LG 's RH 4820W problems

[tien]

LG 's RH 4820W is a very cheap DVD recorder with HDD.
I bought it 2 months ago and there are many problems.
1) Titles recorded on hard-disk can disppears mysteriously.
2) During editing on the hard disk, you can corrupt other titles as well as the current title. Dangerous
Beware.
However, it does come with a one year warranty.

[pjarz]

I bought this DVD/HDD recorder 4 months ago and I didn't notice the problems you encoutered. Did you try to initiliaze the HDD again ?
I discovered others kinds of bugs which I found some workarounds for. I would probably say that you have a defectuous model you should exchange or return until it is under the warranty (2 years warranty for mine).

[geezerbuttz]

slightly OT, but i just returned a 4810SL to LG..

Supposed to do -RW ,, in my luck i have only found 1 disk that i can use on it with 50% success.

TDK. X2 -RW

Other disks would only format as VR but refuse VIDEO mode , Some would format into Video mode then lock the machine up. Trying to recover the disk just froze the machine , and when i tried to erase on my Mac ( force erase ) i found that the Recorder had written into the blank area at the start of the disk ( inner ring ) !!!!!

So nothing could get the disk back to use.

Others would format , then fail as soon as record was pressed.

I cant wait for LG to tell me whats wrong.

[pjarz]

I have absolutely no problem with my LG RH4820 about burning DVDs, except some bugs with the editing functions. I have used DVD-R x4 from Ritek and DVD-RW x2 from Verbatim. 100% success. I burn and erase frequently the same DVD-RWs both on the LG and on my PC. I prefer the VR mode on the LG (high speed copy). If needed I reauthor the DVD on the PC and finalize it in Video mode.

[tien]

pjarz:
I have not tried to initialize my hard-disk yet, not before I have backed up everything on DVDs.
But I suggest you do a simple test to your machine and see if you have this error:
1) Your hard disk must have a few recorded titles.
2) Try to edit one title, choose "delete parts".
3) Try to delete a part that is <= 5 seconds. The smaller the more likely you will create the error eg like 3 seconds, 2 sec , 1 sec etc.
4) You will then likely see data corruption in your title and one other title on the hard disk.
Good luck if you try.

[pjarz]

There is an update available for the LG RH 4820. I plan to do it tomorrow and will let you know if it works better.

[johnbird]

Here's my bitter experience with a RH-4820V (I don't know how
the last letter differentiates the models):
I bought it in early November. After a month of getting accustomed
to the various features and having already burned about 10 DVDs
from edited recordings on the hard disk I realised that there was
a lip sync problem (video stream was ahead of the audio stream).
This problem happens whenever I edit a clip recorded on the HDD and
delete some parts (e.g. commercials) and then dub it to a DVD. When
I play the clip on the DVD after the first deleted part I can notice a lip sync.
After the second deleted part the lip sync becomes greater and so on.
The first thing I tried of course is to have the local service center do
a firmware upgrade, but they discovered that my firmware version is the
latest. The device has since Jan. 3 been in service and they have already
replaced the main board but the problem remains. They told me that
currently there is no other workaround or fix they can try and that we'll
have to wait for a solution from the company Headquarters.

You realize that I feel like I've thrown a considerable lump of money
out the window, since the main function of a device like that
(i.e. record - edit - save to DVD) is broken and no one can give me
any reassurance as to if and when the problem will be solved. Meanwhile
I've contacted the company's representatives in my country and they've
offered me two choices: either I wait for a period of roughly 2 weeks
in case a solution is found from abroad or they will arrange to get the
device replaced with another DVD recorder of a different brand at the
shop where I bought the 4820.

Please note that during the time the device has been in service the
lip sync problem appeared in other cases too. For example in direct
recordings to the HDD or DVD with no editing. I've also been informed
by the company that my device is not the only one in the country that
has this problem (I live in Greece). I was wondering if anyone else
out there has experienced similar problems (especially European models).

In any case, prospective LG4820 buyers beware!! Or should I say look
elsewhere...

[Synergy]

I was wondering why both LG and Samsung never introduced their HDD-based recorders to the US after their CES announcement last year. At least now I know why, they would have destroyed their brand images if they did. BTW, both of them also used LSI Logic chipset.

[pjarz]

Answer to johnbird:
It's very strange because I had the same problem some months ago. It was easy to reproduce the bug. Then I asked to do a firmware upgrade. After that I had no more problem of sync (I tried several times to reproduce the bug without success). Sorry about your case.