks which were previously useless. Inserting a +R disk will cause the machine to format it whereas no formatting is required for a -R disk. At the other end of the recording process, finalising a -R disk will create a menu on the disk whereas a +R disk has no menu. I'm going to record the various tv shows which I have saved on the Yes Max (The Newsroom, Madam Secretary, etc) onto -R disks and record films onto +R disks.

I did succeed in connecting the DVD to the television screen via HDMI; I had to change the HDMI resolution to 1080i first. Unfortunately, the screen is displaying a message about problems with the HDMI cable which is annoying; I haven't found a way to solve this yet. I may try a different resolution and I may try replacing the cable (the current cable is very long, so a shorter one might be more successful. Also the socket on the television is problematic). At worst, this means disconnecting the HDMI and going back to a lower quality picture.

Today we had a short power cut which taught me several things. First of all, the DVD's clock had to be reset - not important and not a problem. The major problem was that the DVD had to have its input redefined to use the AV2 socket; theoretically this should be simple, but as both the DVD and the screen are made by Samsung, the DVD remote affects them both! This can make certain actions easier, but setting the input is not one of them. Every time I pressed the 'source' button, the source on the screen would change, not the source to the DVD. In the end, I turned off the television screen and pressed 'source' a few times until AV2 appeared on the tiny DVD screen. Then I turned the television back on.

One thing which I haven't discovered how to do yet is give each recording a separate title (e.g. S3E1). This isn't too important as I can title the entire disk, but it would be nice to know. It seems that there are certain functions (such as this or setting the recording format) which can only be accessed via the remote control. I think that this is a bad design and it would have been better to put these definitions in the control program of the DVD.