DVD Recording on the Cheap
Looking for a cheap standalone DVD Recorder? iLo has two offerings, the DVR04, and the DVRHD04. Both can be found at Wal-Mart. Since I own the DVR04, I'll ramble about that unit here. iLo DVR04 Compatibility - +R/+RW compatible. Be aware that not all media will work with these units. Of all the media I've tried, all worked just fine with the recording aspect, but when it came time to playback on either my computer, or DVD players, it was a no go. Amazingly though, when it did play back, I got excellent results on an old player which rarely accepts recorded media. iLo has a list of compatible media. Follow this advice since it's a safe bet iLo tested these with their products. Not listed is HP media, which has performed fine on my unit.
Menu System and Remote - The on-screen menu system isn't very intuitive. In fact it's borderline crap! I don't know who they have designing these things, but perhaps they should be forced to use it themselves. Not very much thought went into the layout, and navigation through what seems like endless menus just to get where you want, really is a down point to this unit. The remote supplied with the unit has buttons made for 6 year old kids. Small and close together. Not to mention they have related buttons scattered throughout the remote. A big question with me is always: can I control the unit without the remote? The answer here is a big fat no!
Video Quality - Ok, enough of my bitching. Record up to 6 hours of video. At this setting, the quality is equivalent to VCD or a VHS recording at LP. At it's highest quality, the video was as expected. I've read someplace that people are having sync problems, but not here.
Bottom Line - If you can tolerate the remote control and on-screen menu system (if that's what they call it), then it would be a $149 well spent. If you desire the ability to do editing of video on the unit itself, then look elsewhere and plan on spending about twice the amount. I've had the unit for over two months and can honestly say, it was the best $149 I spent in a long, long time. You can search out reviews or comment on this unit and read some pretty outlandish things. It seems people were expecting a TiVo clone or something. Wrong!! It's a DVD recorder. Plain and simple.
Interesting Info - Looking for a region free hack, mode, whatever you want to call it? Find it here.
- Supposedly iLo is LiteOn, which makes sense since it's been reported that if you open your case, what you'll find is a LiteOn dvd recorder minus the case, sitting inside your DVDR04. Also, it has been claimed that you can replace that unit with another 4X burner without problems. Now you know where all those LiteOn 4X burners went? ;) Whether or not you can replace it with a different speed burner, I don't know. To further suspicion, Wal-Mart has this little blurb:
About ilo:
Premium ilo products are manufactured exclusively for Wal-Mart by one of the world's leading producers of high-quality consumer electronics. - There are reports of the unit being "too sensitive" to Macrovision, shutting down before recording the entire tape. This is only a spotty issue since some people have no problems at all, as it depends on the VCR itself. iLo has promised a firmware update in December '04, but as of this writing, nothing yet. What will happen is you'll have to burn the firmware update to CD-R, then load it into your iLo recorder where the upgrade will take place..
Copyright © 2002-2006 TWEAK.US
All rights reserved.
All trademarks and logos are © of their respective owners. Any
duplication of this site, its contents, and the graphics contained
within is strictly prohibited.
The information provided on this site is for reference only. Use it at
your own risk.
Icons throughout this site are used with permission from:
©
2006 Iconaholic Design Ltd. © 2003-2005 FOOOD's Icons
|
|
TWEAK.US
