ILO DVDRO4, $150 may be good deal.

[kcsport]

Only have the base model here in south Txas also. Ok say I burn the home movies on the disk, What soft ware would I need to edit on the pc then burn back to disk? Right now I'm using pennical to to unpload and edit but it takes forever on a 2.6 system. Thanks for any help!

[NightWing]

One of a lot of choises could be TMPEG DVD Author.

[nightliner]

They have both out for display here in PA. Since my last visit a couple days ago, there stack of the cheaper one has gone down by about six, but it didn't look like they sold the other one.

Still wondering if they can be hacked for region free use.

[NightWing]

Im wondering if a PC can read the hard drive or if you could boost it with a 160GB HD!

Mine is still running like a top! Seems solid and quick. Been recoding about 15 disk on R and RW. No hickup and that on junk from Fry's!

Looks like the hot toy for this xmas is out!

[telemike]

found a hidden menu on the "Setup" menu.
you must do the following to open it.
Enter "Setup" menu on the screen.
Scroll down and highlight "Exit".
While "Exit" is highlighted enter 2,9,6, and 0 and press "Enter".
A hidden menu pops up and you can select your region.

[telemike]

has anyone tried any hacked firmware yet?

[-jsl-]

it took 9 minutes and 12 seconds to copy a one hour show (SP) to a memorext dvd+r 4x disc. only took 30 seconds to finalize it... the disc plays great...

SP is max 2 h per DVD right? That would indicate that a full disc should take ~18 minutes to copy, kind of slow for being 4x speed but too fast for being 2.4x. What about the RW speed, can you try copy to a 4x DVD+RW? What does the manual say about the dub speed?

[D.A.R.J.R.]

has anyone tried any hacked firmware yet?

I tried the hacked Liteon 5001 and 5005 firmware and it didnt work. It might have been becuase I used a cd-r tho.

[bobcat56458]

Here is a problem I'm having with the ilo DVDR04 recorder. When I playback DVD's I've captured, or edited on my computer, then burned with DVDLab software, using a NEC 1100A DVD burner I have hiccups on the audio when I use the ilo for playback. I am using the stereo analog RCA plugs to output the audio on the ilo. The audio was encoded using MPEG 1 layer 2 stereo audio, CBR at 384kbps, & 254kbps on the DVD disks. These same DVD's play fine on my other 3 stand-alone DVD players without the hiccuping I hear on the ilo. The DVD's I record using the ilo recorder itself all play the audio fine. Commercial DVD movies, and backed up Commercial DVD's, all play the audio fine also. Is anyone else experiencing audio hiccups with their computer made DVD's playback on the ilo?

[NightWing]

I doute the unit has a Stereo TV Tunner. Here is the reason.

Picked up a Pioneer 220. { WOW } which has a stereo tunner. While trying both it and the iLO out. I noted that one channel from the local cable company had more audio out on one side. The Pioneer got it right but the iLO did not.

Not sure if the 220 can output Stereo via the rf out but will look into it. Be a way to deffently confirm it.

Also I think the iLO may have a problem with black level. An example...


The one on the left is the iLO right is the Pioneer.

[lordsmurf]

has anyone tried any hacked firmware yet?

I tried the hacked Liteon 5001 and 5005 firmware and it didnt work. It might have been becuase I used a cd-r tho.

It may require a renaming to "ILO" branded naming, if it really is LiteOn in there. Gateway oftens need this.

[gshelley61]

That Pioneer unit may be worth looking into... How does it do with cleaning video prior to encoding? Any macroblocking or color banding issues like with the Panasonics?

[lordsmurf]

The Pioneer is CBR. It's quite decent, better than most, but still just a runner-up to the JVC. It's on par with the LiteOn unit.

[smearbrick1]

Here is a problem I'm having with the ilo DVDR04 recorder. When I playback DVD's I've captured, or edited on my computer, then burned with DVDLab software, using a NEC 1100A DVD burner I have hiccups on the audio when I use the ilo for playback. I am using the stereo analog RCA plugs to output the audio on the ilo. The audio was encoded using MPEG 1 layer 2 stereo audio, CBR at 384kbps, & 254kbps on the DVD disks. These same DVD's play fine on my other 3 stand-alone DVD players without the hiccuping I hear on the ilo. The DVD's I record using the ilo recorder itself all play the audio fine. Commercial DVD movies, and backed up Commercial DVD's, all play the audio fine also. Is anyone else experiencing audio hiccups with their computer made DVD's playback on the ilo?

I had this probem in the pioneer 434 (standalone DVD player) Anything with MP2 audio would hiccup (actually, only dvd... svcd worked fine). I believe it was because the dvd player was trying to up mix the mp2 audio to PCM format. I changed the settings in the audio menu and everything works now. Of course, I didn't realize that this menu also affect 5.1 and DTS. Now that DTS and 5.1 both play as DTS and 5.1 and PCM... I have much better sound from my DVD player.

[x660bf]

Here is a problem I'm having with the ilo DVDR04 recorder. When I playback DVD's I've captured, or edited on my computer, then burned with DVDLab software, using a NEC 1100A DVD burner I have hiccups on the audio when I use the ilo for playback.

I am experiencing the same when playing back dvd-r (on the ilo) burned on my pc from a dvd+rw recorded on the ilo from vhs. The only consistent thing I can discern is that the "hiccup" occurs at the :04 second mark of any minute. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's at the beginning of a chapter or not (I have the chapters set at 5 min.). When the same dvd-r is played on my pioneer playback deck, all is well.

[lordsmurf]

I saw problems with chapter marks in the LiteOn 5001, so I keep mine turned OFF. However, this was only seen on hacked FW1163, no others.

[NightWing]

That Pioneer unit may be worth looking into... How does it do with cleaning video prior to encoding? Any macroblocking or color banding issues like with the Panasonics?

The frames are a bit off when capture but here is a tough test for a MPEG compressor. IE a cartoon. From a LD on a Pioneer Elite unit.



The thing is the level of black. Noted on the border and the color richness. Not sure what it does over the LSI chipset.

Trying to figure out the test capture from live TV. Either Enterprise StormFront or the debate tonight. Or wate till Monday and it it with Monster House ot Garage since Discovery runs it again withing three hours. Weered to have 3 to 5 items recording the same thing to test!.

[NightWing]

Try this again. Set it a bit smaller this time....



Oh well... Wont post...

EDITED:

The main item is a bit of dark grey for thing like black boarderon the iLO but its a bit cleaner on surfaces.

Need to finaly get some solid testing done. Maybe this weekend if I dont get any clients calls!

Need a still comapre program. Something new to write!

[beingfunny]

Thinking on the lines of Liteon, Sam's Club has a Liteon 5101 Recorder for $139.

edited... Sorry, I missed page 2's discussion on this...

Nothing to see here.....

[telemike]

I'll be giving the Ilo a workout tommorow when i transfer some stuff my SA 8000HD dvr to dvd. Some will be HD material downconverted to SD.

[p_l]

Remove the space in your photo's filename between the "Peg" and the "001" by renaming it, and try again.

[NightWing]

OOPS! Knew I had somthing in backwards! Tnks.

Did a better one. Did the same to capture each frame.

Left = iLO and Right = Pioneer 220



ADDED: Going to work on better comparason. between the two.

[bobcat56458]

Smearbrick1: I went to the Setup menu, then the Audio settings and tried both the Digital Out settings, PCM, and Bit Stream, and it made no difference, I still have bad audio when playing computer made DVD's on the ilo.
X660bf: The hiccups I'm hearing are maybe better explained as a dropout that happens every second, or two. It makes no difference if the disk is a DVD+RW, or a DVD+R, I have not tried DVD-RW, and DVD-R as I have none. It seems strange this is happening, as the ilo recorder itself encodes it's audio using MPEG 1, audio layer 2, and not Dolby Digital.

[DavidEC]

A one week look at the 'iLo DVDR04':

I am using a DirecTV receiver as my input source using the S-Video input on A/V2 and the DVD's that I have made are great...

/// BUT ... after reading a number of postings here I have done some testing...
The over the air tuner is a piece of C@#P..
But who now days does not have cable or satellite service??

The tuner does seem to be 'Stereo'... I recorded a bit of 'The Tonight Show' and 'Jay' was on one side of the stage [speaker] while the band leader was on the right side [speaker]

The video format is DVD+VR... and I have only one [out of four] DVD player that does not like this finalized format.. a RCA DNS700 ..which does not like DVD+ disc's to start with even if RCA claims that it should play them....

The composite video out does not out-put a full one volt which is the standard for most video outs.. I had a Friend test it and mine was set to .95 volt which makes the video out seem dark... yet the disc played back just fine and bright in my computer and set-top boxes [that would play the disc.]

While the Manuel does not seem to list it customer service emailed me back that the system does supports 'One Button Record' in 30 minute steps.

either I am missing it I would like to see a chapter menu listing so that I could go directly to a chapter and not have to fast scan through the chapters

But with one year parts/;labor warranty... I will just wait and see if future firmware updates add function to the device.

[NightWing]

Taped Enterprise tonght split the rf through a Monster splitter feeding both the iLO and the Pioneer 220. The local feed even though it from the local cable company is lets say GARBAGE for quality for the channel they run it on.

I think the iLO unit I have is mono . Compared one action section near the start that sound like its stereo on the Pioneer but not on the iLO. Wondering if there are different variants of the iLO. Some with and some without stereo tunner?

I think a friend has one of the RF converters with MTS and will try to see if I can run an experment which should prove it one in for all.

I do agree the tunner in the iLO is junk. It pops up lines but they dont show on the recording.

[DavidEC]

Taped Enterprise tonght split the rf through a Monster splitter feeding both the iLO and the Pioneer 220. The local feed even though it from the local cable company is lets say GARBAGE for quality for the channel they run it on.....

not knowing your lo9cal cable company it could be that they are sending the sation in question in MONO and not stereo over their system...???

I know that my local cable system was all mon at one time even thou the over the air chanels were in stereo for some time and the cable compay made a big deal about "...now you car hear HBO in stereo..." sales pitch {which is why I don't have cable service} and a few of the channels are still mono where I can receive them in stereo off DirecTV.

--David

[Herbyg]

I bought the DVDRHD04. This is my first DVDr. It seems to be working pretty well. ALL of the features that people have mentioned earlier in the thread are the same ones I would like to see in the next firmware upgrade. If somebody sends a list to ILO of the features we would like to see added, do you think they will listen?

I have only three issues with this product:

1. It has frozen on me 3 times. So frozen that you cannot do anything. You have to unplug it to get it working again. Two of the times have been using the "time shift" and rewinding while it is recording the live show. Once was setting up the timer. It hasn't done it in a few days now. Hopefully it does not become a habit.

2. No commercial skip button like the DVDR04 has. I don't know why they removed this feature on the higher end model.

3. When I passthrough my Playstation 2 ( PS2 ) through the AV-2 input, it washes out the colors of the video. But this degradation only happens when I am playing a game. It does not happen when playing a DVD in my PS2 and the PS2 start up menus looks perfect also. The video capture is perfect for DVD movies and the PS2 start up screens. But the video capture of gameplay also has washed out colors. It is very odd. If any of you have any ideas why this happens I would love to hear it.

Thanks in advance.

[D.A.R.J.R.]

It could be macrovision on the game. That might cause the colors to be washed out.


I suggest everyone email them asking for a 3hr mode and all the other fixes you want. They seem to want to listen to our advice and maybe we will get what we want on the next firmware release.

[JasonK]

I just got the DVDHDR04 at Walmart $278 + TAX
Dont worry, just a week ago, our Walmart didnt have them either. So keep looking. They were stacked at a completely different place at our Walmart, and they were not stacked high, but near the ground along one isle in the middle, while the nonHD version was at the end of the same isle.

While the Manuel does not seem to list it customer service emailed me back that the system does supports 'One Button Record' in 30 minute steps.

My HD model does this. If the "display" is showing at the top of the screen, it increments by 30 minutes with each press of the record button.

It lets you setup 16 events in the timer to answer my own earlier question in case others are wondering. You can set once, daily, or weekly, but no "weekday."

Time Shift Warning: In the setup menu, I configured the record mode to HQ. So I assumed the time shift was using this. And the quality wasn't that great for the live football game I was watching with it. After further testing, I determined the timeshift ALWAYS uses SP mode. Even if the setup is set to EP or SLP, it still time shifts in SP mode. Why not HQ? That's disappointing because the quality difference is noticable compared to HQ or the original broadcst, so I will avoid using time shift. I rather watch the best quality from the live broadcast than have time shift at reduced quality.

The mode setting in the setup DOES control the mode it records in when using the record button. Timer program lets you set the mode with each event independantly.

So I tested HQ mode using the manual record button. I was impressed with the HQ mode as I could not easily notice a difference from the original signal. It's really unfortunate that the time shift doesn't use HQ mode. The hard drive performance should easily be able to read and write at this rate to enable time shifting in HQ mode, but we dont have that option.

I bought it primarilly to schedule cable TV broadcasts, without having to swap tapes & disks all the time, so with the combination of the good quality HQ mode along with 16 timer events, I can't complain much. Unfortuantely, there is NO 3-minute skip for commercials. Why would the HD version not include such a handy feature?? Fast forwarding through them at 2x to 16x is annoying.

For some things SP mode may be acceptable. EP has too much pixelization for my taste, and SLP mode is simply unwatchable - very bad. I expect I'll use HQ most of the time as it matches closely to the live feed.

As mentioned earlier, the unit does have a fan. It apparently is always running when the unit is on. After running a couple hours, it's still only a little warm on the underside, not even warm on top. The unit is pretty quiet. With the TV & stereo off, I can hear a light hum from across the room. I dont expect I will be burning many DVDs with it as I delete most things after watching, and I use my computer for burning personal movies from the camcorder.

The remote layout and buttons aren't much to my liking, and the menu layout & operation could have been made a little more efficient than it is. Oh well, it's no Tivo.

My manual doesn't indicate that it records Dolby Digital. It says Mpeg audio only. However, when viewing the information screen for a TV show I just recorded, it says SOUND - DD.

Some have stated they would like a 3 hour mode. I guess that doesn't hurt, but the quality issues are noticable in SP mode as it is. I dont think I would want to use a 3 hour mode, but I'll take another speed if it's offered. I'll use the HD mostly, HQ mode mostly, so it's not a big deal to me to have another lower quality speed than SP. Regarding recording modes, the FAQ says

DVDRHD04 model with the built-in hard disk drive has five recording speeds (HQ=17 hours; SP=34 hours; LP=51 hours; EP=68 hours; and SLP=96 hours)

Mine does not have an LP mode. Not in the interface and not in the manual either. I probably would never use it anyway because SP is about as bad as I think I would ever accept for a timed recording.

[NightWing]

Intersting...

Tnks for the review.

Wonder what occurs if you copy from hd to disk and the source is bigger than the disk?