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Play Mode Picture Quality Tests:

When most consumers see the word 'Digital recording', the first thing that comes to their head is a perfect picture.  As a result, many content providers such as satellite TV providers lured consumers over to digital content by announcing things like 'Digital picture quality', exaggerating 'No loss of quality' and so on. 

As the main purpose of this DVD Recorder is to record content, one of the first things consumers would like to know is what its picture recording quality is like.  When it comes to a VCR, there are a lot of items that affect the picture quality such as the tuner, circuitry, recording heads, not to mention the quality of the tape itself. 

When it comes to a DVD Recorder or anything else that records in a Digital format, the quality of the medium generally has no effect on the picture quality, unless of course it is poor to the point where the Recorder or player encounters uncorrectable read errors while reading back the disc.  The circuitry and heads also have no effect, assuming they are in good working order and do not affect the data being written to or read from the disc.  However, what does affect the picture quality is the quality of the tuner and coder (which converts the picture from analogue to digital) as well as the video compressor, which uses lossy compression. 

In this section, we show close-up snapshots of the picture quality between the different levels of compression (Play modes) on DVD.  We will take a snapshot on a still scene and another of a scene in action to show how well the Recorder copes with different video sources. 

For the source, we used a DVD and played it in our Lite-On LVW-5045 DVD Recorder.  This was connected up to the Lite-On Recorder using a high quality SCART lead with the output set to RGB.  We captured the screenshots directly from the recorded discs on the PC using Nero Showtime's frame step and capture feature.  Unfortunately as Nero Showtime captures anywhere between the shown frame to couple of frames ahead of what is shown, we were unable to provide the same frame for each recording, so we cropped to roughly the same portion of the picture in each screen-shot.  In the motion scene, the camera panned up at a fairly constant speed and in the relatively still image, the dog's face slowly moved about (down slowly and then gradually to the left).

The following image shows a relatively still scene on the source DVD zoomed in at 2x:

The following image shows a scene in fast motion on the original DVD zoomed in at 2x.  In this case, the camera starts pointing in the field and quickly pans up towards the house:

DVD - High Quality

First, we will start with the High Quality mode, where up to one hour's worth of recording at this mode can fit on to a DVD.  The following image shows a close-up recording using the 'HQ' mode:

Despite this being the highest quality play mode, unfortunately quite a lot of image detail has been lost, particularly in the fur texture.  For example, compare the section under the eye to with that of the original.  Just to rule out a possible poor picture quality output from our LVW-5045, we also tried a Sony DVD player and a NeoDigits (using composite cables); all returning roughly the same result as above when we played back the recording.

When it comes to an image in fast motion, the recording turns out close to the original with some detail lost in the flowers. 

DVD - Standard Play

The following image shows a close-up recording using the 'SP' mode:

From what we can see, there is only a very slight difference between the recording quality using the standard play and high quality modes. 

When it comes to fast motion, we can see virtually no difference between recording in the standard play and high quality modes.  With such a difference in image quality between the high quality mode and the original, but very little difference between the high quality and standard play modes, we would recommend using the Standard Play mode, particularly if there is a chance that a further recording may need to be made to the disc later on.

DVD - Long Play

The following image shows a close-up recording using the 'LP' mode:

Despite horizontal resolution being cut in half with the Long Play mode, there is not as much difference in the picture quality as we expected compared with the High Quality or Standard Play modes, besides the picture becoming more grainy. 

When it comes to fast motion the Long Play mode shows a fair amount of graininess.  For example, the left parts of the wall and the top flowers have some visible artefacts which are not present in the standard play recording. 

DVD - Extended Play

The following image shows a close-up recording using the 'EP' mode:

In this mode, we can see a further loss of details with the image looking a bit softer than the Long Play image.  For most consumers, this is still acceptable for everyday recordings, considering many VCRs produce a very soft picture. 

Despite a fair difference between the relatively still frames, the extended play fast motion picture only looks a slight bit grainier than the long play image. 

DVD - Super Long Play

The following image shows a close-up recording using the 'SLP' mode:

When it comes to a point where recording time is most important, this is the quality which can be expected, at least on a relatively still scene.  With this mode, the vertical resolution is cut in half and the recording is made in MPEG1.  Despite these differences and a much lower recording bit rate, we do not see as much of a difference as we expected between the Extended play mode and this mode apart from the whiskers to the right becoming pixelated in this image.

In the motion scene, this mode shows some further graininess over the Extended Play mode, particularly in the flowers.

Budget 2-head VCR

Just to see how this compares with VHS quality, we used a budget VCR which has less than 100 hours worth of usage and a Mitsubishi 3-Hour VHS tape.  We recorded directly from our LVW-5045 to the VCR using a direct Scart-to-Scart connection with the play mode set to 'Short Play' and captured the recording from the tape with the VCR connected directly to the capture card. 

When compared with the different play mode recordings from DVD, this image seems to have a slightly stronger contrast than the DVD's recordings, but with a slightly softer image than the DVD recording's standard play mode.  However, the standard play image still looks a little more detailed and less grainy than the VCR recording.  The following image shows the VHS recording of the fast motion image:

When we compare this shot against our samples from the DVD, again this image looks a little softer than the DVD's standard play mode, but with more detail than the DVD's long play mode. 

However, when we play both the VHS and DVD recordings side by side, there is some noticeable noise in our VCR picture, particularly in relatively still scenes which is not present in the DVD image, so for the average consumer who does not have a high end VCR or a Super VHS VCR with good quality tapes, the DVD recording will look superior in most cases at least using its 'SP' and 'HQ' modes and potentially its other modes as well. 

DVD - Quick quality comparison of the modes

The following table shows a close-up thumbnail of each screenshot for each play mode, along with the original:

The following table shows another comparison of each play mode along with the original, but for the fast motion screenshot:

DVD-R/RW minimum size test:

In the early days of DVD-R/RW, DVD recorders had to write a minimum of 1GB of data to DVD-R/RW as apart for the requirement for the format.  This means that for very short recordings, the recorder had to write an extended lead-out in order to meet this requirement.  As a result, the drawback was that the less material that was recorded on the disc, the longer the finalisation process took in order to finalise the disc.  This restriction has since been removed, such as according to this Pioneer article.  

For this test, we formatted an Imation 4x DVD-RW with quick initialisation and recorded one minute's worth using Super Long Play.  Next, we timed the process it took to finalise the disc and compared the time it took against a finalisation on the same disc when we filled it to the brim earlier in this review.  From our recorded times, the finalisation process took 39 seconds for the disc with one minute's worth of recording in SLP mode and 51 seconds for a full disc recorded in SP mode.  This is a clear sign that this former restriction is not applied on this DVD recorder.

Disc file & folder layout:

While most consumers would mainly use a DVD recorder simply for recording and playback recordings, some users would be interested in using a DVD recorder to capture a recording such that they can edit it on a PC.  DVD recorders have the main advantage in that they are dedicated for recording, unlike PC based recording where it is possible for some background process or application to interrupt the recording process if it starves the recording application of CPU resources.  Unlike recordings made on a PC, this DVD recorder records the content as a DVD compliant disc, so editing the disc's content on a PC is much like editing the content of any other Video DVD, with the exception that there is no CSS to worry about.

There are several ways of storing the titles in VOB files.  On many Video DVDs such as those containing TV episodes, each title is stored in a separate VOB file, such as 'VTS_01_1', 'VTS_02_1', etc. and split again if a particular title exceeds 1GB in size.  On others, the titles are all grouped together stored in a series of 1GB VOB files (since 1GB is file size restriction for a VOB file) with the final VOB file containing the remainder, resulting as 'VTS_01_0', 'VTS_01_1', etc.

So, for this test, we are interested in seeing if this DVD recorder will store each title in a separate VOB file or if each title is given its own VOB file.  The advantage with a separate file per title would make it an advantage for those who intend editing the video later on a PC or plan on copy off the VOB files to archive off with individual titling.  We loaded a blank DVD-RW, quick initialised it and recorded seven titles of various lengths.  One title was 20 minutes in length using HQ to make sure it would consume more than 1GB of disc space.  As 6 titles can fit on a page, the 7^th title is there to see if anything special happens when a new page is created.  The following Windows Explorer screen shows the file layout after we finalised the disc and opened it on a PC:

As we can see from the above file listing, the recorder just keeps appending each title to the existing VOB file; only splitting the file when it reaches 1GB in size.  The 'VIDEO_TS' file contains the two menu pages that were created on the disc, which can be viewed in an MPEG2 editing tool.  The first title begins in the 'VTS_01_1' MPEG file.  When we open this file in an editor and start navigating through the VOB file, the time stamp goes back to zero when we reach the next title, so finding the start & end points of particular title is not that difficult by simply navigating back until the time stamp reaches zero or forward until the time stamp returns to zero.  For titles that split on to the next VOB file, it is simply a matter of merging the two together.  The freely available Mpg2Cut2 MPEG2 editing tool can merge VOB files. 

While giving each Title a separate VOB file may make opening individual titles a lot easier, having the titles grouped together does have an advantage in that it is much easier to recover deleted titles as well as the remainder of partially overwritten titles.  When a title is deleted, the recording still remains in the VOB file, which can be easily extracted using any good MPEG2 editor that can open VOB files.  For existing or deleted titles that are partially overwritten, extracting the remainder with an editor is much like navigating through a VHS tape to find the start of what is left of the overwritten recording. 

The 'VIDEO_RM' folder contains several temporary files that the DVD recorder stores during the creation of a disc, which also remain present even after the disc is finalised.  The following screenshot shows the contents of the 'Video_RM' folder with the file extensions:

Removing the region lock:

Since the first DVD players came out, they are required to enforce a region restriction such that the player will only play discs matching its region code.  As a result, this allows the movie industry to prevent consumers from attempting to purchase DVDs outside their designated region, such as trying to purchase a move released early in the US and take it back to Europe where it is still showing in the cinema.  For example, if we attempt to play a Region 1 disc sourced from the US, all region 2 compliant DVD players and recorders such as in Europe will reject the disc.  The following screenshot shows what happens if we attempt to play the region 1 disc 'Garfield & Friends" in this Recorder:

One nice feature about this drive is that the region restriction can be removed or changed with a simple secret key sequence.  Just be warned that this not an official feature of this Recorder and is not supported by Lite-On.  This means that Lite-On is free to remove this region changing feature in a future firmware revision.

To remove or set the region enforcement, simply bring up the setup menu by pressing 'Setup', navigate down to the 'Exit' icon and then key in the digits 2, 9, 6 and 0.  The following screen will show:

On this screen, simply select the region that matches the disc or select 'Region Free' to allow playback of the foreign region disc.  On certain discs, it may be necessary to select the region code that matches the disc as some discs are designed to play if it detects that region coding is not present.  To exit the menu, press the 'Setup' button.  Once the disc's matching region is selected (or 'Region Free' with most discs), the disc will begin playback:

We can also confirm that a change in the region setting is retained even after unplugging the unit.

Now, that concludes our review of the Lite-On LVW-1105HC+.  Head over to the last page to read our conclusion…

DVD-R/RW Recording performance

Conclusion