Liteon 5045

[robman]

Hi Team, This is my first post. I am looking for a hdd tv recorder. I have looked at the Pionerer dvr 520h, panasonic dmr e85h and the liteon 5045. As far as value for money the liteon leaves the others for dead. My question is am I missing something here is the liteon comparable to the others? The liteon has twice the size hard drive as well.

My main use will be to record programs to watch at a more conveinient time. Plus viewing the odd dvd. Can all of the above mentioned machines be programmed to record different programs at different times of the day on different channels, note not at the same time, I know they can only record one program at a time.

Any help you can give me in making the correct decision would be greatly appreciated.
Regards Robman

[jokiin]

I've been using the LVW5045 for over a month now and the performance is excellent, very easy to use, reliable results and at a much more realistic price than some others on the market. There are cheaper units on the market but they don't measure up to this one. I would say that it would be very hard to justify spending more money than this on a HDD DVD recorder.

It can do what you are asking also, if you decide you want to keep something that you have recorder to the hard drive you can edit any ads etc out and then burn to disc, works very well.

[robman]

Hi jok11n, how easy is the unit to set pre-recording times etc, and what is Easy Guider 2? Do you have any links to reviews that I could read?
Regards Robman

[jokiin]

Easy guider 2 is just an update to the GUI that they used on previous models, timer recording is dead simple, one of the easier ones that I have ever used.

[robman]

jok11n, Hi once again, have you experienced any of the out of sync problems that are mentioned in some other reveiws? A couple of people have said that their recordings are out of sync if they record over two hours onto the HDD. I am about to order one of these units and I just want to be sure they are trouble free, as much as is possible with electronics.
Regards Robman

[jokiin]

I actually had someone else query this, not sure where the reviews are that mention this but I have not been able to replicate this issue at all, I've done recordings for 12 hours straight and they were in sync the whole way through, the only think I could think of is that it may have been an NTSC issue, as the frame rates are different between NTSC and PAL (I'm assuming that the reviews that mention this issue were from somewhere that uses NTSC)

[robman]

Hi jok11n, Mate I have ordered a 5045, I can't wait to get it my hands. I live in Tamworth NSW so it takes a few days. The only annoying thing is that it does not have the ability to work out the austar channels itself, so you still have to select the austar channel you wish to record. Maybe there is a solution to that I am not aware of?
Anyway, thank you so much for your help, forums like this make for much more informed decisions. the 5045 was $200 cheaper than any of the best deals I could get on comparative units.
Regards Robman

[jokiin]

Would be nice if it could change the channel on the input device :D , I've done some recording of Foxtel and the quality is very good.

[Watcher]

Let us know how you go with this after you've had a good play with it Robman.
This thread has me really interested in this machine now. :)

[jokiin]

To anyone that has one of these or is thinking about getting one might be interested to know that LiteOn are currently working on a firmware update to allow more media types (this is something I requested from LiteOn engineers when I met with them in January at the CES in Las Vegas and they were more than happy to do it, they actually offered before I had a chance to ask :) ), I have supplied a quantity of blank media to LiteOn in Taiwan so that they can give us an update that will specificly add a wider range of blank media choices than currently available to LiteOn DVD recorders. A DVD recorder differs slightly to a DVD player in regard to firmware, there are two updates required to achieve this, one update is for the encoder/decoder (LSI in the case of LiteOn recorders) and another for the drive itself. LiteOn have a distinct advantage obviously because they make their own drives, most manufacturers buy the drive off another supplier and they pay a lot of money to have new media added and are often reluctant to do this. I think this gives the LiteOn a distinct advantage when compared to other recorders in the market as anyone that has a PC DVD burner might already be aware, media changes often and the results you achieve with brand x media this time might not be the same next time as media changes etc occur.

[dvdude]

How fussy are they with regards to media?
Will the cheap Princos work okay? Or do I need to buy 'name' brand style like Taiyo Yuden, TDK, Verbatim etc

[jokiin]

How fussy are they with regards to media?
Will the cheap Princos work okay? Or do I need to buy 'name' brand style like Taiyo Yuden, TDK, Verbatim etc

I haven't tried Princos but I suspect that they would actually be ok, it's only +R discs that it is a bit fussy with, all the -R discs that I have tried have worked without a problem.

[robman]

Hi Team, just reporting back. I have had the 5045 for about two weeks now and it is sensational. Picture replay quality is as good as the original signal. I have not experienced any of the out of sync problems mentioned in various forums, I think that is a format issue that does not apply to PAL. The simple controls are very easy to use and understand.

I have not had time to play with the tuner to get all the stations worked out.

If you are after a reasonably priced hard drive dvd player/ recorder I can give this one the big thumbs up.
Regards Robman

[jokiin]

Agreed, I have actually had a synch issue once, which I also couldn't replicate but it seemed to relate to a glitch in the input which looked to skip a frame during the recording. This was in a long recording and as I said I have only had it once and have not been able to duplicate the fault, so far I've done over 200 hours of recording in SP mode so I would say that it is not that bad to have experienced this once only. I did mention this to the distributor yesterday and got confirmation that the lip sync issue that has been mentioned is being investigated as part of the next firmware update.

[fatsatman]

I've been using the LVW5045 for over a month now and the performance is excellent, very easy to use, reliable results and at a much more realistic price than some others on the market. There are cheaper units on the market but they don't measure up to this one. I would say that it would be very hard to justify spending more money than this on a HDD DVD recorder.

It can do what you are asking also, if you decide you want to keep something that you have recorder to the hard drive you can edit any ads etc out and then burn to disc, works very well.

Hi jok11n,in reference to the editing,,i have downloaded the manual and only found that you can SPLIT the title and then Merge two titles,,,is this how you edit out ad's etc??and if so,does this allow you to cut out bits ,to the second?what firmware are you using and is it easy to update?
i am seriously looking at buying one and i too cant justify the price of the competition,,,i own a lvw5005 and love it,,it too suffers from being picky with +r's but will take just about any -r's.
this satisfaction in the 5005 is another reasoin im looking at the 5045.

[jokiin]

It's perhaps a little easier to use than reading the manual might suggest, I downloaded the manual as I never got one (my unit was the first sample into the country) and it seemed a bit confusing, once I actually started using the unit I found it quite easy. You can edit on the machine quite easily and cut and join, I do mine on the PC just because I prefer to do it that way. You will find that there is a wider range of +R media that will work with the 5045 than the 5005, I'm still on the original firmware, the later firmwares that have been made available on the LiteOn website are not for the same hardware version that we have, there is a specific firmware being done right now that is specific to our model, a focus of this firmware is increased +R media support, there is also an update for the 5005 for increased media support in the works at the moment also.

[mykael]

Got one a couple of days ago. Nice unit.

Couple of little oddities I noticed:

The tuner appears to be set to have some 70 or so preset frequencies, and they change depending upon whether you pick antenna or cable. Worked fine for me (we get free to air rebroadcast over cable where I am) after some shuffling, but there 1 channel (at 492 MHz) that it can't get. There appears to be no way of manually tunning a station into it.

Have patience with Start Scan. I got a little carried away pressing buttons trying to stop it, and it buffered them all until it was good and ready to run them (all of them). Left the tuner in an odd state (I think it as still scanning). Power off required to sort things out.

The remote auto repeating and the occasional lag in responding to buttons is something to be weary of.

That said it's a good unit, does what it claims to and is definetly a good purchase for the price. No more fiddling around trying to find blank VCR tapes and/or wondering what's on them. Quality is a lot better too.

Mik

[steviebabe98]

Hiya ive just bought a 5045 and it looks as though its gonna be a great piece of kit. I am having a problem though I set up the videoplus and when it started to record. I decided to change channels on my TV but got a weird scrolling screen on all channels. any ideas what ive done wrong ? im assuming ive done something wrong on connecting up my tv, satellite, and 5045. can anyone help. cheers Steve

[jokiin]

I'm guessing you're in England (or thereabouts???) we don't have videoplus here (Australia) so I can't offer any advice unfortunately.

[steviebabe98]

Hiya JOK11n, its just the same when I record on timer or just straight recording. which leads me to think ive got the setup wrong. thanks for replying by the way.