which dvd recorder would you recommend from these?

[royal007]

Hi,

I have a chance to buy one of the dvd recorders listed and just wanted some feedback on which of these has the best quality for recording VHS to DVD. I would be using the 2 hour recording mode, as 1 hour would not be long enough.

JVC DV-MV100B
JVC DV-MV150B
LG LRY-517
LiteOn LVW-5005
Panasonic DMR-ES45V

What do you think? Which would you buy if you had the choice?

Thanks

[lbjohnson]

I have brought 2 Lite On dvd recorders and have very good recordings from both. Reasonably and very dependable.

[jman98]

It's clear that you're buying used. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
1) You CAN be cheated on Craigslist. I know that the entire under 30 generation believes that this is just impossible, but it's not. Keep in mind that the terms of service on Craigslist says basically "We're not responsible for anything you buy". Ebay is only marginally better but there is a remote chance that if you get sold defective merchandise, they might help you. Amazon's reseller market is essentially like Craigslist - "We're not responsible". I had an issue with an Amazon reseller who sold me a crippled cell phone (one of the international GSM bands was missing, although advertised the phone as having it). Amazon refused to help - "Take it up with the seller". The seller never replied to my email, but when I filed a complaint with my credit card company about how I was sold defective merchandise, THAT got his attention and he immediately refunded my money and accepted a return of the phone, claiming he had been "out of town" when I tried to contact him. So if you pay by credit card (probably not possible with Craigslist) and get cheated, you may have some recourse through your credit card company. Credit card companies aren't as consumer friendly as they used to be though, so no guarantees here. But you'd have a chance.
2) Some of the sellers know that the machines they are selling are defective, but it will work just long enough that when you have problems in a month, there will be nothing you can do about it.
3) The machines may be defective, but the seller hasn't used it in so long that they honestly don't know it's defective and they aren't really trying to cheat you, even if they end up doing so.

LiteOn has a very simple menu driven recording system that works very well for non-techies. All those recorders are probably long in the tooth though so again, no guarantees that what you buy will last very long. Consumer repairs on LiteOn are IMPOSSIBLE. Believe me, I know. My dad had one and I tried. It's IMPOSSIBLE to find replacement burners for their models. If you buy a LiteOn, when it dies, it's dead. I have no info about how repairable the other models are or are not, but you should NOT count on being able to do your own repairs. Most DVD recorders don't use standard off the shelf burners and it's getting harder all the time to find working replacements anywhere.

Note that Walmart has a deal with Magnavox where they sell 1 or 2 of their model DVD recorders. I believe that Magnavox is the last manufacturer to still make them in North America. Unfortunately the prices are not great. At best they're expensive and at worst they're a complete rip off. Every few months or so rumors make the rounds that Magnavox has decided to leave the market, which causes mass panic buying of the models and WalMart adds roughly $100 to the price as they sell off their "final" models. Then after the panic buying subsides, Magnavox shrugs their shoulders and says that they guess since there was more demand then they realize that they can keep on manufacturing them after all and the prices return to the usual somewhat expensive but not a complete rip off levels. Rinse and repeat. This cycle has been going on for years now. But the Magnavox units are of good quality according to reports here and they are new.

[sanlyn]

If your VHS are copy-protected retail editions, you won't be able to record with any of them. Recorded PQ with the Panasonic will be the better of the choices (with home-made VHS, saying "direct-to-DVD with the best image PQ" is an oxymoron anyway). JVC is likely to be in last place. I realize that owners and lovers of all 5 choices will disagree, but if all you expect is a recorded image is that moves and makes noise, all of the choices will do that.

I'd go with jman98 here, it's the best idea. The Magnavox units (also sold under the Toshiba name) are decent machines, and the models with built-in HDD would be even more convenient.

[DarrellS]

I wouldn't waste my time or money on a DVD recorder. Get a Hauppauge 1212 or HD-PVR2

[usually_quiet]

I wouldn't waste my time or money on a DVD recorder. Get a Hauppauge 1212 or HD-PVR2

These two devices only record H.264 video (via hardware encoding), which does not make them an ideal choice if the desired end product is DVD-compatible video, which uses MPEG-2. The Hauppauge HVR 2250, or HVR-1950 can capture DVD-compatible MPEG-2 via hardware encoding, and other capture devices can capture using software encoding, which provides additional options. However, any PC capture device may at times require a DVD recorder (used as a pass-through) sitting between the VCR and the capture device to stabilize the signal for recording.

[royal007]

Yeah, these are all used, but they do work, and they are only under $10 each. I've noticed the JVC ones go for big bucks on ebay, why is this? I have looked through the pages on here, and most people say they suck. Then I read that Panasonic has macroblocks, can't find much out about the LG. I won't be using it to record copy-protected tapes, but they are commercial tapes with no protection. Also don't want to spend $150+ for the Magnavox and PVR.

[sanlyn]

The JVC's apparentlky sell for bigger bucks because there's this "thing" people have about the JVC name. The idea seems to be that JVC products remove noise. They also remove everything else, and tend to get the color all wrong. Depends on what people like, I guess. The remark about macroblocks might reflect the practice of many users to try to get 6 hours of tape recorded into a DVD. That will most certainly give you macroblocks, but you'll get the same thing if you try to get 6 hours with other DVD recorders (or with anything else, for that matter).

LG's will output an image similar to the Panasonics. In fact, Matsushita and Funai probably make most of LG's innards, because LG doe not manufacture DVD recorder components themselves, they only make a few of them. The only brand you mention that makes their own encoders/decoders is Panasonic, AFAIK. However, you should know that Panasonic's DVD repuation was made on their earlier ES series. The "45" is a much later model. By the time the LG and the Panny were being sold, most stores had stopped carrying JVC.

Keep in mind that the optical drives in older DVD recorders will be the first thing to go, and that parts support is likely no longer available. If this stuff only costs $10 a shot, go ape and spend $20. Maybe 2 of those choices will do if one bombs out. But If a used DVD recorder is what you're intent on, you should be looking at top-of-the-line HDD units that originally sold for $400 or more and will obviously be going for a pretty penny today. The performance and durability of the big guys was miles ahead of the models you're talking about. The number of buttons on the front panels wasn't the only thing you got for the higher prices.

[orsetto]

$10 apiece is stupid-mega-cheap even for Craig's List. The sellers are either morons, or they know the machines are broken. But at that price, you may as well buy as many as you can carry, if not all of them: at least one should work, and you'd still be ahead moneywise.

You should probably go for the newest first, which would be the two JVCs. They were discontinued roughly three years ago. Technically, they are not really made by JVC but are re-badged LG models (samlyn is confusing them with earlier pure-JVC units with similar model names, which were truly love-or-hate machines). Overall user reports are about average: they're nice when they work, nasty when they don't. Nonetheless extremely popular when new- people tended to way overpay for them. They have proven far more reliable than the original JVC models, and most of the complaints regard problems with timer recording (the units are hypersensitive to real or imagined record prevention signals they receive from digital ATSC broadcast or cable QAM channels). This may or may not impact you if your primary interest is dubbing VHS to DVD.

The LG LRY-517 is not particularly liked as a VHS dubbing tool, people complain of missing or difficult functions that work better on other models. For $10, its worth a look. It was a 2005-2006 model so the burner may be borderline.

The LiteOn LVW-5005 was a popular 2004 model, primarily in Europe because it was hackable and people enjoyed experimenting with it. But 2004 is really pushing it as far as age goes: DVD recorder burners don't hold up much past the 5 year mark. Still again, for $10, worth a look.

The Panasonic DMR-ES45V was the last Panasonic combo made with an analog-only (no digital) tuner, circa 2006. It was very popular, as all Panasonic combos have been, but among Panasonic fanciers it was not as well-regarded as earlier units for a variety of reasons (some nitpicky, some significant). Assuming it still works, it would be worth far more than $10. The most common problem with Panasonic DVD recorders is their irritating tendency to "play dead" after a year or two of use. The disc clamp inside the burner picks up fingerprints and dust like a magnet, and eventually loses its grip on the DVD, resulting in failures to load, record or play. In 3 out of 4 cases, this can be remedied by taking the the cover off and cleaning the disc clamp. The unit will then work normally for another year or so until it needs another cleaning.

While necessity for cleaning is annoying, the Panasonic burners have a reputation for incredible durability (at least twice the lifespan of any other brand). You will know a Panasonic burner is truly dead by the sound it makes: if you load a DVD and hear a loudish "knocking" sound, resulting in an error display, its a goner. If it isn't loud, just won't load a blank disc, it probably needs a cleaning. Instructions for cleaning can be found here. The "macroblock" slam against Panasonics is a matter of personal visual taste (some see it and hate it, most people don't see it at all). It is also model-dependent: some Panasonics are more prone to "blockiness" than others, and it can be tricky to identify which is which even in the same model year.

The points made by previous replies above bear repeating: NONE of these combo units will dub a commercial Hollywood tape to DVD: they will flat out refuse. Dubbing a commercial tape requires separate VCR and DVD recorder (or computer), with a protection filter box or TBC of some kind connected between them. And with standard VHS tapes that they do copy, you may not be thrilled at the results. You don't have much control over the dub process, editing is crude or unavailable, and the built-in VCR may not track some of your tapes that well. The wider the variety of VCR you have, the better, so if you can afford space to use three of these "bargains," buy three different brands.

[sanlyn]

Yep, I was thinking earlier JVC's. The brand seems to be few and far between around my area, but that could differ elsewhere. The optical drive problems described sound like my old ES10 and ES20. The ES20 still works. Feed it enough noise with a VHS tape at 2 hours and the macrobloks will show up, but not as bad as I've seen with other machines. Some of that stuff is imbedded in the cable broadcast on home made recordings and looks worse when recorded direct to DVD. I have yet to see a decent transfer with a DVD/VHS combo. Might get better results using a separate VCR that's in decent shape.

[hech54]

You can get an old LG with the built-in HDD(it's not a combo though):
http://ifndef.altervista.org/index_eng.html
Even if the DVD burner is dead you can still pull the MPEG2 off of the internal hard drive with software found on the web page above.
I have the European clone version (Medion MD81335) and it is VERY nice....and it has 1 hour recording mode available as well.

[Hikmet]

LG recorders's optical heads quickly lose functionalities, but cheap.

[handyguy]

EasyCap is about $8 on Amazon, lots of people use it.

[royal007]

orsetto, I think I will buy them all as you suggest and see which one has the best quality, then sell off the ones I don't need. Thanks for all the advice. btw, I won't be using the vcrs in the combo units, as I already have a JVC S-VHS TBC one. If anyone's interested I can post some still images from each dvd recorder to see how the quality differs.

[Novice20]

I know this is not on your list of $10 recorders but if you want something that works, look at the Magnavox 513H. It's a lot more than $10 but it's not outrageous. J&R sells them at a reasonable price.