OregonAlex
New member
Hi Folks,
If you are looking for a cool gift for someone or for yourself you might want to consider a standalone DVD recorder. I didn't get why these things were becoming so popular until I used one. I wanted to share this with you.
I recently bought a:
Lite-On LVW 5005 DVD recorder from buy.com and I have been very impressed with what it can do, how easy it is to use, the quality of the recordings and the price. I wanted one of these units last year and they were around $300. Looks like the market is now very competitive and the price point is very attractive. I got one for $125. and with Blank DVD-R/+R down to about 30 cents a piece it is very cheap to convert your VHS collection. I liked this particular model because it writes to any kind of CD/DVD media (minus Double Layer). CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/RW/DVD+R/RW.
It also has a Firewire port so you can control a DV Camcorder and transfer movies from your camcorder directly to DVD. I haven't done this yet. However, I can see how this can save a whole bunch of time rendering to MPEG if you are using a Non-Linear Digital Video Editing System. For example, I can hook up my Mac directly to DVD Recording and play through my edited video which will output to the Firewire port and have the DVD recording record. This can save me many hours of transcoding DV to MPEG2. Not sure how many people are following what I am saying here.
Anyhow.. another reason (probably the main reason) this particular model is popular is that people have figured out a way to turned of the Macrovision protection. So you can record directly from a copyrighted VHS recording or from a DVD player (I guess) using the higher quality RCA inputs.
You can also use the machine as a VCR. Recording many many shows on a single disc and if you use rewrittable media you can even reuse the disc by erasing shows on it at will. It also has its own built in turner so you can watch one program and record another. Very cool what $120 buys you these days.
If you are looking for a cool gift for someone or for yourself you might want to consider a standalone DVD recorder. I didn't get why these things were becoming so popular until I used one. I wanted to share this with you.
I recently bought a:
Lite-On LVW 5005 DVD recorder from buy.com and I have been very impressed with what it can do, how easy it is to use, the quality of the recordings and the price. I wanted one of these units last year and they were around $300. Looks like the market is now very competitive and the price point is very attractive. I got one for $125. and with Blank DVD-R/+R down to about 30 cents a piece it is very cheap to convert your VHS collection. I liked this particular model because it writes to any kind of CD/DVD media (minus Double Layer). CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/RW/DVD+R/RW.
It also has a Firewire port so you can control a DV Camcorder and transfer movies from your camcorder directly to DVD. I haven't done this yet. However, I can see how this can save a whole bunch of time rendering to MPEG if you are using a Non-Linear Digital Video Editing System. For example, I can hook up my Mac directly to DVD Recording and play through my edited video which will output to the Firewire port and have the DVD recording record. This can save me many hours of transcoding DV to MPEG2. Not sure how many people are following what I am saying here.
Anyhow.. another reason (probably the main reason) this particular model is popular is that people have figured out a way to turned of the Macrovision protection. So you can record directly from a copyrighted VHS recording or from a DVD player (I guess) using the higher quality RCA inputs.
You can also use the machine as a VCR. Recording many many shows on a single disc and if you use rewrittable media you can even reuse the disc by erasing shows on it at will. It also has its own built in turner so you can watch one program and record another. Very cool what $120 buys you these days.