I just bought a Cyberhome CH-DVR 1500 (Walmart ~ $248 US) and am only partially satisfied with the results. As long as I play back the DVD on the unit itself, it works great. But try to play it on another machine, and results are spotty at best, ranging from passable to locking up the machine or computer.

Though computer monitors are poor substitutes for a good TV, I was able to play some DVDs on a high end computer with some success, though it did not recognize chapters I had put in it. I was not able to edit on the computer either. CD Creator 6 would load the files, but said because of the type of sound file, editing would result in loss of sound. That sounds pretty close to useless to me unless you are editing a tape you intend to put your own background music to.

As far as quality goes, if you burn at the 2 hour speed, it is almost indistinguishable from the original, definitely superior to VHS. Search is a bit clunky, but still better and faster than VHS once you get the hang of it, I think.

Most of my trial recordings have been from TV and input from DV camera. I have recorded on both DVD+R and DVD+RW. Mostly I have used the RWs for TV shows and find that quite easy to record and playback. As I said, I like the two hour speed and the four hour speed is "good enough", but I don't like the slower versions at all. It does have a one hour speed, but I have used this very little. I have read that for most purposes, they are pretty much alike.

You can set it to make automatic chapters every five minutes, or you can add your own, post production. So far I have not used the five minute variety. The ones I added myself work fine, and are not "too hard" to do, but as I noted, they vanished when played back on a computer.