LiteOn - RightOn! (Liteon LVW-5045)

Member Name: Decay01

Product:	Liteon LVW-5045
Date:	01/09/05 (2490 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use - 160Gb Hard Drive - Writes to most DVD's and CD's - Firewire DV in port on front

Disadvantages: Slow to initially boot up - Design looks is a bit dated.

Being a typical sceptic, I deliberated over which DVD Recorder to get for ages, six months in fact! During that time, I read reviews, visited forums, looked in my local electrical stores and dreamed about the day when I could finally ditch my old VCR!

Okay, so I'm not rich, it basically came down to what I could afford, and what could I get for my money? I looked at the standard DVD Recorders and nearly went for the low end Panasonic machine. I even tested some that friends had, but I still felt I wanted a 'real' DVD recorder, one with a hard drive not a DVD Ram which is compatible with only itself! Most of people I know already had DVD recorders, but only they could only back up directly to DVD +/- R or DVD Ram, none had hard drives. Yes they did the job, but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted something that was easy to use and would copy onto and from almost anything. The convenience of not having to search for a disc and being able to record or back up video then edit out bits I didn't want, was just too huge an attraction. Unfortunate most of the machines I liked at the time with large hard drives cost £500 plus!

Then I saw the LiteOn. I already used LiteOn CD writers in my PC's so new the name. Did some research and even found that LiteOn manufacture DVD drives for Sony of all people! Apparently they are one of the largest manufacturers of DVD drives in the world?

So, this machine could write to DVD + and - R and CD's, it had a 160GB hard disc, allowed you to edit video and all for…£280.00! - Bargain! Of course it's now even cheaper, but even 6 months ago when I got mine it was still considered a bargain.

6 months on I am still not disappointed. I can use it, my wife uses it and we can now backup all our video camera footage quickly and easily as well as pause live TV and record from Terrestrial or Satellite. The convenience is just too good to ignore…get one and you won't be disappointed.

What can it do?
More like what can't it do! Okay, you can record directly to Hard Drive or DVD if you wish. You can record from TV, DVD, SCART, Front AV Sockets or Front DV socket. You obviously cannot record directly from copy protected DVD's to your hard drive, that would be asking too much, but you can duplicate ones you or friends have made. Having the front sockets makes for a very easy method of transferring all your camcorder footage or VHS straight to the Hard Drive for recording onto DVD…yeah! I can finally through away all those VHS tapes!

You get Video Plus, Timer Record, Quick Record (pressing the record button repeatedly allows you to record in 30mins increments) Time Slip (pause Live TV…go make the tea, come back, carry on from where you left off!) or you can watch the program you are recording from the very beginning while it is still being recorded!

You can record up to 198 hours on 5 different quality settings (lets face it, who would normally use anything other than SP (standard quality for general recording…just like normal TV broadcast) or HQ (High Quality for backing up those all important home movies to DVD). The settings range from HQ where you can fit 1 hour on a 4.7Gb DVD or SLP mode where you can fit 6 hours (although this quality is, as you can imagine, pretty low resolution).

You can add titles to your recordings, lock them to prevent them being accidentally deleted and change the thumbnail that is shown in the preview and written to your DVD's. You can also add in your own chapter points, or if you forget, the machine will set them for you at 5 min increments.

What don't I like?
The interface for navigating the system is a little simple and not that well thought out and the initial setup of the unit, for SKY was quite awkward (email me and I'll tell you how I did it!) but apart from that, I love the machine…oh yeah…it's looks are a bit dated, looks like a 70's reject machine, but it does the job!

Any Problems?
Well…this is a budget machine, but if there are niggles, they are not too drastic, at least I haven't experienced any yet! I have heard of many different complaints on the LiteOn forums but these seemed to refer to the older model. LiteOn actually seem to monitor some of these forum comments and release firmware patches to solve them. Yes this machine can be updated by downloading a program from the internet, writing it to CD and installing it on your LiteOn yourself….what other manufacturers do that? As far as I'm aware, none of the main stream ones like Sony or Panasonics do it?

If you do upgrade the firmware…make sure you back up everything first…just in case! Also, Make sure you get the 5045B model as all of the problems mentioned around the web seem to have been solved.

Conclusion...
Well, you can find out all the specifications yourselves by visiting the retailer's websites and wading through the details…that's not what my review is about.

In general, I think that this is an excellent machine for the money and it has features and functions that make the competition look pathetic. For the money, it's excellent value and even it's smaller brother the 5026 with an 80Gb Hard Drive is still and amazing machine….especially for only £199.00 (eBuyer - August 2005).

At the end of the day, it's a personal choice…but for £279.00 (eBuyer - August 2005) what more do you want!?

I guess I sound biased, but I've had no cause to complain about it so far it's all been exactly as I expected. I am a very satisfied customer and can thoroughly recommend this unit…even my parents and Aunt now have one after seeing what the 5045B can do, so it can't be that bad!

Summary: Easy to use - Huge 160Gb Storage Capacity - Read and Write to ALL types of DVD's/CD's

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Features: