Lite-On LVW-5005 Review

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Lite-On LVW-5005
2.4 stars
Average rating for this product is: 2.4 out of 5

From 0 ratings and 31 reviews

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hollidayp1's Review of Lite-On LVW-5005 DVD Recorder

23rd May 2006

Overall Rating

0.5 stars
  • Value for money
    0.5 stars
  • Image Quality
    2 stars
  • Features
    2.5 stars
  • Time DVD Recorder Owned
    6 - 12 Months
  • Sound Quality
    2.5 stars
  • Ease of Use
    4 stars
Good Points

Very good user interface; easy to use.


Bad Points

Non-standard, weird format prohibits you from re-authoring or editing recorded DVD's.


General Comments

The Lite-On LVW-5005 is NOT ACCEPTABLE!!
The Bottom Line: Not recommended. 1 out of 5-stars. Why? Because the non-standard (weird) format of the data written to disc makes editing or re-authoring impossible or a nightmare.

I would actually give the Lite-On recorders zero stars but for the excellent user interface. If you do purchase a Lite-On recorder because of the low price or ease of use, my recommendation is that you use the Lite-On DVD recorders only for recording on DVD RW media that you intend to watch once and erase, or that you have no intention of editing, re-authoring, or copying.

The Lite-On line of DVD recorders has one of the best user interfaces of any recording device, bar none. However, the biggest problem with the Lite-On recorders is the weird format that they use to record their data onto DVD's. If you explore a 2 hour DVD made with the Lite-On recorders using Windows Explorer, you will usually find that it shows up as having 8Gb (yes 8 Gigabytes!) of files, which is impossible on a 4.7Gb DVD media.

My guess is that they use some kind of a trick to do this to compensate for bad spots on a DVD. There appears to be two sets of VOB files that are duplicates in content but with different file names. This causes problems when you try to copy or re-author the DVD (which you may want to do if you made the original recording on a DVD RW).
You can copy the DVD to a hard disk, but if you try to use only one set of the files (4Gb) the result will be an incomplete DVD with time gaps, and it may not even play on a standard DVD player.

I have had a total of 4 Lite-On DVD recorders since April 2005, and this applies to models:
Lite-On LVW-1101HC1
Lite-On LVW-5005,
Lite-On LVW-5005A
Lite-On LVC-9016G

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