"Geoff Lane" wrote...

It was more the theory I wanted to know, my daughter owns a similar
Philips model (DVDR3300H) and her manual states under a helpful hint
comment 'Use the DV socket to connect to a personal computer.

I am wondering what this would enable her to do, I did try connecting a
hard drive (With some movies on the file system) via firewire to her
Philips device but nothing was recognised.

There are three potential reasons for connecting to a computer via firewire.
The first, and most obvious, is to transfer footage from camera to the
computer in order to edit, and edited footage back to camera for unknown*
reasons. The second is for mass storage devices like firewire hard drives to
be accessible in the same way you'd use any other external mass storage
device. The third is to connect two PCs in order to network them using the
appropriate driver. There may be other uses, but I'm unaware of them.

Your DVDR devices are very unlikely to connect in order to network with the
computer, and you've already dismissed the mass storage device theory. This
means that connecting the computer is for either or both of uploading
footage from the DVDR to the PC, or downloading your edits.

On either machine, you'll need to set one recording the stream before you
start the other playing the stream, because both the PC and the DVDR can
assume control of a DV camera, but they can't assume control of each other.

* In 2001 I bought two DV-in cameras. In that time I've used the feature
only twice- the first time "in the field" to transfer footage from one tape
to another to free up a full tape. The second time, it was also the easiest
way to get one of my finished edits to VHS, back when sacrificing a DVD
would have been too expensive.