Customer Reviews

LiteOn AllWrite LVW-5115GHC+ DVD/CD Recorder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've only had this for a couple days and haven't put it through all its paces yet, but in most respects it's a great player for the price, I won't go into the features since they are clear from the specs. What possibly doesn't pop out at you when you first glance at the specs, and which may turn you off to this product, is that it has no S-video in or out, nor does the built-in TV tuner recognize NTS stereo.

Or to put it another way, when you record a tv program, you lose the stereo sound -- it is converted to mono. (No dolby 5.1 either BTW.) Lots of people will be so put off by this that they'll pass on the recorder. Turns out I can live with it as I mostly want to digitize old camcorder tapes from an camcorder that only recorded in mono and had no S-video or Firewire connections. For this kind of old fashioned equipement, the Lite-on 5115 worked fine; recording a great picture.

When I buy an expensive HD TV setup in a couple years I'll no doubt buy a different and more expensive DVD recorder to go with it.

I've had the LVW-5115GHC+ for several months. I also have a LVW-5005, both were purchased from Costco. I like the 5115 because it will play just about any video file you throw at it. The discs don't even have to be formatted as Video DVDs, VCDs or SVCDs. If a video file is on a CD or DVD the LVW-5115GHC+ will usually play it.

Unlike the 5005, the LVW-5115GHC+ doesn't have S-Video in or out. The cable box I have mine hooked to has only RCA jacks. Both will record only in mono if you use the built in tuner. I never use the built in tuner. I use the tuner in the cable box. Recordings done this way are in stereo.

With my LVW-5115GHC+ there is a glitch when you finalize; often it will start off reporting that it is 95% done, then it will just sit at 95% untill it really is. Other times it will start off at 0% and then it will report that the finalize was not properly completed. The discs play fine however even in other machines, or the computer. I was pretty pieved until I discovered that the discs reported as having a bad finalizes seem to work fine anyway. I keep hoping that LiteOn will come out with a new firmware update; the one that came out in January had no effect on this problem.

The firmware on the 5005 can be modified if it mistakenly identifies your source video as copy protected. The LVW-5115GHC+ hasn't had this problem for me anyway, but there is no firmware hack available that I know of if this did become a problem. Overall I am fairly happy with the LVW-5115GHC+. If it had S-Video in and out and a fix for the finalize glitch I would give it a 5.

I bought one of these back in January, eager to finally enter the world of component DVD recording. My wife likes the Mexican food show "Con Sazon" and wanted to record all the episodes to DVD in SLP mode, plus I wanted to start my long-awaited project of transferring old VHS material to DVD.

The unit itself is very handsome, with a bright blue power LED and a nice VF display that tells you pertinent information. It has front input jacks and even has a Firewire input for video camera recordings (though I didn't ever try that.) It supports DivX playback, which is nice (if it could RECORD in DivX, that would be awesome!!)

The first thing I noticed is that the auto time setting feature did not work. We live in an area that has relatively poor TV reception (we use DISH Network for locals) so I let that slide.

I use Taiyo Yuden DVD-R blanks for just about everything now - they are inexpensive and of high quality. I have never had any trouble with them in computer drives, and at first they seemed to run fine in the LVW-5115GHC+, but a few discs into my experimental recordings the thing went nuts when I inserted a new disc. It started buzzing loudly, just like an old Apple II disk drive when it can't read a disk, and wouldn't stop or respond to anything until I unplugged the unit.

After this episode, I went to their site (it took some searching; they have separate computer and consumer electronics sites) and found an updated firmware. It was fairly painless to install (burn to a CD on the computer and put it in the LVW-5115GHC+) and after that the problem seemed to go away.

During the following month I copied over 50 old VHS tapes to DVD, and had no problems. The record quality is quite good - even the 6-hour (SLP) mode is noticeably better than SLP mode on VHS. LP (3-hour) mode is comparable to SP mode on VHS. I didn't bother using anything higher than LP for VHS transfers. The unit has One-Touch Record (very important with write-once media!) and creates a rudimentary menu with each recording session (though the menu picture is of the first recorded frame and cannot be changed.) Chapter marks can either be inserted on-the-fly while recording or inserted automatically every so many minutes (selectable.) Unwanted recordings can be "erased" (they disappear from the menu) but of course cannot be literally erased from write-once media. Once you finish a disc it must be "finalized" before it will play on other DVD players.

The remote is fairly easy to use, though it lacks buttons for functions like record quality (you have to delve through a few cumbersome menus to change record quality.)

A couple months into my ownership of the unit, problems started occurring again. While creating a DVD with several recording sessions on it, the unit would occassionally have trouble reading the disc (which was perfectly clean, by the way) and then corrupt the disc so none of the formerly recorded sessions were playable, even on a computer, and the recorder would not finalize the disc. It just showed up as "blank disc." At that time another firmware was available so I upgraded, but this time it seemed to have no effect. A couple weeks later the problem recurred (complete with the loud buzzing), and I lost more recordings.

I had enough of the thing. I returned it and got a Magnavox MSR-90D6, which I am currently evaluating. I liked the Lite-On's features, and will probably buy another Lite-On DVD recorder in the future, but will wait for the second or third generation unit that has the bugs ironed out.

When I saw this at Costco for $129 I could not pass it up. I was really just looking to replace a DVD player but for the money I thought it would be nice to get the recording feature too. This does not have optical out and no s-video -- as other reviewers pointed out. The reds are very bright and odd looking-picture is not as good as it should be for dvd playback. DVD's don't whow time-remaining so when I'm watching I don't know how much time is left on the DVD.

I bought this liteon lvw 5115 dvd recorder on 11-12-05 and I think its the best. It does everything that it promises. I recorded some old videos from my vcr to the dvd recorder. They came out looking fine on the EP setting. I also recorded some material from my DVR and it came out looking just as good. This new model was only $129.95 at costco. It was quite a bit less than the LVW 5005 was going for last year. You can also upgrade the firmware on the liteon website. Anyway to sum it all up its definitely worth the $129.95 I paid for it!!

First, the 5115 does record discs that when finalized play in both my Toshiba and Sony DVD players and on my PC. No compatibility problems. The procedure to record is very simple when using either the "Guider" menu or the "Timer" for setup. Recording sessions take a matter of seconds to setup. So far there have been no errors made by the recorder. Also, the remote is nicely laid out.

But there are a few drawbacks. First, self-recorded dvd playback is near poor in quality when compared to playback on another player. So, I use another player to play the disks back on-this will add to the life of the laser too. Second, stereo cable channels through "catv hookup" seem to be recorded only in mono for some reason. When the player is on, the blue LED light will light up a small room-white out will help kill the brightness. And, most playback functions like zoom, repeat, and angle are accessed from 1 button only on the remote.

Overall, as a way to record both DVD + and - discs (from tapes and broadcast) the unit is well worth it but not if you plan to use it mainly as a player too.

I bought the LVW-5115 after giving up on my second LVW-5005. I hoped this model would be better.

It still freezes up, but the 5005 froze when I pushed stop while this one freezes when I push pause.

The color is just wierd. It shifts everything toward the green.

It stops recording (some of the time) if there is a gap in the tape you are trying to copy. My old videotapes are full of these gaps. I think this problem results from Lite-on's (similar to other manufacturers') concern that I might copy copyrighted videotapes. So, the recorder is very sensitive to anomalies in the signal. Of course, this makes no sense because the law very explicitly allows people to make one copy of any copyrighted material for his or her own use.

But this is not what I was trying to do, anyway. My old tapes are from TV shows, recorded on my own VCR. This unit is going back and I guess I will try another brand.

I owned 2 Similar Products from GoVideo and they would not respond to any Commands. After a few momths the Drawers would not open. Last year I decided to buy thus product. What a mistake. It would come on all by itself every few hours and eventually also froze the drawer. I saw a low price deal and decied to buy another and contact LiteOn for Support on the first one. The 2nd one turned out to be another piece of trash, also turning on a dozen times a day. LiteOn has not responded to any emails or Phone calls for assistance.

I notized that the LiteOn and GoVideo are Identical in most respects. They have the same exact Face Plates and for all practical purposes are the same. GoVideo also never responded to any requests for assistance.

I since bought a Sony Model and so far no problems with it. My Recomendation. Avoid it like the plague.

I have wanted a DVD recorder for a long while now. I bought one about 1-1/2 year ago and was VERY disappointed with it. What I wanted was a recorder that was almost as simple to operate as a VCR. I thought I would give it another try with the Lite-On LVW-5115GHC. I am glad I did!

This DVD recorder has features galore, but is VERY simple to use. So far it has worked FLAWLESSLY. I use a variety of DVD's and DVD-RW's. All have been the + (plus) DVD's (ie DVD+R, DVD+RW) and have had no problems.

All recording modes, except the 6-hour SLP mode, are VERY good. Use the 6-hour mode if you must, but the quality is low, as expected.

The only drawback I see is that there is no RF modulator in the DVD unit. Yes, there is a TV tuner and "pass-through" 75-ohm cable connection, but to see DVD's you must use the composite (RCA connectores, Red, White, Yellow) cable. This means if you don't have composite inputs on your TV, you will have to have an RF modulator. Not a big problem and is easily dismissed when looking at the big picture!

The "big picture" is an inexpensive DVD recorder that works great. Another feature I really LOVE is that this player will play DivX format video. I can just take a disk from the computer and drop it in the player and it looks great!

I am courious on how this unit lasts. I am sure thrilled with it now. I hope it lasts a while. Time will tell.

Randy

UPDATE: I originally bought this in November of 2006. It is now late March 2007 and it is still working great.

On first glance, this is a nice looking unit. One cool asthetic feature is that the front panel display is behind the silver-looking faceplate. So when its off, you don't just see a black glass area.

But that was the extent of my happiness with the unit. I used component cables from the output to my HD-Ready Sony 36XBR450. The picture looked washed out or too bright, both on viewing the antenna source (over the air) and watching a DVD. The contrast was so bad that it was unwatchable. So I used the composite cables to view the source and the picture was much better in terms of color and contrast. I mentioned this to a friend at work that has the same unit and he didn't notice it until I mentioned it to him. When he compared it to another player, he saw the same thing I did. So he's boxing it up to return. It was a great idea with a nice looking form factor, but since I will be using those both to record from Tivo/antenna and also to watch movies through the component connections, mine is getting boxed up and getting returned. I bought it for $120 at Costco and figured at that price, it would be "good enough" but now I'll look for a unit that has s-video (in/out) and will record in stereo like my VCR does. I did like the fact that you could record in both +/- R/RW. Alot of players only do one or the other. I just may have to go that route.