what would you guys think of this Liteon recorder? Check it out at-http://www.liteonamericas.com/us/ce5005.htm

They are not in all Walmarts anymore. Have to look around. The LiteOn is still sold at CompUSA, Circuit City, and others. Gateway and Daytek also have LiteON clones, or at least have in the past.

The LiteOn 5005 is a nice unit. Hack it, use it, love it.

LS, someone who thinks he is in the know say that it is really hard to get parts for Liteon if something burns out or breaks. Do you know anything about that?

Whoever that is doesn't know much.

The LiteOn units mostly rely on a pre-set kit setup, and are standard board kits, LSI chips, and LiteOn burners. This is a big reason they are so cheap. They bulk buy off the shelf parts and assemble to their own spec. Made a nice machine because they chose good parts.

Ignore whoever that is. They probably think Panasonic is the "bestest evar".

Are there any liteOn units with Hard Drives built in yet. this sounds like a good unit but I love the built in HDs and the editing you can do with them. I am looking into the JVC units with Hard Drives but if a lite On has a HD I might get one of those :)

Brent

LS, I sure hope you are right becaue the Liteon 5005 almost seems to good to be true. I'm really lean hard that way.

The JVC is a better unit. ILO used to have some HDD models, but not sure if they are still LiteOn clones or not. For something as costly as a HDD unit, I'd pony up a bit more and go for the JVC.

There is also the LiteOn DVD Recorder with 160GB HDD (LVW5045). But again, for that much money ($375), I'd pay a little bit more and get the JVC. LiteOn is a runner up, and on the HDD units, I'm not sure how well the hacks work (if at all).

LiteOn/ILO also does NOT have any "FR" modes like the JVC, you're stuck on presets like 1, 2, 3, 4 and other lower hours marks. Pioneer has "FR", but it's not as good on VHS sources, and VHS quality is more important. JVC does both, that's a major plus for that unit.

Any particular model of JVC recorder you would recommend, non-harddrive? I still don't trust the harddrive models- to many problems.

I've had the JVC DR-M10S for 14 months now, extremely pleased.
It cost $399.00 with free shipping at the time.
It was about $260.00 to $299.00 when it was discontinued.

The JVC DR-M100S is the current model. These are about $230.00 now.

I decided to go with the JVC, hope it does a good job!