"Aktchi"
In my experience, I don't think it is wise to use your DVD Recorder as your main DVD Player. My reason being is when even playing back regular DVD's on a DVD Recorder, to me, the sound quality coming from my DVD Recorder was not as good as it was when it was coming from my dedicated DVD Player. And also, I noticed that my DVD Recorder tends to be pretty picky when it comes to which DVD's it would like to playback and which ones it doesn't. In my machine, I don't know whether the laser in the recorder is not as strong as the one in my dedicated player, or maybe the laser in my recorder is not as precisely aligned as the one in my dedicated player. But I got my Toshiba RD-XS34 on an incredible deal last year, thinking that I was going to have at least a servicable "one player does it all" machine, and not getting nowhere near that. Yes, it does timeshifting very well (if the TV Guide works half the god damn time), but as a serious player for my home theater system, I am going to say that it's a no go. But also, based on the shootouts that I read in a British periodical from time to time (What Hi-Fi/Sound and Vision), maybe I should've also opted for a Sony just like Rich did, but being that I also wanted a hard disk recorder at the time, and the Sony was too expensive, I settled for the Toshiba at the time. The Sony was the champion in those shootouts. The Sonys tend to excel at playback as well as recording (in one machine), and based on that fact alone, at least now, I know what my next recorder is going to be once the Toshiba gives out.
But I'll leave that up to you, but if it were me, I wouldn't be using my DVD Recorder as a DVD Player.
Just my $.02 worth.
--Charles--
