Just when you'd bought that sweet deal of a DVD recorder, another better model pops up. In this case, Pioneer's claiming that it's first to market with a DVR incorporating DVD-R Dual Layer (DVD-R DL) technology. For those who like their TV programs but aren't often home in time, that's good news.

What this means is the DVR-330-S will allow 24 hours of TV shows to be recorded on just a single DVD-R DL disc. For those who still have a stack of conventional DVD-R/RW discs to use up, the recording time here is extended up to about 13 hours. Typically, you can squeeze out up to only 8 hours on extended play.

DVD-R DL disc, a new standard approved by the DVD Forum in February 2005, improves on conventional discs by featuring two recordable layers instead of one, boosting the 4.7GB on the former to a combined capacity of 8.5GB on the latter. This results in approximately 1.8 times more content that can be recorded onto a Dual Layer disc. However, price may be a factor holding back the adoption of DVD-R DL discs. A single 4x Dual-Layer media today costs S$11. In contrast, a spool of 10 8x DVD-R discs retail on average for about S$10.

The longer recording time isn't the only goodie the DVR-330-S is packing. Onboard is a new MPEG encoder said to allow for improved picture quality through a new overhead data-optimizing technology that assigns more video data per bit rate. Besides that, this DVR offers all the standard features, including commercial skips of 30 seconds at a button press and DV input for connecting to a digital camcorder. Playback formats supported comprise DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R DL, CD-R/RW, VCD, JPEG and MP3 and WMA audio files recorded on CD-R/RW.