I have been trying to setup an activity for my DVD recorder. It looks like the "Watch a DVD" activity comes the closest. One thing I am confused about is why does the activity wants to set the input to one of the line in"s on the DVD recorder?

Device Start Action
1 Toshiba DVD Recorder Set to "L"
2 Hitachi TV Set to "Video 1"
3 Yamaha AV Receiver Set to "VCR 2/DVR"

When I set up my Sony DVD recorder I used the "Record to VCR" activity as the basis for "Record to DVD" (then I renamed it accordingly after I set it up) rather than "Watch DVD". IMO a DVD recorder is more akin to a VCR than a DVD player. If you wish you could also have a "Watch DVD" activity that maps to the "play" capabilities of your DVD recorder. This isn't the case for me since I have an Oppo DVD player in addition to the Sony DVD recorder. I use the Oppo for watching movies (since it has DVI output that looks phenomenal) and the Sony transferring my camcorder tapes.

The "record to DVD" activity behaves as desired for me. I have it switch inputs on power on to the DV input (which is my most frequently used input), but that's not necessary. You can remove this setting from the activity if you wish and have it simply power on the device. Additionally, I have a custom button on the LCD "DVD input" which allows me to quickly toggle between line1, line2, DV, etc.... such that I do not need to have a "Record Tivo to DVD", "Record VCR to DVD", "Record DV to DVD", etc activities.

Phil