Sony DVDirect VRD-MC1

• Reviewed by: bobinsanpedroca

  Strengths: Another great product from sony

  Weaknesses: none as of yet to be discovered

  Overall: ease of use, simple, no pc required, can act as a external burner when in use of a pc. Simple to operate. Simple to setup and use within minutes. There is a pause feature to edit show/movies while burning ie... to get the commercials removed.. great unit

• Reviewed by: NicN

  Strengths: Well built, works well as extenal drive, good video conversion

  Weaknesses: No video passthrough; No audio; Can't edit DVD.

  Overall: Well-built and not much bigger than other standalone external drives, yet you get also a mult-card reader as bonus. Drive inside is a Lite-On so you can easily patch to make this RPC-1. Good performance reading/writing from PC using USB 2.0As a bonus you can also use a standalone DVD recorder. However, since there is no video passthrough and the preview screen is tiny with no audio. Also, part of screen is covered by menu in preview so you can pretty much guessing want you are recording. However, converted video is of good quality so that is a plus.

• Reviewed by: m8cca

  Strengths: One touch operation to dub from mini-DV. Good video quality.

  Weaknesses: Very little control over output.

  Overall: Brought this unit to convert my mini-DV collection to more updated and easily shared DVD format and to avoid having to upgrade to DVD camcorder.The operation to move mini-DV content to DVR is rather simple. You plug the camcorder to driver via 1394, press record and it control the camcorder in rewinding and dubbing content to DVR. Using 1hr setting you can pretty much make 1 to 1 copy of you miniDV tape (60 min). And the resulting quality of converted video is quite good, considering the DVD is just about 40% of the size of mini-DV tape.However, in the output you get a straight forward menu with fixed minute apart chapters optionally, and you cannot change title or add comments. Got unit at sale price so this is still quite a bargain.

• Reviewed by: rngai

  Strengths: Video conversion at good quality even at the low settings

  Weaknesses: No DVD menu editing at all. Cannot delete recording even in DVDRW mode.

  Overall: Have used product for quite a bit, mostly dubbing from DVR and VCR. Using 2 hr / DVD setting, you will get virtually the same quality recording in SP mode in VCR. Even at lower (4hr/6hr) settings, you get acceptable result. This is a lot better than some DVD-Recorder I had used before.However, once a recording is made, you only get a plain menu selection with a small picture preview from first seconds of the recording. You cannot edit title or change pictures. And even using DVD-RW, you cannot delete any unwanted clips in DVD. So you have to be careful to do things right the first time.I would likely use it to just do video conversion and edit the resulting titles in PC for burning.

• Reviewed by: Holovac

  Strengths: Versatile, reliable operation. Great menu, smooth as breeze.

  Weaknesses: Old VHS with protection cannot be saved to DVD.

  Overall: I've been looking for a DVD writer for a while. This baby is not only stylish but works like a dream. Since I'm from Europe, I had to order it from the US. It is worth every cent spent on it. It is the Leatherman Wave of the DVD writing world.