Lite-On AllWrite LVW-5005 DVD/CD Recorder
Super Value
I scored my machine at K-Mart's day after Thanksgiving sale (of all places) at a smoking $149.99 price point! <br /> <br />I've owned the Panasonic DMR-E55S and the Philips DVDR75 before and returned them both. Compared to those two models, the Lite-On has a totally easy \\"Guider\\" menu that hand holds you through the basics of DVD recording. As another reviewer has noted though, the Guider menu series really should have included a \\"titling\\" step prior to disc \\"finalization\\". Titling is one of my gripes with this unit - only eight characters?!?! Was this software written in DOS? Anyway, I mostly skip that step now since I cannot keep producing eight character crypto titles on the fly for all the movie recordings I download from my satellite receiver's hard drive - my movie collection is bursting at the seams! Plus the stuff I'm starting to transfer from my old VHS collection that never airs. <br /> <br />My second gripe with this unit is that I cannot manually mark chapters. The software permits auto chaptering at something like 5, 10 15, etc minute intervals, but there are occassions where I'd prefer that control. <br /> <br />So far, I've had no media issues. It works on everything I've thrown at it like a charm - even the \\"el cheapo\\" Great Quality (!) brand DVD-Rs from Fry's Electronics - another smoking deal at 29 cents a piece. <br /> <br />If you've got satellite or digital cable, don't forget that this unit also burns CD-Rs and you can also rack up quite an audio collection from your digital music stations! I'm copying six hours at a time off of the Sirius channels that I get through Dish Network onto a DVD, parsing out the tracks with Microsoft Media Plus, then compiling a massive audio collection (albeit after having manually keyed artist and title info). <br /> <br />Overall, this machine is a tremendous value. I've had a Lite-On 52x CD burner in my PC for over two years now and have found them to be a reputable company with quality products.