Home > Consumer Reviews > Lite-On LVW-5115GHC+ DVD Recorder with TV Tuner

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!!