Lite-On AllWrite LVW-5005 DVD/CD Recorder
Stick with a brand you know!
From the looks of things there is a 50/50 chance of getting a unit that actually works properly.  Unfortunately I was not one of them.  I actually purchased a LVW-5007 with the hopes that some of the bugs from the 5005 were worked out.  I was wrong!  I should have known from the minute that the date was NOT Y2K compliant that this was bad news.  It took 30 minutes and \\"second level support\\" to figure out that if you input 1905 and enter it becomes 2005.  They couldn't have put that one sentence in their too-vauge-to-understand-anyway manual?  The TV Guide part is a great idea in theory but in reality you have to let it \\"download\\" from your cable line for at least 24 hours with the unit off with no interruptions.  That is easier said than done when you have two teenagers wanting to watch DVD's 24/7.  AND if you have several choices of what your cable company's ID # is, you run the risk of the channels being wrong.  Plus if you are not subscribed to HBO, etc. they still show up scrambled and they would not delete at all. <br /> <br />Recording to DVD was relatively easy--find your program and hit record.  But several times the recorder would show that I had the timer set and I never HAD anything set to record.   <br /> <br />It also was very picky about what type of DVD it would play.  New ones--no problem.  Rentals some would work, others would completely lock the unit up to the point where you had to unplug the whole thing, and then plug it back in, just to get the disk out. <br /> <br />Other problems--the buttons on the remote would stick, very slow in shutting down, when fast forwarding thru commercials it would skip to the next title and you would miss a whole scene. <br /> <br />I never got to the point where I was copying video tapes to DVD.  I was too frustrated at this point to even try!  Sorry Lite-On mine went back after 3 weeks.  My new Panasonic was up and running in 5 minutes!