Liteon DVD Recorder LVW-5007
Great recorder, but some drawbacks
I purchased this DVD recorder on Ebay from Sears as a clearance item. It was an impulse buy but so far I have been very pleased. The first thing I did was to upgrade the firmware. It took a couple of trys because the unit is fussy. I then set up the machine by teloing it my zip code, the time and ect. Then I set it to record Ice Age off TV and left for vacation.  I came back from vacation to a pleaseant surprise. Ice Age had recorded perfectly and all of my TV listings (including a few Canadian stations) had been downlaoded onto my machine. Wow! it's just like the listings on my old satillite reciever only I do not have to pay for them!  Now for the nit-picks...  Their is a slight amount of snow when I view a TV signal through the unit to my TV. However, the DVD record and play clear. Could be a setup issue but I do not know. I have my antenna go into the unit, then it outputs S-video and L&R audio to one of the aux inputs to my TV. I also have an rf cable running from the usit to my tv so I can use my TV tuner. Picture is fine when the unit is off. Not a big deal because I watch TV with the TV tuner, DVD tuner is for recording which it does just fine.  The sound is just so-so. I think it only records and TV in mono. It seems I have turn up my TV some when viewing TV or a recorded DVD through the DVD recorder. I could get around this by using my TV as a source to record from but that just adds complication to my setup and I don't think it's worth the hassle.  When setting up the unit, I had to set the clock. What's up with that? It downloads the TV listing info of the air...with the times they are on...why can't it be smart enough to set it's own clock with this info? Seems strange to me.  Now for a couple of cool things...  Recordings done on DVD+RW will play in other DVD players without being finalized. At least in my Philips player they will. This is great because I can lend them to friends or record from another DVD player to get out the commercials.  Firewire input - I can record from my digital camcorder with no image loss. I bought the cheapest firewire cable I could find ($5 off Ebay) and it works fine. The video displayed as you are recording is choppy and the sound cuts in and out but the resulting DVD is fine. I was able to fit two hours of DV tape onto one DVD without sacrificing quality.    4/12/06 Update: I'm still very pleased with my recorder. I've installed the revised firmware to disable the macrovision, enable LP (3hr) mode and make it region free. No macrovision is great, it's nice to be able to back up kids DVDs. The 3 hr mode is OK, but DVDs recorded this way will not play correctly in my other DVD player. I could care less about the region free thing since I don't travel the world picking up DVDs to watch as I go.  The recorder can be moody at times. It can lock up, sometimes to the point where it must be unplugged or run the system restore. When I do this, the clock displays the wrong time and cannot be set. It resets to the correct time after being turned off for one night to allow the TV guide to update. Annoying, but I can live with it.