need feedback on lvw 5045

[coolj1]

I'm interested in buying a Lite on lvw 5045 (160 gb)......but i need some feedback from people that own them or has had one in the past.
I've been eyeing it for the past month. My next door neighbor has the Ilo dvdrhd04 & he has problems with his.

[johnahl]

I have owned one for about 4 months now. If I had it to do over I would wait until things are perfected.

I have had a problem where the hard drive will scrabble its contents making everything unreadable. The problem is nasty because you'll be watching something saved to the hard drive and it will hang up or jump to a different program. I have had it fail that way twice. I had to erase the drive and then defrag. I think it happens when I try to do a lot of editing when there are other programs on the hard drive. It doesn't happen if I don't do any editing. IOW if I save programs, view them and then delete them, I don't seem to have a problem.

Another thing that I don't like is the VCR+ function. It sucks. There are a total of 16 timed events that can be stored. The recorder doesn't delete any of the timed events that have already occured, and when you try and press the VCR+ button, it displays a dialog box that tells you that you have to delete a previous event before more can be saved. IOW you have to go through about 10 keypresses to delete a timed event that has already occured before you can save another one.

Please don't anyone tell me that VCR+ sucks anyway. I know some people don't like it, but I do. I mostly use the recorder to save programs when I'm not at home and pressing buttons 20 or more times on the remote makes it a real hassle. I have a VCR that has VCR+ and all that I have to do is press the VCR+ button, enter the code from the TV listings and hit enter,....done.

Sorry for the long rant, but I think you'll do better to wait until LiteOn improves. Or buy a different brand.

JohnA(Kent,WA)[/quote]

[coolj1]

Thanks for all the info. I guess the Liteon LVW 5045 isn't worth the $300.00 & some tax....i also heard that the firmwares don't even correct these problems. What i don't understand is why they even bother putting it on the market....do they like to piss people off?.....My neighbor's Ilo DVDRHD04 also hangs due to alot of edited movies on the hard drive.
The real problem is that i can't wait for these lite on manufactuers to correct the problems these units have. I know this would be another bad decision but i think i'm gonna get the Panasonic DMR-E50S at Walmart. I'm gonna try it out for a couple days. I heard the Panasonics are not even recommended but tell me what other recorder with a HD can record to +/- DVDs under $450.00 bucks. I'm not even trying to look at that Sony RDR-HX900. Thanks again for all the info. I'm gonna do some more surfing around the net and see what i can find. Thanks again.

[spacepiggy]

I'll take a slightly different tack than the other response.

I previously had to return two Panasonic E95's due to fatal lockups. I bought the Liteon 5045 as a low risk alternative.

It is not a prefect machine. Definitely it needs the latest update (197 as of this writing) to correct some function/video quality issues.

It is not an editor. It is a convenient replacement for a VCR (which can't perform editing of recorded programs in the first place), that allows time shifting and deletion of unimportant programs, and archiving to DVD if you chose. It is not frame accurate when editing. It is tedious to cut out commercials. This is not what I bought this machine to do. It offers better picture quality than a VCR, and recordings take up a lot less space. If I want to edit, I use my Macintosh.

Positives: cheap, reliable in my experience, fairly simple user interface, easy region hack, PAL/NTSC conversion.

Negative: the remote has all the functions. I'm tempted to buy a replacement now just in case. And it's not laid out too well and the buttons are touchy.

Negative: if you think you might want to archive a program to DVD, you have to pick the recording mode (speed) in advance to make sure it will fit on the disk. Recordings cannot be recompressed to different data rates to fit a 4.7 GB disc. Speeds offered are XP (1 hour) SP (2 hours) LP (3 hours) and all the rest are crap and only good for kid's shows, up to 8 hours on a single disc. LP is the speed/mode I use the most, as movies will usually fit just fine.

It also has music CD and VCD/SVCD recording. I don't bother with that, I have other tools that do a much better job.

[coolj1]

i'm just gonna wait !