Getting Me Fit In More Ways Than One (LG LV 200)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	LG LV 200
Date:	14/01/03 (439 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great features, low price, small and light to carry

Disadvantages: Bad English in the user guide, noisy when rewinding

I bought *a* VCR in an effort to get fit – strange but true. See I knew I’d only bother going to the gym after work if I could video anything I wanted to watch, so I got one and now I’m up to date with my shows, and relatively fit.

I bought *this* VCR because it was the cheapest I could find at 99 Euros (~65 GBP) including delivery. I only wanted it for my year here, intending to sell it / give it away when I leave. I didn’t care about the features assuming it could cope with the odd spot of recording and playing, but I soon found out this model comes with lots. More than you’d ever need in fact.

The first thing I noticed – and rejoiced about – was that it was light. I had to carry it home from the post office, and it was the size (only 36 x 27 x 9.5 cm but packed in a humungous box by the firm sending it) rather than the weight (a mere 4kg) that hindered me.

--- Setting Up---

Naturally I wanted to get it tuned in and working as soon as possible, but it was also a Saturday and I had no plans to spend the one day of the week when I’m not at work and when most things are semi-open, inside. Tuning in is quick and simple, a huge relief to me as I get 30+ German channels here plus various French, Turkish and American ones. There are clear instructions in the multi-lingual user guide, and an automatic searching function for channels. The only downside I could see was the ability to add the names of channels. This is obviously needed in the countries were most of the 88 available channels are needed, unless you have an elephant’s memory, but it takes a while as you have to spell them out using a limited number of keys – like when sending text messages, only worse. By now I can tell you that Sat 1 is on 4, Viva on 12 and CNN on 26, but then I couldn’t so I went ahead and gave each number its proper name.

--- Remote ---

The remote is pale gray and ultr
a light, and needs 2 x AAA batteries (the small ones you use in cameras a lot). It has all the features you’d expect – play, rewind, stop and so on – plus some more unusual ones including:

· EJECT - not an unusual feature itself, but it’s odd to find it on a remote. I’m not entirely sure why it’s here as well as on the recorder itself but that’s because I’m careless and often end up pressing it accidentally, meaning I then have to get up and re-insert the tape. Which, I suppose, is just their evil way of keeping me fit. What’s next? Exercise videos?

· CHILD LOCK – for those of you with inquisitive little ones, this could be helpful. It stops the buttons on the box working, meaning only the remote can stop and start tapes until you set it back to normal.

· CM (Commercial message) SKIP – this fast forwards for 30 seconds then resumes normal play. You can also press it a few times to set it going for that many time x 30 seconds. Maybe useful if you need to leave the room for a second so it can FF while you’re out without over shooting, but otherwise I can’t see an advantage of this over normal FF and playing.

· EZ (Easy) POWER OFF – this stops the tape immediately, rewinds and ejects it and then switches the power off. Useful if you’re in a hurry out of the door and don’t want to leave it on and waste electricity, perhaps?

--- VCR ---

The one thing I noticed straight away was that the VCR doesn’t display a clock. You can bring up the time on the TV screen by pressing the button on the remote, but otherwise there’s no indication of what hour it is. I found this a bit odd – all my other recorders have had it – and can’t see why they’ve done so. It’s not to keep the whole thing plain and minimalist because where the clock should be they have an array of bright lights – lights t
o show the timer’s set, lights to show there’s a cassette in, light’s to show it’s on and, bizarrely, lights to show it’s off. There is no counter on the box though, again, you can bring one up on the screen when the TV’s on. As with most these days, the timer corresponds to real time, so it’s easy to see when to stop the tape after fast forwarding for, say, an hour’s recording.

Memory stop is a feature I liked. It allows you to rewind to a set place on the tape automatically, for example when the counter hits 0000 again, so you can tape something after a show you want to keep, watch it and then simply rewind to the correct starting place again.

Setting the timer is easy. You have a choice of 6 languages for your onscreen display when you set up the machine, but can change this at any time. As well as entering the channel name or number you can choose from a daily, weekly or permanent setting for a recording. You can also choose from short play or long play – the latter giving you twice the recording time on a tape. Instant recording is available, and an extra feature I liked is the ability to set an end to a show you’ve just put on to record – so if you realize something’s on, you can start recording immediately and then tell it to stop after an hour. If you set up the timer to record 2 shows which overlap, it will tape all of the one that starts first, then whatever’s left of the second. If the power fails for any reason, it will erase all timer settings not yet recorded, but will retain the tuned in channel details, a pain but not doubt inevitable.

If you have problems – which fortunately I’ve never had – there’s a Dr option which will give you a diagnosis of what the machine thinks is wrong with itself, and ideas on how to fix it. This can be anything from a timer not being able to be initiated because no cassette is in, to something m
ore complicated.


--- Verdict ---

I like this VCR. It is easy to use and comes with a detailed instruction manual (although the English in it leaves a little to be desired at times – and doesn’t match the German. It’s like when you go to Luxembourg and have the multi-lingual tours that say almost completely different things in French, German and English…). Although this VCR has a few downsides – as well as the ones mentioned, it’s a pretty noisy one when rewinding – I’ve been quite pleased with my purchase. It is far from the “basic” model I assumed I’d get for the price, and has worked consistently well over the last 5 months or so. Maybe not the most high tech model out there, but a bargain at the price. I just wish they’d sell ones for even less without the silly features, most of which I have no use for. It’s a brand I hadn’t heard of before, but certainly one I’d buy again.

I bought mine from Karstadt in Germany, but you can get them in the UK from general electrical retailers, catalogue shops and so on.



This is based on the LG Electronics 2285 model which, from what I can tell, is almost if not entirely identical to the LG LV 2000.

Summary: