Lite-On LVW-5045 Review – Standalone HDD+DVD Recorder

While most recent VCRs automatically present a set up wizard when powered up for the first time, the Lite-On Recorder does not present anything different or special for its initial power up.  This does have the advantage in that one can immediately start playing DVDs as with any other DVD player, however as with any other VCR, terrestrial TV channels must be tuned in before recording from them is possible and the time & date must be set before scheduled recordings can be performed.

Whenever the Recorder is powered up from standby, it welcomes the user with the following screen:

After the above welcome screen appears, the Recorder will show white noise since at this time there are no terrestrial channels tuned in.  Setting up the Recorder for the first time is fairly straight forward.  Simply press setup and the following screen appears:

When the setup button is pressed, the initial highlighted option is the top thumbnail in the left column.  A thumbnail can be selected by using the up & down arrows.  As each thumbnail is selected, the appropriate options appear in the middle column.  To select something in the middle section (such as shown in the above image), simply press right to navigate in.  Most of the options in the middle section also have sub-options.  Pressing left navigates back out again.  We find this handier than most VCRs where each sub-menu is shown on a new screen.

The first adjustments we would recommend are to set the correct video output, date, time, aspect ratio and audio output.  In the above case, a SCART to SVHS adaptor was used, so without selecting a correct option, a black and white image would be presented.  Be careful not to select ‘Progressive’ as most TV’s do no support a progressive image and this may result in a blank screen if chosen.  If the analogue stereo outputs are connected up to a stereo TV or speakers, no Audio adjustments are necessary.  The Aspect ratio comes in a choice of 16:9, 4:3 Pan and 4:3 Letter Box. 

As there are quite a lot of screens within the setup menu, a rundown of the setup menus can be viewed in the following video clip. 

The contents of the setup menus, submenus and options are as follows:

System
          Video Output
                   Component
                   SCART S-Video
                   SCART RGB
                   Progressive
          TV Type
                   Choice of NTSC or PAL
          Clock Format
                   M/D/Y ‘“ 12Hr
                   D/M/Y ‘“ 12Hr
                   Y/M/D ‘“ 12Hr
                   M/D/Y ‘“ 24Hr
                   D/M/Y ‘“ 24Hr
                   Y/M/D ‘“ 24Hr
          Date
                   –/–/—- (depends on Clock Format)
          Time
                   –:–:–
          Auto-sleep
                   Choice of Off, 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes
          Restore
                   Restore

Language
          OSD
                   Choice of English, (Chinese), Frané§ais, Deutsch, 
                   Italia,Espaé±ol, Nederlands, Dansk, Suomi, Svenska, Polski,
                   Norsk, Eλληvıĸé³é§ or Portuguéªs
          Menu
                   Choice of English, Chinese, French, German, Italian,
                   Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Finn,
                   Portuguese, Norwegian or Greek
          Audio
                   Choice of English, Chinese, French, German, Italian,
                   Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Finn,
                   Portuguese, Norwegian or Greek
          Subtitle                  
                   Choice of English, Chinese, French, German, Italian,
                   Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Finn,
                   Portuguese, Norwegian, Greek or Off

Playback
          Aspect Ratio
                   Choice of 16:9 Wide, 4:3 Pan or 4:3 L. Box
          Parental Lock
                   Choice of Off, 1: Kid Safe, 2: G, 3: PG, 4: PG-13,
                   5: PG-R, 6: R, 7: NC-17 or 8: Adult
          Password
                   Change Password
          Slide Time
                   Off, Interval choice of 3 to 99 seconds (in single steps)
          VCD PBC
                   Choice of On or Off

Record
          Mode
                   Choice of HQ, SP, LP, EP or SLP
          Chapter Mark
                   Choice of Off, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 minutes

Audio
          Digital Out
                   Choice of PCM or Bit Stream
          DTS Out
                   Choice of On or Off
          Surround
                   Choice of Stereo, DOLBY or DTS
          TV Audio
                   Choice of Stereo, Main, SAP (sub) or Mono
          MPEG
                   Choice of PCM or Bit Stream

TV Tuner
          TV Signal Antenna
                   Choice of Antenna, Cable or Auto
          Country
                   Choice of Eire, Germany, Netherlands, Norway,
                   Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria,
                   Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, France, Luxembourg
                   or Belgium.
          Utilities
                   Scan Channel
                   Edit Channel
          Fine Tune
                   -24 to 24 (in single steps)

Exit

Tuning in terrestrial TV channels

As with setting up a VCR for the first time, terrestrial TV channels must be tuned in before it is possible to begin making a recording from one.  Like most modern VCRs, this Recorder features automatic tuning, so all the user has to do is sort out the channels it finds as well as enter their names.

The tuning menu can be accessed by pressing ‘Setup’ and navigating down to the ‘TV’ thumbnail.  Select the TV Signal type, country and select ‘Scan Channel’ within the ‘Utilities’ sub-menu.  The Recorder will spend a few minutes seeking out the channels.

Once the Recorder finishes tuning in its channels, the list can be edited by selecting ‘Edit Channel’, as shown in the following screenshot.

While the channel editor menu has some useful features, there are at least two useful features missing from this.  These are the ability to automatically pick up the channel names as well as the ability to manually tune a channel.  Then again, entering a channel name is fairly straight forward assuming there is a TV handy to compare against the TV’s own tuned channels.  Fine tuning channels is possible also. 

Although there is no option to manually tune in channels, the Recorder does pick up even very weak channels during its automatic scan.  For example in our area, we can pick up very weak channels from a far away television transmission mast and the Recorder had no problem picking these up during its scan:

The lack of manual tuning does have a drawback in that it is not possible to simply add a channel should a new one start up, especially when it comes to cable TV or an area where it is common to see channels frequently start up and leave.  The only way to add a new channel is to do a full scan again, which also means having to resort the channels as well as name them again. 

Setting the recording options

This Recorder gives a choice of five recording modes.  These range from High Quality to Super Long Play.  When it comes to recording a programme directly on to its hard drive just to watch once and delete, the High Quality mode would be ideal.  However, if the user wants to transfer their recording to DVD at a later stage or wishes to record directly to DVD, the recording quality is important since the DVD Recorder cannot re-encode an already recorded programme to fit to DVD and longer recording modes result in lower quality recordings. 

Our recommendations would be as follows:

The recording options can be set by pressing ‘Setup’, navigating down to the ‘Record’ thumbnail and pressing the ‘Right’ arrow to select the sub-menu:

The Chapter Mark allows the automatic marking of a chapter at a given interval.  The advantage with automatic marking is the ability to quickly navigate through a lengthy recording during playback.  As the fast-forward feature only goes up to 16X, it would take about 4 minutes to navigate through an hours worth of recording, however by marking chapters at ever 5 minute interval, skipping an hours worth of content can be quickly done by pressing the ‘Next Chapter’ button 12 times.  Chapter marks can be easily removed later such as to only place marks at certain parts of a recording.