sludgeguts's Full Review: Lite On LVW-5045 (160 GB) DVD Recorder
As previous reviewer said - it doesn't like TDK media - then why the heck did they bundle a 25pack of blank TDK media with the machine?
Bought my unit last December.
6 months down the line I decided to transfer some old video memories to DVD. Saved them to the copious hard drive without any problem (hooked up to the inputs on the front of the machine) but saving to blank disk was another thing. Didn't recognise anything I put in - TDK, Maxell & some cheapo stuff I bought at Tesco.
Contacted the unhelp line who said I needed a software upgrade & talked me through the process of downloading off their website, burning to CD & installing in the machine - except it wouldn't. That's when I discovered the machine wouldn't accept ANY blank media, DVD, CD, RWs or even play films/music recorded onto blank media.
The hell line arranged a pickup for the next day.
Took a day off (lost pay) & no pickup.
Ended up taking 5 days off work over a period of about three weeks before I had a replacement unit - each time I phoned on the day to confirm & they confirmed I was on the list. I even ended up phoning during the day to confirm. I even asked them to phone the repair centre to confirm I was on the list AND asked them to phone the courier.
THEY LIED.
Anyway. I eventually got a replacement - which wouldn't work. Brand new, never been out of the box & the damned thing wouldn't accept input from the scart - so I couldn't record anything on cable/satellite.
Another day off work for them to drop another unit.
I sent emails to every name I could find on the Lite-on website. My complaint went all over the world - and not one of them had the courtesy to email an apology & promise to look into it.
Looking back, the machine cost £200, it would have been cheaper (and I told them this on the phone) to have binned the unit & bought another for what it cost me in lost pay.
Here we are, 4 months later & it's playing up again - it won't recognise blank media & another day's pay down the toilet.
I'm off down Tesco & Argos to see what HDD recorders they have & I'll buy a separate Disk recorder - but I'm never going to buy lite-on.
As an update.
I shuld have said that the buttons are small & fiddly & some instructions require a lot of button pressing - to erase a recording...
Open the Hard drive menu, scroll through your recordings to highlight the right one, press edit, scroll down a few options to erase, press OK after the warning 'do you wish to erase' press OK again.
To copy to disk.
scroll through recordings then press copy (assuming it accepts your disk!). Once copying is complete you will see the recording plus an icon showing how much space is left on the disk.
The good thing is that you can remove the disk to put another recording on at a later date, the bad thing is if you forget to finalise the disk - until you do this, it won't play the recording anywhere but on this unit.
In the chapter on copying from hard drive to disk, you are not made aware of the finalisation process. A case of memorising the 100 page manual (OK, so a lot of pages are waffle). Halfway through the manual you are given a couple of lines explaining the need to finalise a video recording so it can be played on another player.
Glad I saw that before otherwise I would have ditched the machine & lost my cherished memories (unless I found somebody else with one of these machines!). The process requires five button pushes & five lots of scrolling around.
Maybe these processes are the same on other makes, I don't know but I would have liked to see a small remote with basic functions (play, skip, fwd, back stop, record)& a larger remote (plugged into the machine & using rechargeable batteries?) to carry out the complicated functions.
OK. Took a day off work, unit collected. Returned a week later.
I now want to save some Xmas films to DVD and guess what...
The damned thing doesn't recognise my disks again.
I've had the unit back about 6 weeks, it worked fine for a day or so - but you don't record to disk every day so I don't know when the DVD player packed in.
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