LiteOn DH-20A4P

Advantages: Easy to use
Disadvantages: Dreadfully unreliable

...vandalising the machine. In honesty I suspect I'd think the same as in a year of selling the LiteOn products in a store I managed we never once had one returned, they are becoming the most popular and most reliable make on the market. As if I have not had a fair share of issues model number 3 sporadically goes through a stage that I regard as "a fit". The front panel lights all come on at one, if a disc is inside I get a strange noise coming from the machine then the whole machine just goes into blackness. The only way to return the recorder to life is to unplug the machine from the mains leave it to cool down for a minute before plugging it back in again, when for a temporary period all features work properly. I'm returning this DVD recorder tomorrow and demanding a different type. While I love LiteON products I feel that this may well... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap, can be made multi-region. Works well. PC Pro Best Buy
Disadvantages: Doesn't alter the fact that dual layer media is not cheap! Possible dual-layer compatibility issues with home DVD players

...It's about three years since I first bought a DVD-writing machine for my main desktop PC. This was an NEC model 1300a and was one of the first to handle both DVD-R and DVD+R formats, without paying the somewhat inflated prices being bandied around by Sony at the time. Overall, I think it cost me around £130. Oh! How the mighty, (or prices, in this case) have fallen. I've just taken delivery of a LiteOn SOHW-1693 DVD writer that not only writes to everything that the NEC will, AND with its 16-speed write-velocity it's 4 times faster, but it will handle dual-layer writable DVD media too, and all for £29! Dual Layer? Yes, one of the limitations of early DVD writers is that they would only write around 4.8 gigabytes of information before becoming full. This might not sound like much of a limitation to those used to a CD-ROM's 700... Read review

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Advantages: Good value, space saving, can be made multi-region
Disadvantages: Not a DVD-burner, but very little else at this price

...from outside of your own Region. In theory, and having used up your 5 ?lives?, it is possible to get the vendor to reset this by returning the kit to base, and it?s likely to be a particular nuisance to those with DVD collections sporting a mixture of imports and home grown disks. Even the vendor is limited to 4 resets of the 5 choices, leaving the machine practically unusable after 20 regions have been swapped??..or SO they?d like you to think. I downloaded a natty little utility purposely written for LiteOn machines called LTNRPC which comes in a zip file from www.rpc1.org. This not only allows you to reset the number of regional changes back to 5 every time it gets close to zero, (which in turn uses up one your precious ?vendor resets?) but also allows you to regain the full number of vendor resets too! It does has a facility... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful