Yamakawa DVD Recorder

This Yamakawa DVD recorder could compete as “best-featured deck at a low price”, if there were such a title.

The product in a nutshell

yamakawa dvr 628

The only Yamakawa DVD recorder currently available is DVR-628. Its price is just a bit over $200. The deck records only DVD+R/RW media. This fact brings along some upsides and downsides: DVD+R/RW recording is more versatile than DVD-R/RW. With Yamakawa DVR-628 you can edit recordings more freely (for example cut TV commercials, set your own chapter names and order chapters with copy/paste functions). The DVD+R/RW format is said not to provide such good backwards compatibility as the “dash” format.

You can select among four levels of recording quality: HQ, SP, EP, SLP (1 hour to 6.5 hours on a one-sided single-layer disc). There are no other functions available such as VBR recording or a flexible recording mode.

This unit includes a TV tuner. But you have to manually program your recordings because no VCR Plus+ (or similar) function is available.

The IEEE-1394 input is a real plus for this price category, and allows you to directly transfer your camcorder footage to DVD support.

As for the DVD player function, this unit is multi-region.

Connectivity

  • Outputs: Component, Composite and S-Video;
  • Inputs: Component and S-Video;
  • Front inputs: USB and FireWire;
  • Analog and digital A/V inputs and outputs.

Other features

  • On-screen/multi-lingual display;
  • Superior playback quality in progressive scan mode
  • Reads commercial DVDs, CDs, MP3, VMA and JPEG files;
  • Can playback DVD-R/RW media;

The Yamakawa DVD recorder is a good point to start from. We found it a better trade than the Compacks DRW 101, which narrows editing functions on the same DVD+R/RW media and doesn't include a FireWire port.