CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO

Lite-On Less is more, or at least not less

The Short Form

$129 / 11 x 2 x 10.5 IN / liteonit.com / 888-854-8366

Plus

•Inexpensive. •Compact. •Good recording performance. •Simple to use.

Minus

•No way to edit out commercials.

Key Features

•Records on DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW •Plays JPEG, WMA, MP3, and MPEG-4 files

Test Bench

Recorded performance was nothing out of the ordinary, though the rare 3-hour LP mode was mostly free of encoding artifacts compared with the longer-playing modes. Progressive-component output was average quality, meaning that video-based content tended to have jaggies - where the diagonal edges of moving objects break up. But this is a typical fault of DVD players. Click here for full lab results

To produce a good DVD recorder at a minimum price, Lite-On took the radical step of eliminating a front-panel display from the LVW-1105HC. A front readout has been a mainstay of video recorders since Sony introduced the world to Betamax back in the 1970s, but good riddance to that annoying flashing "12:00"!

Having no display allows the deck to be considerably smaller than other standalone recorders and gives it an unusually clean look. The only front-panel indicators are for power on/off, recording/playback, and timer-recording on/off. Essential feedback is provided by an onscreen display, of course, which is best called up using the Easy Guider button on the remote. This is a clever context-sensitive control that automatically guides you through menu choices according to the disc you've placed in the tray (depending on whether it's prerecorded or recordable, write-once or erasable). I've encountered this control on previous Lite-On recorders, and it has always proved useful since it restricts your choices to whatever is immediately relevant. Other remote buttons call up more conventional menus, such as for setting up the machine. In all, I never missed the front-panel display except, ironically, for its traditional clock function!

With this recorder and its even less expensive near-twin, the LVW-1101HC (which lacks DVD-R/RW compatibility and the ability to play MPEG-4 files), Lite-On has demonstrated that you don't really need front-panel feedback to successfully operate a simple DVD recorder.

REMOVING COMMERCIALS I quickly discovered that the downside of the LVW-1105HC's low price is that it won't let you edit your recordings, even on erasable discs. You get only rudimentary editing capabilities like naming or erasing titles, or protecting them from erasure. On many recorders, you can at least mark chapters, then hide or delete them - an effective way to eliminate annoying commericials from your favorite TV shows. But you can't even do that on the LVW-1105HC. This makes it easy to use but ultimately less convenient than some of its pricier competition. Fortunately, the remote includes a commercial-skip button that lets you jump forward in 30-second increments while playing your discs. Keep it handy!

VIDEO PERFORMANCE Like all three decks reviewed here, the LVW-1105 provided excellent recording quality in its top two recording modes, which offer maximum disc playing times of 1 and 2 hours. And as with the other decks, image quality decreased as I moved beyond 2-hour capacity. The first thing to go was horizontal resolution, which was halved in the 3-hour LP mode. Despite the lack of resolution, though, this mode provided an unusually good tradeoff between image quality and maximum recording time, as there were relatively few of the digital artifacts common to the 4-hour LP modes in other recorders - things like "mosquito" noise (a roughness or "busyness" on object borders) and blocking (where the picture degrades into mosaic-like blocks). These were much more distracting in the Lite-On's 4-hour EP mode, and the picture was pretty miserable looking by the time I got to the 6-hour mode, especially when there was motion. The other two recorders were just as bad in this mode.

As a DVD player, the Lite-On's video performance was about average. Progressive-scan conversion was typical, which is to say not bad but not terribly good, as evidenced by the usual "jaggies" that affect diagonals in video-based content (see "test bench").

BOTTOM LINE Lite-On has produced an easy-to-use DVD recorder that's best suited for simple off-air dubs or copies of camcorder footage. Best of all, it comes at a very attractive price for a good down-and-dirty burner. But if you want to remove commercials or mark chapters for easier navigation of your recordings, you'll have to look elsewhere.