Lite On LVW-5006 DVD Recorder

I purchased the Lite-On LVW-5006 about a week ago from a Radio Shack retailer for the regular retail price of $250. My interest in a DVD recorder was to download and archive movies, concerts, & other special TV programming from a cable TV decoder/DVR. Although the LVW-5006 can be programmed to record programming just as a conventional VHS recorder, the cable company's DVR box made that both unnecessary and overly complex for my purposes. The video quality of the recorded DVD's is excellent in the SP (2-hr) mode, and although I've only recorded one movie in the 3-hr format, I really can't discern any drop-off in video quality compared to the original DVR recording. I did have some trouble initially with feedback or humming in the audio signal to the DVR. I switched to shielded cable and experimented with various audio output signals and volume settings on the TV, but still could not totally eliminate the annoying background hum. It became apparent that taking the audio out signal from the cable box, through the TV was creating the feedback so I installed a pair of splitters on the audio out of the cable/DVR box and sent one audio signal to the TV and the other directly to the DVD recorder, bypassing the TV audio out jack. This eliminated the humming noise. I continued to use the TV's video out port for the video input to the DVD recorder.

To date I have only recorded on R & RW media (Memorex) although the LVW-5006 is capable of recording on both and - formats. Playback through the Lite-On-5006 is excellent, but more important to me, I can also playback the recorded DVD disks on my Bose 3-2-1 unit and a Mintek portable DVD player I received for Christmas. I can therefore take archived movies and concerts off the DVR, make my own DVD disk, and replay them on my portable player when I am traveling by airplane or holed up in a hotel on business. This is exactly how I wanted to utilize a DVD recorder.

We also discovered another unexpected benefit, the LVW-5006 can read jpeg files off regular CD's and run a slide show of your photos through the TV set. We experimented with this yesterday for some family and friends and found the photo reproduction on the big TV screen to be outstanding.

My only complaint about the Lite-On is that you have to run your TV input through the DVD recorder to set up your recording options and finalize recorded disks at the end of your session. I wish I could perform these functions through the device's front panel without having to switch the TV input.