Our introduction to Funai comes in the form of the very affordable DRV-B2737 DVD recorder/VCR combi.
The market for such combis is still strong, both for people who want to transfer their existing VHS collection to DVD, and for those who fancy a DVD recorder but aren't ready to sever all ties with the last millennium just yet.
As is often the case with these decks, style has to take a back seat to functionality. The VCR section means that the deck is a bit bulky, twice as high as a modern slimline DVD player. The VHS tape-loading slot sits to the left, with the DVD tray to the right and they share a rather basic LED display.
Front connections include an S-video socket, but there's no FireWire input for digital camcorder users.
At the back there are two Scarts, but only the output Scart is RGB capable and the input Scart can only handle regular composite video.There's no component video output, nor S-video input at the back. This is a blow to digibox users. If you have an S-video output on your set-top box you'll have to use the front panel inputs to get high picture quality on recordings.
More impressive is the provision of both optical and electrical digital audio outputs.
The DRV-B2737 will record on DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, and can offer VR recording on -RW platters for greater editing flexibility.
That said, you can only do serious editing in playlist mode on VR discs. You cannot simply delete unwanted material, like commercial breaks, although you can delete entire titles. This means that although you can set a playlist to skip over adverts, you cannot remove these unwanted chunks and free up the disc space. There is the ability to pause during recording, however, so you can manually cut out ads.
Recording modes come in six settings, with one, two, four, six, eight and a massive 10 hours of recording possible options. Dubbing from VCR to DVD is a very basic affair. You cannot pause the recording during dubbing, so everything on the tape will be transferred to the disc.
