Liteon 5005A -- Black level problem

[superbu]

I purchased the Liteon 5005A a few days before Thanksgiving at Costco, manufactured Oct. 2004. I'm almost happy with its performance for the price. Almost...

Discs I record look lovely when played on on the Liteon, look just like the source. But when I play them on other players (Cyberhome, Toshiba), it looks like someone turned the contrast way down. It doesn't look HORRIBLE, but there's definitely a big difference there. I've been searching, and saw nothing anywhere, including here, about the Liteon players having a black level bug.

Problem is, if I tape a television program on an -RW disc that I later decide I want to keep, so I make a -R copy from the -RW disc, that copy of the copy looks pretty BAD, because the contrast is even lower. I just tried it. It looks just like someone turned the contrast down about halfway from the original copy -- blacks all washed out, etc.

And if I were to edit together different clips from my camcorder videos onto a disc, and then make copies from the edited copy to send to my family, I wouldn't be able to do it -- it'd look terrible. So this black level problem really keeps me from doing the main thing I bought the recorder for.

Is there any way to fix this? I've heard nothing about the firmware upgrade fixing the problem.

[davehancock]

I found the way to correct your black level problem - junk the LiteON!!

I've gone through two LVW-5005s for EXACTLY this problem. The first unit (July 2004 build) also clipped the highlights. The second (Nov 2004 build) didn't clip the highlights but I still had the black level problem.

I now have a Sony GX300 and am pleased with it.