There's something appealing about mini-sized AV gear,and this diddy recorder from Lite-On is no exception. It's an attractive design and will appeal to many for that alone, taking up far less space under your TV than a standard DVD recorder and looking more like a games console.
It appears, however, that the spec sheet has been similarly cut down in size.
Top of the list of notable omissions is an RGB Scart input. We had hoped that by now,with the DVD recorder market flourishing, this would have been a thing of the past,but sadly not.
There is also no Nicam tuner for the onboard analogue TV tuner, which is quite a gob-smacker.
The 'Editing Menu' is very limited as well. You can erase, rename or protect titles and that's it - no partial erasure is possible. Chapter marks can only be added manually while a recording is taking place - ignoring the fact that many recordings are made when the person is out.
Chapters can be set to automatic (and you can specify the intervals), but this is not as useful as adding them yourself while watching a disc play back.
There are good things about this deck as well,of course.The 'Easy Guider' onscreen menu system is great. It is attractively designed and gives a hand-holding approach to routine functions like setting the timer or playing a disc - things that might seem easy to many,but may be daunting for novices.
There is a zoom and slow-motion playback (although there are no buttons on the remote to tell you this, so if you don't read manuals you'll never find these features).
DiVX playback includes a code for VOD registration,and you can also play JPEG,MP3 and WMA files.
Ease of use is good,thanks to that excellent onscreen display and the neat remote.
Recordings can be made in five modes,giving one, two, three, four and six hours of capacity,and there is also a Free Rate mode when setting a timer to fit a programme in an allocated space with the best possible picture quality.
Interestingly, the timer can be set up to the year 2099. We'll let you know if that works in 93 years' time.
