review for SANYO DRW-500 recorder

[lordsmurf]

Not bad.
For only $248 and easy to find at Walmart, not bad.

It's a far shout from the JVC or LiteOn. You can tell this Sanyo is made cheaper. Things take longer, using the remote is harder, on screen displays are not great. It works sort of like the Sony in this regard. Kind of a hassle to get around, but it can be done.

It uses the ESS VANTAGE MPEG-2 encoder chipset. Just a few screws, no warranty seal, easy to open. Can see chip through heat vents.

NEC 1100 drive like most other DVD+R/DVD+RW machines.

Well ventilated! It has heat vents all over the unit, and big fan in back.

Aspects of the unit eerily look like the APEX DRX-9000. The remote, the manual, and the way the on-screen displays appear. But the unit has a much-different PSU (or so it looks) and the unit itself looks different. The button are on the front, but on top, not in the front-front (if that makes sense?). It's sort of like the new curvy DirecTV receivers (8th gen RCA ones that are P4+ only).

- The recordings quality in 3-hour mode are a lot like the LiteOn in hacked 3-hour mode. Very decent encoders quality.
- The 4-hour mode is like Philips or Panasonic on a good day. That's a partial compliment. It's not great, but it's not truly horrible either. It's close to Pioneer/Toshiba/etc, what I group in the 2nd Class recorders (in terms of video quality at 3-4 hour modes), just below it. This is not like the normal good/bad 4-hour, it sort of fits in between on the normal quality chart.
- As usual, the 2-hour and 1-hour are fine. Looks like all the others. This mode is not hard to do. Toss lots of resolution and bitrate at an image, and you've got it made. Big deal. Did anybody actually use 2-hour SP on a VHS tape? No, not really. Not all the time if they did.

Ripping the video in DVD Decrypter, the discs are made just like the LiteOn discs.

There are obviously no noise filters in here, results like Panasonic in this way. The worse your source, the worse the recorder will make it. (The Apex and JVC models normally IMPROVE the images, not hurt it.)

Like the LiteOn, this appears to be CVBR encoding. Not my favorite, and why the unit may not do as well as possible. Could the ESS chip be better than it's allowed? That's a good question. We've already seen an LSI chip held back by LiteOn CVBR, but shine at VBR in an Apex and JVC unit. At any rate, the CVBR bitrates are not great.

MP2 audio, not AC3.

The DVD menus are nice. Images with some space for text. Not that I'd ever use them.

I wouldn't buy it, not when the JVC is $300-400 online, but with having 90-day Walmart warranty, probably okay for web-buying-phobes. It's better than a lot of that other crap I've seen on shelves.

This belongs to a friend, so I'll keep an eye on it's long-term use and report back anything good/bad I see/hear on it.

[det1967]

I'm on my second Sanyo DRW-500 , both of which I've purchased in the last 5 days. The first one I got fouled three out of the first four discs I tried in it. I tried Verbatim's, Imation's, and Memorex. The disc would be going along fine, but around the 75 or so minute mark it would either freeze up completely, or it would start jumping like crazy, flashing colors repeatedly, then stop.
I took the unit back to wal-mart and got a replacement, and have been 85% satisfied with the new one. The only problem I have had with it so far is sometimes when I pause the unit during recording, then hit pause again to resume, it pops "recording prohibited" on the screen. I must then hit stop and begin recording again where I left off, which creates a whole new title.
The way the menus are set up on this one, you must manually activate each title. You can't just stick in a disc, hit play, and watch a whole disc. Each time a title ends you have to get your remote and play the next title.
The Sanyo seems like a very buggy unit so far, but I am learning to work around most of them. I'll probably keep it for close to the 90 days and get a JVC in the future.
BTW, it appears that the Sanyo does defeat macrovision. I transferred an old U2 video I had over to DVD and it worked fine. I'm not positive it was macrovision encoded, but I would imagine it was.

[Dr. DOS]

LordSmurf,

This winter I will be looking at a desktop recorder.

What versions of the JVC or LiteOn units should be avoided?

Are there others, since you wrote this post, that are up at the top of the heap now? Panny, Hitachi, etc?

[lordsmurf]

Not really.
Pioneer, LiteOn and JVC are the "big three".
Sanyo will find itself somewhere just under that.

You want the JVC DVD recorder only (DRM10S), not the combo unit.

You want a LiteOn with a fan, unless you're into custom mods. Or a clone (Daytek, Gateway) that has a fan.

[etcallhome]

Probably by Christmas I'm going to get my first DVD recorder. Mainly what I want to do is burn archived VHS stuff to DVD and record TV programs. The three I am seriously considering are iLO 04, Liteon 5101 (Sam's one) or the Pioneer S220.

Is the Liteon 5101 more nearly like the 5001 than the iLO? Do both have fans? Would either of these be satisfactory to a non-videophile eye like mine?
The reviews have been mixed on these two. PQ evidently is great on both but also there seems to be criticism of them locking up sometimes or going haywire and producing coasters. The low price is what is attracting me, though.

Or, would I be better off holding off until I have enough money to get the S220? I have not found a bad review on this recorder anywhere on the Web. It sounds like it is dependable, has excellent PQ, and would be good for time recordings off the TV.