Liteon 5101 Lockup Problem

[Brent G.]

I've had my last LiteOn 5101 for about 3 weeks and it worked rather well. But it started locking up today, 3 times in 5 minutes!

I think I know what's causing it. It's heat related. I have my Panny R55 underneath it and it happened to be on all day. When I started to use my LiteOn, the remote stopped working. I "slapped it silly" by unplugging it and plugging it back in. A few seconds later it locked up again. I went through this process 3 or 4 times and finally gave up (besides my knuckles were getting sore). It was only stable for about 15 seconds before it locked up again.

The temp of the Panny is barely negligible but I guess it was enough to cause the LiteOn to start locking up. Before today the Panny was powered off or net even there. Sure I'd get the LiteOn to lockup about once a week, more if I pressed the remote buttons too quickly, but nothing as serious as this. It's winter here right now and I'm sure the problem will only be worse when the summer heat arrives.

Oh well, I guess it's time to return it to Walmart once and for all. It's time to make it someone else's problem.

Apart from the really bad green tint (far far worse than the Panny), the highly directional remote whose buttons that sometimes executes the wrong function, and the lockups, it delivered a pretty sharp picture. The LiteOn's 6 hour mode was more stable than the Panny's. The color depth looked better too. Oh well, 3 problems is 2 too many. I'll keep an eye out for a Pioneer 220 in the mean time.

Hi ho into the carton I throw,
it's off to Wally we go,
to get back the dough,
while cursing high and low,
for what I had to undergo.

[solidsnake]

I hope my liteon 5005 will last, but a question. How does 4 hour modes on each of those units compare?

[Brent G.]

I didn't bother testing the 4 hr mode between the LiteOn 5101 and the Panny E55. I found the Panny even in the 2hr mode to unacceptable picture quality. Maybe its just my machine, but the flesh tones at times is blotchy. It has a hard time descerning shades of the same color. Instead of a gradual tone of light to dark flesh tones, it paints the face with 2 or 3 levels of pink like it was layered on with a roller. The units comes with black levels too dark so you lose the detail in the shadows and in dim light people's faces has a light green hue to it. Lightening the black level reduces the green, but may aggrevate the blotchiness of the skin tones. The 6hr mode of the Panny is really really blocky. Now I know why no one uses it. Its far worse than any VCR. The LiteOn 5101 6hr mode on the other hand is quite acceptable and I've used it to tape quite a few non-critical movies. It's definitely watchable. The Panny is definitely going back. I may wait a week for the next LiteOn firmware update to arrive to give it one last chance. If it doesn't show up or if it doesn't solve the green tint and lockups, it's going back too.

[tipstir]

Boy you all are having such bad times with the best DVD Recorder for the home stereo unit. I guess I am just lucky after the firmware upgrade it been working like champ!