That time of year had descended on me again where whether I need one or not it was time to purchase a new DVD recorder. After the success of last year's Samsung DVD recorder I again chose to stick with the brand again.

During last year having fought it off for a few years silver finally made way for black, as black had for silver five years prior; I am of course talking about casings. The Samsung DVD-SH 852 comes completely in black with a nice neon blue power button. I reach my first stumbling point, the new casing is a beautiful shiny black and as a result it attracts two things, dust and fingerprints. Being a home that comes complete with two dogs that rule triumphant, I find myself cloth in hand wiping over the DVD recorder twice daily, I pray to God this stops soon, or that the dogs are just going through a particularly molten stage.

Forgetting the obvious flaws let's get under the hood so to speak.

The DVD Recorder works in the (minus format) I always specifically choose format DVD recorders, the images cut better into a disc; whereas the + format DVD recorders very often have this habit that a tear down the line the images burned on them become diluted or the disc simply stops playing suddenly. Another added bonus is that discs are often a lot cheaper than the + format discs. It's important that when buying a DVD recorder you take these issues into account, while some DVD recorders record in both + and formats, most do one or the other and as a result the discs you buy need to be appropriately labelled so.

With this year's Samsung model, rather like the one I purchased last year the recorder will burn images regardless of the disc speed. Until recently DVD recorders would only record on discs that clearly indicated X1, those discs that said X16 or X32 would only really work in PC's. The Samsung models rather capably do both.

There are recording advancements this year too, now you can record on rewritable discs, or on RAM discs. On a Rewritable disc or RW you can record and erase a number of times, but in honesty beyond 5 times and your pushing your luck. While the RAM option (you use special RAM discs) allow you to use the same disc up to about 1000 times. The bonus of using RAM is that you can not only reuse it time and time again, but it offers a timeslip ability that means mid way through a show, while still recording you can go to the start of the programme and watch mid way through a bit like using Sky+ or any other digital

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