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| Posted by | Seán Byrne |
| Posted on | 18/03/06 08:54 |
The Easy Guider
When the 'Guider' button is pressed, the following screen shows:
Playing using the Easy Guider
It is not clear why a 'Play' feature is included in the Easy Guider, since it does not seem to provide any handier way of playing a disc than simply pressing the 'Play' button. For example, on a media disc, it just presents a nicer looking screen to choose between Music, Video and Pictures than the default one that shows when a media disc is loaded:
Selecting any option in the menu above is the same as selecting the same option from the default media selection menu - 'Video' starts playing the first video track, 'Music' starts playing the first audio track and 'Pictures' starts a slideshow from the first photo. If the disc does not contain any particular media type, the option is greyed out and cannot be selected.
When a DVD-Video or an Audio-CD is loaded, selecting 'Play' from the initial Easy Guider screen is the same as simply pressing 'Play' on the remote control.
Recording using the Easy Guider
When it comes to recoding, the Easy Guider can come in handy, even for users who are well familiar with all the Lite-On's controls. For example, it is useful for doing a once-off recording in a particular picture quality without setting the quality in the setup menu and forgetting to set it back later. The first screen for the 'Record' Easy Guider option is as follows:
If 'TV' is selected, the following screen will appear:
Unfortunately, the Easy Guider does not display the channel name, but then again as most users are familiar with what is on each channel number, this is not really much of an issue. If any other source is selected on the previous screen or after the desired channel is chosen, the following screen will appear:
Like the play mode selection in the setup menu, the longer the play mode the more the quality gets sacrificed. Finally, once the desired play mode or quality is chosen, the final Record Guider screen is shown in which the recording takes place immediately after selecting 'Go !', assuming a suitable disc is loaded:
If no disc is loaded, the Easy Guider will ask the user to insert a disc:
If an unsuitable disc is loaded, such as a finalised disc, CD-R/RW, etc, the recorder will show the following screen until a suitable disc is loaded:
Setting up a timer using the Easy
Guider
One of the main things consumers find most difficult (besides setting the time) on a VCR is setting up a timer. While this DVD recorder lacks Video Plus+ that must VCRs feature, setting up a timer is straight forward to the point where someone who has never set up a timer before should be able to do so easily enough using the Guider. In fact, as Video Plus+ generally starts and stops a recording at the programme's exact broadcast times, it does not take into account if the programme gets delayed or if the recorder's clock is off by a few minutes, so many consumers still prefer the trusty manual timer entry method where they can add an extra couple of minutes to the start and stop times. When the 'Timer Record' option is selected from the Easy Guider, the following screen appears as with selecting the 'Record' option:
It seems quite odd to be able to schedule a timer recording for the DV input, since generally the only time one would connect up a DV camcorder would be to transfer a recording. On the other hand, if the camcorder is feeding in a live picture over DV, it may come in handy to schedule a live footage recording at a certain time.
If the 'TV' option is chosen, the next screen to follow will be the channel choice as with the Record Easy Guider. After that screen or if any other input source was chosen above, the following screen will appear:
At this point, the user has the ability to schedule a once off recording or one that repeats on a daily or weekly basis. After this, it asks for the date:
After the date is entered, it asks for the start and stop time as shown in the following two partial screenshots:
Should the user enter a start time that overlaps with an exiting timer or an end time that would be too big to fit on a disc, the recorder will give error messages as shown below respectively:
Once the end time has been entered, the recorder gives a choice of recording quality options as with the Record Guider, but with the addition of 'Just Fit' as shown below. When this option is chosen, the recorder will automatically adjust the recording quality such that the programme will make the most of the disc's space. However, this option does have a drawback in that only one recording can be made per disc, unless the recording is very short (<30 minutes). This means that if this option is chosen for a repeating timer, the user will need to ensure a blank disc is loaded before the next recording takes place.
Should the recording duration be too long for one or more play modes, the recorder will limit the selection available to what will fit the full recording to disc, such as shown in the following screen shot when we set up a 4 hour recording:
Finally, once the play mode has been selected, the following summary screen is shown. At this point, the timer is set up:
Unlike the Record Easy Guider, the Guider for setting up a timer does not warn if an unsuitable (or no disc) is loaded, where as many VCR's would flash up a tape symbol or display a message to indicate that the user needs to load a tape in order for the timer to recording to take place. Even when the timer start time is just a few minutes away, the recorder simply displays a message to turn off the recorder for the timer to record. However, even at this point it still does not warn if an unsuitable disc is loaded. For example, in the screenshot below, we had a data disc loaded (which cannot be recorded to):
Easy Guider Disc Tools
Like the Playback Easy Guider, the Disc Tools Guider is identical to Disc Tools screen that appears when the 'Tools' button is pressed. Both of these tools have been covered on Page 4 of this review:
Scheduling and Editing Timers:
Setting up a manual timer
Like most VCR's, the remote has a 'Timer' button, which shows up the following screen:
In the above screen, we had 3 timers setup, including one expired and one that failed due to an unsuitable disc being loaded during the scheduled time (both indicated with a yellow exclamation mark). The Timer screen also comes in handy to see how much recording space is left with the current play mode. It is possible to edit an existing timer by highlighting it and pressing 'Enter'. The following screen shows a new timer entry screen:
It is interesting to see that the recorder automatically fills the fields out with default values based on the current play mode, channel, date and time. The Source and Mode both have the following submenus respectively:
If the source is anything other than 'TV', the channel field is greyed out. Unlike the Easy Guider's Timer repeat method, this timer entry screen will give the ability to specify which days of the week to record if the 'Weekly' option is chosen for Repeat as shown below:
If a repeating schedule is set up, it is possible to specify how long this repeating schedule should run for in the 'Advanced' menu. For example, if one wants to record a TV show that runs for a period of 10 weeks, it is possible to set the period, as shown below:
Like with the Easy Guider Timer wizard, it is not possible to set up a timer with a record time too long to fit a disc or a timer that overlaps an existing timer. If the user attempts to perform either, the recorder will grey out the 'OK' button, such as shown below:
Checking and activating the timers
Once one or more timers have been set up, these appear at the bottom of the timers list. The timer screen also shows the status of existing timers, such as if a timer failed due to an incorrect disc, no disc and so on. Failed timers show up with a yellow exclamation mark:
The free disc space is shown at the top of the screen is based on the play mode of the currently highlighted timer. Deleting a timer is fairly straight forward by simply pressing the left arrow key to highlight the trash can and pressing 'Enter'. The recorder does not give any warning about deleting a timer, which makes it quite easy to accidentally delete a wrong timer, but on the other hand, it makes it a simple quick process to delete several timers, such as a group of failed/expired timers.
Like most VCRs, a timer will only take effect if the recorder is put into standby. Unfortunately as we discovered earlier, the recorder will not warn about an incorrectly loaded disc or even if no disc is loaded prior to the timer taking place. The following screen shows the warning that the DVD recorder needs to be turned off for the timer to record and this time, we have no disc in its tray!:
Once we powered off the recorder (with no disc) to see what happens, apparently it came on during the scheduled time for a few seconds and went off again. It would not be until the user goes into the timer menu that they find out why their recording never took place; however by this time it is too late:
Playback & Content Navigation
I don´t understand the following text in this review about the Lite-On LVW-1105HC:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/263/11
Positive:
Excellent DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW recording quality.
Negative:
Disappointing recorded picture quality with both HQ and SP modes.
What do these words mean:
recording quality
and what does these words means:
recorded picture quality
or is the meaning of them the same?
If both words have the same meaning, then there ist the decent recording quality.
In the review stand this:
Decent recording quality in its long play modes.
Allthough, isn´t that Long Play Modus is always not so good as short play or HQ modus?
Why is the record quality from the long play modus in this Lite-On LVW-1105HC even better then the record quality in the HQ or SP modus?
Friendly Greetings from
Moe Perry
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