Emergency - Call the Technomedics!

So there I was, happily editing the commercials out of the first three Season 5 Goren/Eames episodes so that I could copy them on to DVD then cap them for the blog. All done, I tried to select them for transfer, but Episode 5 kept saying that it was protected. Well, I hadn't protected it. After much fiddling, I phoned the manufacturer's helpline. 18 minutes (that's £9) later, much of the time on hold, I persuaded the girl on the other end of the line to phone me back when she found an answer.

Well, apparently they can send out a signal that allows you to record something but not copy it, and this must be what had happened. She said it's rare. Well that helps (not).

As I have a TV/video of the same make, on which I had slightly obsessively also recorded the show, I asked why I had never been able to record from my videos on to the hard disc drive of my dvd recorder, especially as I now have a scart plug which should give it output ability. Apparently not. No output facility in the appliance. Thanks.

Back-up plan would have been to try and transfer the episode from my Sky+ box on to the HDD recorder, but I'd stupidly deleted it by accident instead of the programme I'd been aiming for.

Last resort - dig out my old video recorder, attach it to another TV and experiment to find which channel on the HDD it would record on, if any.

At last! Success! I'm sitting here while it plays and records, then I'll edit it and whack episodes 1, 3 and 5 on to a DVD, after which I hope to bring you - the beauty of the Goren hand with a large ball bearing held out on it. Took my breath away, and I've been dreaming of posting it since last night. That must be why everything decided to go wrong. NEVER make plans!

In the midst of all this I made a slightly hysterical phone call to Eliza's voicemail begging for a copy. If the quality of the recording is the way it looks on this portable TV I'll need it!

**Stop Press** The first time was successful, except only the sound recorded! The scart lead wasn't porperly connected...