[Neil]

You don't want to be using a video recorder to record. In fact you don't want to be using tape at all. You need a proper CCTV hard disc recorder. They are getting cheaper all the time. If you use tape you will forget to change it and you will not be recording all the time. With a hard disc cctv recorder (not the usual ones for recording TV) they record all the time. When they are full they save over the oldest video. This means they are always working. The cheap ones will usually record a week or two so if something happens you have that long to look back over the recording.