Reviews for Lite-On LVW-5045 Digital Video Recorder

Wonderful unit

Strengths: everything is easy to use, the guider is self explanatory, remote is excellent, hard drive huge, recording quality options plentiful, great all in all

Weakness: cant get unit to sync its own channels with my satellite dish's channels

i dont know what the ppl who gave bad ratings were talking about, perhaps they hooked it up wrong.

when i first hooked it up, i can say i saw a decrease in video quality and had other problems, some that the others complained about..but that was be cause I HOOKED IT UP WRONG! as i figured out after skimming the user manual. i disconnected the intermediary vcr and connected the unit using RCA cables and its been working flawlessly ever since. recording dvd's is extremely easy and the timer record and setup and video functions are really well done!

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Lite-On LVW-5045 Digital Video Recorder

Strengths: Large Hard Drive. Nice looking. Compact. Decent price. Very easy FirmWare Update. Reads and writes practically all popular formats.

Weakness: Noisy drive motor. Over sensitive remote control. Timeshift is practically useless. Poor picture quality output, ie: poor color, picture size is altered (squished) in High Definition mode. More...

Out of the box and atop my 57 inch TV, this unit looks nice, seems to be well made and has lots of input/outputs, including a DV link (IEEE-1394) on the front panel. I use digital satellite service exclusively and have a truly amazing picture on my TV, but once the signal goes thru the LVW-5045 system, the output picture quality looks more like analog cable tv. In addition to the output picture, when I view HDTV stations, the picture is "squished" from top to bottom even though I already have a 16:9 aspect tv. I can correct this by ajusting my TV Zoom, but then lose a large portion of the picture. Once the signal goes through the box, the colors are unrealistic and somewhat fuzzy compared to the input signal. So far, I have been unable to edit anything on the hard drive, but am still experimenting, and may be able to edit in the future. I like the way it will read or write most any media, though I could not use a CD-RW to update the firmware. CD-R worked fine for updating. I think this machine has potential, though I doubt that firmware will be the answer. The supplied manual is "adequate". The remote control is overly sensitive in that most, if not all, buttons seem to "DoubleClick", leaving you somewhere you were or one step further than you want to be. I could honestly only reccomend this unit to users who thinks "Disappointment" is a necessary part of their day.

95% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Lite-On LVW-5045 Digital Video Recorder

Strengths: Point-and-click recording to HD is a breeze.

Weakness: Unit has continuous problems with audio/video sync.

Programs recorded to hard drive start out fine, but as show progresses, audio and video begin to slip out of sync. By the end of a 2-hour program, audio and video are often off by 2 seconds.

The latest firmware (191) upgrade did not fix this problem.

In each case deleting the program and re-recording it to the hard drive has fixed the audio sync problems, but you shouldn't have to record everything twice.

95% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Lite-On LVW-5045 Digital Video Recorder

My Letter to LiteOn

Dear LiteOn,

The other month I purchased an HDD/DVD Recorder LVW-5045 from Costco @ $349.00 This seemed a good buy at the time. I am sorry to have to tell you that it has proved not to be the case.

I have given this piece of equipment a thorough testing for a month and yesterday decided to take my machine back to exchange it for another LVW-5045 to see if I perhaps had a dud....In fact, the one I picked-up yesterday is even worse than the one I took back.

"So what's the problem I hear you ask"? Please Read on...

1, The first thing I noticed was that the sync between the picture and sound was sometimes off. This of course is highly annoying.

2, Next is the wishy washy picture quality viewed directly through the unit and monitored on the TV, (NOT A RECORDING), but live. What happens is that when the picture (live TV) turns to a dimly lit scene, the colors as so faded that parts of the screen actually turn Black & White. This will get recorded like that as well. Not good.

3, Crash, crash, crash... Yep, that's right. You make a big deal of the fact that this machine can record hours & hours of programs, but it crashes nearly all the time when you split the file up into separate segments. This is a major problem when I have recorded one particular TV channel for 5 or 6 hours, only to find that when splitting the file, it tells me of a disk error and I have lost the lot. It will handle smaller time frames no problem. I'm not sure what that time frame limitation is, but single films work okay in general.

4, HDD to DVD High Speed. Well that's another little fib. I don't call 15-20 minutes for one film particularly quick, do you?

5, My latest machine....acquired yesterday....has all of the above problems and one more to boot. It would seem that the compression ratios have all been knocked down a step or two. What I mean by this is that the tests I have run on all the different compressions settings perform to a worse standard than the first machine. This is very odd, as the model is the same? You tell me.

6, With this new machine, I have installed the latest firmware, downloaded from your site, and there is no apparent visual or technical upgrade in performance. All very vexing.

7, May I also ask, why you make such a big deal of the NTSC/PAL compatibility, when the unit only runs 110V. I don't know of anywhere that has PAL and is on 110V ?. I would like to take this unit with me to the UK and Spain with ease without purchasing a different power adapter. Further to this, I have a Sony PAL DV camera and it won't work through any of the inputs properly. The worst being the DV input, which doesn't work at all, and which would have been nice. My NTSC DV camera works okay, but not in 16:9 only 4:3. This is also disappointing.

I think my main question is "why is this product out in the market place"? It needs further work to rectify the many problems. It has potential to be a great machine and great value for money if only your firmware updates dealt with all the above.

And lastly of all, having read your customer service notes on your website, I see that you do not reply to individual emails, but rather post the question and answer on your site. In a word, this is simply "Terrible" customer service and I doubt very much that you would want to publish mine, so I am lost for any answers from you, moreover, you have probably lost me as a customer whilst I go and try out a Panasonic version of the same thing.

94% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

The BEST DVD Recoder

Strengths: Real time recording, good price, easy to use, good quality

Weakness: Not seen one yet

Reason: www.tomshardware.com/s...


If someone has on-going problem, quality or waht ever; check your installation, use s-video cable and a good AV cable. there are component (YUV) and composite (RCA) video outputs, and also analog and digital (optical and coaxial) audio outputs on the rear of the unit. It would have been nice to have an S-Video output too, however. On the front panel is a composite video (RCA) input, a stereo audio input, and an iLink connector for plugging in a digital camcorder.



Teknico

83% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Lite-On or Lite-off

Strengths: It played DVD's well

Weakness: Unit would only decode channels 5 and 6!!!!

Bought the unit at Costco. Fortunately they took it back.
Out of box, - I first used it to watch some DVD movies. that part worked fine.
Then I hooked it up to my antenna and it would only decode channels 5 and 6. I tried everything. Even re-setting the software. No help.
Tried to get help from Lite-On. No luck. Phone number listed was bogas. Web site was almost as bad.
Super glad I didn't buy another one after reading other reviews.
Noticed that Costco no longer sells unit.
Wonder why???????

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Fantastic !

Strengths: Easy to use, able to burn music cd's , able to use + or -discs.

Weakness: none

I have only had my recorder for 6 days.
I have not had any problems at all.
I don't have a problem with the remote and it took me about 5 min to get it hooked up and working.
I don't understand how any one could find this hard to set up or use.
I also have a omini and this kills it.
I also got mine on special for $ 645.00 !
I saw it at the next shop for $ 799.00.
So I am very happy so far!

40% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Worst Piece of Audio/Video C... I ever Bought.

Strengths: Decent quality when just using the hard drive.

Weakness: Usually takes 2-3 tries to make a usable DVD. Now, won't eject DVD at all. Customer service is some of the worst I have ever used!!

The unit hasn't worked well since I got it.. I have installed every firmware upgrade which hasn't helped. It actually has gotten worse since I did the last (ver. 204) upgrade. The DVDs I write either don't work at all or have serious distortion on some things. I asked customer support how to downgrade it to the earlier version, but I couldn't get a straight answer from them. They kept telling me to return it to where I bought it, which isn't possible because I have had it more than 2 years and I don't have the receipt anymore. I sent at least 6 emails and couldn't get a straight answer from them. Now, it won't eject the DVD. The FAQ's say if the DVD won't eject, take it to a service depot. Surprise surprise!! The website doesn't list any service centers! I live in the Denver area so you would think that would have one somewhere near here. I will NEVER buy another Liteon product! (I would give it 0 stars if I could!

Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Lite-On LVW-5045 DVD Recorder

If you're tired of your old VCR and a closet full of clunky VHS tapes, then get a DVD Recorder. If you want one with lots of features at a relatively low price, check out the Lite-On LVW-5045. This recorder includes a beefy hard drive that should make TV viewing and Disc burning an affair as comfortable as your favorite recliner.

Read Full Review