PVR Wire

Flash video recorders are all the rage these days. At least that's what the manufacturers of these products must think because we've seen a swarm of them hitting the market in the last few months.

We've covered the Neuros MPEG-4 recorder, the i.Tech, the Evergreen, and the Storvision miniVCR SV-1000 MPEG-4. We've also covered the Hagiwara Easy Recorder 2 for Memory Stick Duo.

The fine folks at Hagiwara were kind enough to loan us an Easy Recorder 2 for review and the second installment of Up Close takes a look at the product to get the 411 on these "record directly to a memory card" devices to see how they fair.

Admittedly, video to memory card devices fulfill the needs of a very niche market. The Easy Recorder 2 caters to the PSP and iPod owning group because it creates content in MP4 format that is formatted specifically to fit on the smaller screens found on these devices.

However, with the advent of sites like YouTube and its competitors, devices like these are my tools of choice for capturing content from any device with an A/V out. For instance, the video in this post was captured from my TiVo and uploaded to YouTube using the Easy Recorder 2.

On the whole, we came away pretty impressed with what the Easy Recorder 2 had to offer. Find out what we thought about the product and get an exclusive coupon code for a discount after the jump.

It's always nice to see a company put some effort into their packaging, especially for a niche product like this. The box does a good job of conveying exactly what the product does - and goes so far as to indicate that it only works int he NTSC format only. There's nothing worse than buying some tech and figuring out it's incompatible with how you intended to use it. Those who use the PAL standard are out of luck.

The back of the box goes into further detail explaining what comes in the box. The easy recorder also comes with a 1 year limited manufacturer's warranty. Very nice.

The actual device is pretty simplistic by design and aesthetically appealing with it's white color and roundness. There is a slot on the front for your Memory Stick Duo, a power button (PWR), a record start and stop button (REC), a synchronize button (SYC) which allows you to start and stop the record function when a video signal is present, and a pick button (PIC) which basically allows you to navigate through the LED based video quality selection system on the far right.

The back of the unit houses the power input, a standard mini USB plug and standard RCA inputs.

The Easy Recorder 2 is a really simple product to use, Plug the unit in with the AC adapter, hook the unit to the A/V device you intend to record content from with the included RCA cables, and press the power button. When the unit is on and what you record is cued up to play (or playing), hit the record button. When the light turns red you're recording.

Record Mode	Bit Rate	128MB	256MB	512MB	1 GB	Sample
Long (L)	192 kbps	70 min	120 min	240 min	480 min	View
Normal (M)	384 kbps	35 min	60 min	120 min	240 min	View
High (H)	768 kbps	20 min	35 min	60 min	120 min	View

As stated, you select the quality of your video using the (PIC) button and a combination of LED lights on the unit help to indicate the quality at which you're recording. You'll obviously want to take recording quality into consideration dependent on the size of the Memory Stick Duo you are recording to. Above, you can find the recording options as well as a sample video of the video quality.

Chris Ber-it's-kind-of-chilly-in-here-man happened to be on the the television doing the Tip Drill segment on the Sunday NFL ESPN morning show. That's the program I opted to record. Pressing the record button a second time when you are finished recording stops the capture.

After you're finished recording you hook the Easy Recorder 2 up to your PC via the included USB cable. The AC adapter is not required for power when the unit is hooked directly to your computer. The device is automatically recognized and the Memory Stick Duo becomes a selectable drive on your computer. i should also point out this entire process was performed on Windows Vista Ultimate and therefore should work just as perfectly on XP.

Since the Easy Recorder 2 is a device that caters most to the device losing the portable console wars PSP owning crowd the items that are recorded are placed in the asinine file structure that is familiar to those used to transferring video to their Playstation Portable. The first folder you arrive at is the MP_ROOT folder that you'd see on a PSP.

Next is the 100MNV01 folder.

Finally, you'll find the actual items you recorded within this folder. The first recording will be vaguely named M4V00001, the second will be named M4V00002, and so forth. This is a restriction of the asinine PSP file structure mentioned above and not of the actual Easy Recorder 2 unit. You can rename these items to whatever you want if you intend to use them on your PC. They will need to remain as named if you transfer them to your Playstation portable.

In order to play MP4 files on your PC, you'll need to have Apple Quicktime installed. In addition, there are other applications that will play these files such as the VLC Media Player. Above the video is playing in Quicktime.

As you can see, the Easy Recorder 2 is a viable option to record television programming to bring with you on your laptop when on road. There's a manual aspect to capturing shows since there is no scheduling functions and this could come as a turnoff to some, but in a pinch it'd be pretty simple to plug this into your television and hit record when you're in a hurry to record something.

From there, if you happen to own a PSP or an iPod Video you can transfer the files to your portable for watching viewing on the move. As said in the intro, you can also post these MP4 files to YouTube and other video sharing sites - ensuring you are within copyright, of course. It's as simple as that.

Summary:

I actually don't own a PSP or an iPod anymore. I got rid of them in favor of other competing devices. However, when I did own a PSP I would have loved to have a product like this since moving video content to it was usually pretty annoying.

For one, I had to download it from a legitimate source and usually re-encode the video file for playback. While none of this was very difficult, it was always time consuming, and ultimately more trouble than it was worth. However, it was also free and that can't be ignored.

The Hagiwara Easy Recorder 2 can be purchased here for $139.95 for the unit alone or for $159.95 with a 512 MB Memory Stick Duo and both of those prices are a lot more than free (although you can get a good discount. See below). One should also take into acount that there are similar products on the market that are more expensive, but have a more robust feature set. It really comes down to your needs with the device.

This device works for me. A scheduling function is not needed in my eyes nor is a remote control. That's why I own a set-top-box. This device is by no means a replacement to a conventional PVR as some devices of this nature attempt to be, but it's a nice companion.

Overall, I really like the freedom of being able to record what I want when I want from whatever video source I like, be it from my TiVo, my Media Center PC, my camcorder, or my television and having the resulting file work immediately without the need for re-encoding.

In addition, I happen to blog about PVRs, so I'm a fan of how easy it is to record content and post it online should a story require it.

I also tend to prefer the path of least resistance regardless of cost. Whether the convenience this product provides is worth the price is obviously up to you.

[Note: PVR Wire readers in the market for this product can score an exlusive 10% off discount by entering promotion code "er2-pvr" during checkout. This offer is only good at the Hagiwara Online Store.]