Liteon LVW-5005

A few days ago I bought the Liteon LVW-5005XS on sale from A&B Sound. Liteon isn’t a really well known company, but they’ve been making the best DVD/CD drives for computers for quite some time now. I’ve tested out all the different features and so far I’m very impressed.

I don’t think there’s anything like this on the market today. This one writes to basically every format, just not DVD-RAM, but that’s not a big deal not many players support it anyway. Here are the formats it can record to:
1) DVD+R (Video)
2) DVD+RW (Video)
3) DVD-R (Video)
4) DVD-RW (Video)
5) CD-R SVCD
6) CD-R VCD
7) CD-R Audio CD
8) CD-RW VCD
9) CD-RW SVCD
6) CD-RW Audio CD

It can directly capture Video straight from a DV camera through a firewire/iLink port. It has component video/digital SPDIF audio out. It’s very easy to use as well. It has an easy to use menu interface. I was thinking of buying the Panasonic DMR-ES20. Everything between the Liteon and the ES20 was almost the same except that Liteon supported more recording formats and was a lot cheaper than the Panasonic.

Specifications for this unit can be found here. The manual lists everything in detail. Also found a complete review which might be useful.

If searching for a decent DVD recorder you should consider buying this one.