Review: Liteon DVD Recorder

Liteon DVD Recorder
Inexpensive DVD +R/RW recorder/player.

VCR’s changed the way people watched and what they watched on their televisions in the early 1980’s. Recording became standard fair and consumers looked to recording features as a requirement in purchasing VCR’s. When DVD’s took over the consumer landscape, the machines didn’t record and so it became an added home theater component along side the VCR. Now, inexpensive DVD recorders and disks are finally poised to take over the reigns, which the VCR has held tightly for nearly 25 years.

The price range for DVD recorders varies between $200-$1000 in a wide range of features and formats. Gaining popularity are recorders with hard drives. The Digital Video Recorder or DVR technology marries perfectly with DVD recording, allowing users to record their shows to hard drive for viewing and then the added functionality of recording a DVD of their favorite shows.

The Liteon DVD recorder is one of the cheapest on the market with a regular retail price of $249, there are plenty of stores offering deals as low as $200. While not a name brand everyone will recognize like Sony, Philips or JVC Liteon has made a robust simple to use set top DVD recorder. I’ve tested the LVW-5001 for the last six months making more than 100 DVD disks of my favorite shows, theatrical and home movies. Combining it with my DVR, the Liteon DVD recorder has made recording television a breeze and is much simpler than my PC’s DVD recorder.

The interface is very simple to use. The menus are intuitive and in less than a minute, it can be set up for recording. It records in four modes, 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour, and six hour with marked decreases quality for the last setting. Since even digital satellite doesn’t provide the highest resolutions, the two-hour and four-hour works fine and looks good on all but an HDTV. The six hour is fine for my three year olds Bob the Builder shows.

It uses standard DVD +R/RW disks so either a permanent copy can be made or you can record over and over again with the RW disks. These are perfect for weekly television shows, soap operas, or the latest football game. The only issue I’ve found is the Liteon has trouble with off brand disks, both the Compusa and Fry’s house brand won’t record on the DVD recorder. Still, it does work with almost every other name brand DVD disk which is nice compared to some of the other models on the market today.

Overall, the price of this recorder should convince more consumers to try the set top DVD recorders. It works great and I don’t see the need to spend more on a higher priced model with the same features.