The advances in the recording world over the past several years have seen a number of changes. It seems like just a short time ago, Video Home Systems, or VHS recordings gave families the capability to capture their special moments to view over and over. This discovery also allowed a family to record their favorite television shows to watch when it was convenient. Today, most families have begun using a DVD recorder for those same reasons.

A number of people find that being able to record and download the shows they want to watch onto a hard drive beneficial. This option does allow movies to be recorded and watched later. However, the video is recorded at a lower quality.

In order to maintain the highest quality, the recordings can be burned directly to a DVD. This allows the quality to be almost as good as the original film. The diskettes are relatively inexpensive and portable.

By burning the images to diskette, they are more permanent than the VHS recordings, as well. The VHS units play the tapes by spinning it several times while they are being played. This can cause the tape to lose it's integrity over time. The diskettes are burned and read by a laser, which does not have any detrimental affects to the diskettes.

Newer movies are purchased as blue-ray or high definition. There is special equipment available that can upgrade regular diskettes to have a clear picture. However, there are some limitations with this equipment. In order to get the highest resolution, it may be necessary to buy the blue-ray players.

Making the decision to upgrade to a DVD recorder from a VHS system is probably not a difficult one to make. These machines are dropping in price all the time. The high quality of movies and family videos DVDs provide, make the change well worth it.