When DVD recorders were first introduced, they were very expensive. Now, though, even some of the high-quality brands are getting cheap enough for anyone to afford. If you're looking for an affordable DVD recorder, here's where you should be looking.

You might be tempted by cheap off-brand rip-offs from China and Taiwan, but as with all electronics, it's best to avoid them. With DVDs, you might find that they don't always write DVDs correctly, meaning you end up with a bunch of expensive, useless coasters instead of the recordings you wanted. Cheap players are never cheaper enough to justify the cost of all that wasted media - take it from someone who's had their share of cheap CD burners.

Some top-end brands that have very cheap players are Daewoo, Phillips and Samsung - while they're not luxurious, they're good quality DVD recorders. They generally have high picture and sound quality, but no unnecessary frills.

If you can buy online you can save a lot of money. Amazon and eBay both have plenty of used DVD recorders that can be less than half the price of new ones - a good deal, considering that it's far more difficult to wear out or break a DVD recorder than an old VHS machine.

At the high-end, on the other hand, there's plenty to choose from as well. JVC, Sanyo and Sony all make very good high-quality recorders. At the top end, hard disk and DVD recorders are often combined, meaning that the machine can record quickly and easily onto its disk and then transfer it onto DVD for you if you want to keep it. This is very useful, as it means you don't always have to have a DVD in the machine to record - in fact, if you only ever want to keep things for a few days, you never need one.