A DVD recorder is an optical disc recorder

Optical disc recorder

In computing, an optical disc drive is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves near the light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from discs, but recent drives are commonly both readers and recorders,...

 that uses Optical disc recording technologies

Optical disc recording technologies

Optical disc authoring requires a number of different optical disc recorder technologies working in tandem, from the optical disc media to the firmware to the control electronics of the optical disc drive...

 to digitally record

Digital recording

In digital recording, digital audio and digital video is directly recorded to a storage device as a stream of discrete numbers, representing the changes in air pressure for audio and chroma and luminance values for video through time, thus making an abstract template for the original sound or...

 analog signal

Analog signal

An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...

 or digital signals onto blank writable DVD media

DVD recordable

DVD recordable and DVD rewritable refer to part of Optical disc recording technologies. DVD optical disc formats that can be recorded by a DVD recorder, , either write once or rewritable format written by laser, as compared to DVD-ROM, which is mass-produced by pressing, primarily for the...

. Such devices are available as either installable drives for computers or as standalone components for use in television studio

Television studio

A television studio is an installation in which a video productions take place, either for the recording of live television to video tape, or for the acquisition of raw footage for post-production. The design of a studio is similar to, and derived from, movie studios, with a few amendments for the...

s or home theater systems

Home cinema

Home cinema, also commonly called home theater, are home entertainment set-ups that seek to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood with the help of video and audio equipment in a private home....

.

As of March 1, 2007 all new tuner-equipped television devices manufactured or imported in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 must include ATSC tuner

ATSC tuner

An ATSC tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television television channels transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America and South Korea that use ATSC standards...

. The US Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 (FCC) has interpreted this rule broadly so as to include apparatus such as computer with TV tuner card

TV tuner card

A TV tuner card is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the Tivo digital video recorder does.-Variants: The interfaces for...

s with video capture

Video capture

Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera or DVD player—to digital video. The resulting digital data are computer files referred to as a digital video stream, or more often, simply video stream...

 ability, videocassette recorder

Videocassette recorder

The videocassette recorder , is a type of electro-mechanical device that uses removable videocassettes that contain magnetic tape for recording analog audio and analog video from broadcast television so that the images and sound can be played back at a more convenient time...

s and standalone DVD recorders.