By WILSON ROTHMAN
Say you've got a two-year-old PC that doesn't have a DVD burner, but will otherwise serve you well for at least two more years. Maybe you recently bought a digital camcorder or are thinking about getting one, but you've also got eons of old videotape you've been meaning to preserve on DVD. Sony's multifunctional DVDirect recorder is the perfect $300 stopgap measure.
What makes DVDirect cool is that it's a free-standing DVD recorder. If you have a digital camcorder, you can connect that via the FireWire (aka iLink or 1394) port. Press Record on the DVDirect and it sends a signal to your camcorder to roll tape.
Setup is almost the same for VCRs and older camcorders. You connect them to the DVDirect via the composite or S-Video inputs in back. In most cases, you can set the recorder to wait for signal, so that you can control the recording process by pressing Play and Stop on your VCR or camcorder. This is a simple product. Since it doesn't have a video monitor—or video output—of its own, you'll have to figure out a way to simultaneously connect your VCR to a TV so that you can monitor what's going on with your videos.
You won't find a whole lot of fancy options, like creating titles and choosing thumbnails for DVD menus. There is an option for automatically adding chapter breaks every 5, 10 or 15 minutes, but that's about all you get in the customized-DVD department. What you really get is a painless way to record your videos on DVD.
DVDirect also connects to your PC as a fast burner. It comes with the Nero 6 suite of burning applications for Windows, and can burn DVD-R and DVD+R discs at up to 16X, the highest possible speed at this point. (That also means a whopping 48X CD-R write speed, when you need it.) In case you're in the loop with DVD recording formats, it also handles both DVD-RW and DVD+RW rewriteable DVDs, as well as the newer DVD+R DL double-layer discs, each of which can theoretically store up to 12 hours of (low-quality) footage.
While the DVDirect serves plenty of useful purposes, it's funny what it won't do. It won't act as a video converter, turning your analog footage digital that you can edit it on your PC. Also, even though it supports FireWire for the digital camcorder's input, it can't serve as a FireWire drive on your computer—the only interface for that is USB 2.0. It's also not quite portable—at 4 lbs., it's probably a little too heavy to help you turn video to DVD while you're still on vacation.
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