Further to some of the early reports on the LRH-890 (2007's replacement to the LRH-790), I can report the following (my unit's manufacture date is April 2007, purchased Sept 15, 2007 @ FutureShop, so earlier models may or may not have the same firmware):
1) fast dubbing of EDITED material - WORKS just fine. Make sure you are using the correct recording media. The manual states on page 52 (bottom of first column):
"When you dub the title on the HDD to VR mode
DVD-RW or DVD-RAM disc, the [Fast] mode is not
available for edited HDD title and Clip Recording
title."
I used a DVD+RW and a DVD+R, and it worked at exactly the speeds reported in the table on page 51. -RW's and -RAM's won't work.
2) FF/RW of DivX material - works fine just as it does with MPEG1/MPEG2 material. Make sure you are using the << and >> keys and not the |<< >>| or the navigator/cursor keys. Also, regarding DivX playback, this unit can play old/odd encodes that my previous unit (Daytek DVR-950s) would not, and scales everything perfectly to fill the screen with no black bars all around (another problem the Daytek had, it could not fill the screen with anything less than 640 pixels wide). And the processing done in the LG unit on DivX material is phenomenal in my opinion - stuff that looks marginal when played back on a computer screen looks outstanding on the LG unit - I don't know what they are doing, but it's definitely working!
3) S-video in: no, it doesn't have it, but, at least in my experience, a good quality composite cable (2' short or less, gold machined ends, ultra shielded, 100% oxygen free, true 75 ohms, etc) produces a sharper picture than S-video does anyway. S-video looks softer, blurrier. I tried a 'blind' test with my wife, she can see the difference and agrees. It might be our outstanding TV that makes this difference due to it's internal digital processing (Sony KV32HS510), but it doesn't seem to matter what we connect to it and thru what - the Computer's ATI Radeon output, a DVD player, the Shaw DCT, all direct in or going thru other devices - they all look sharper with composite, s-video looks blurrier. YMMV, depends on your TV I guess.
4) Picture quality - I connected it with RGB component cables and immediately set it to 480p output. During the day, picture looked great. At night I noticed it looked a little blurrier than the Shaw DCT direct to the TV (not terrible mind you, but noticeable enough to bug me). I was somewhat disappointed. Then I started tinkering and switched it back to 480i, and again, just as my experience with s-video vs. composite, it was noticeably sharper. It's probably the Sony's "DRC" (Digital Reality Creation) interacting with the digital processing of the LG unit converting to progressive - 2 layers of digital processing appear to wash out the picture a bit. On the Sony HDTV, the picture is better and flicker free at 480i, so I don't need to use 480p, obviously the Sony is better at converting, filtering and sharpening the picture than the recorder is. You may experience different results with you own TV, so !!EXPERIMENT!! I was fooled into jumping to what are often presumed to be the 'best' settings, and found it was not necessarily so in my case. Let your (or your wife's) eyes be the judge.
5) It has DivX/MPEG4 recording capability, but why you would want to use it and why they included it other than as a novelty, I don't know. You cannot chase-play your recording in MPEG4 as you can in MPEG2. You cannot edit (split, combine, a/b delete) your MPEG4 recordings. Your cannot copy them off the unit to a disc. You cannot use MPEG4 for timer recordings. You cannot easily switch back and forth from MPEG2 to MPEG4 mode (IE, it's not simple for one time use), you have to to into the main setup and either toggle MPEG4 mode on or off, in which case it's used until you switch it again, so basically it's for manual recording where you have time to fiddle with switching the settings. To make it simpler to use, they should have made the 'Recording Mode' button on the remote cycle thru all available MPEG2 modes and then switch to MPEG4 modes, but it doesn't. Regarding quality, in SP mode, MPEG4 recording uses about 1gb/hour (258hour capacity on the 250gb disc), which is roughly equivalent to the data rate used for MPEG2 in LP mode, but the MPEG4 recordings at that rate are noticeably blocky and look much worse than MPEG2 at LP mode. So, like I said, I don't see anyone actually using this mode a lot, since it has some pretty crippled functionality and no real quality or space advantage.
6) User interface - it is *very* good compared to my previous recorder (Daytek DVR-950s) which was a total piece of crap. Every menu on the Daytek unit was written with different shades of screen background color, different fonts, different screen (off)centering, and poor engrish and navigating the menus to get to often used functions was a pain. On the Daytek unit, the timer settings (probably the *most* used function on a device like this) was burried 3 levels deep in the main setup menu, and once you got there, setting a timer was very painful due to the way the interface was configured. The LG unit is way better, I have no real complaints on this end, it looks professionally designed, is pleasing to the eye and very simple and intuitive to navigate. Timer recordings are easily accessed and equally easy to setup. Settings for daily, weekly, individual days, weekends, etc are readily available if you scroll *backward* when you are in the record-date box.
Another small but key detail is that the LG unit defaults to the Harddrive as the playback and record source when you turn it on, which is the way it should be IMO, but not necessarily so - the damned Daytek unit *always* defaulted to the DVD, and had to be set manually to the HDD every time you used it. Who the heck buys a HDD recorder to use discs as the primary recording and playback source??? LG got this right.
7) Recording quality - MPEG2 mode at SP (2hr/disc, 2.1gb/hr) is indistinguishable from the source (digital cable). No interlacing/deinterlacing artifacts or other similar issues (the Daytek unit had a huge problem with that). No need to go to 1hr/disc, I cannot see the difference with recorded Digital Cable. In 4hr mode the quality difference from the source is *barely* noticeable, you have to think about it to see it, but it's still significantly better than VHS tape, and recorded digital cable in this mode is also way better than the same channel live in analog. I use SP for stuff I want to keep (classic movies from TCM mainly), and LP for daily recordings, nascar races, etc. that will get deleted after watching them.
Recording so far has mainly been done with the Shaw DCT and all-digital channels. But the analog internal tuner on the LG box goes thru it's internal digital filtering process, and it really does improve the recorded picture quality, it cleans out all of the grain from the analog channels if that's your only source, you will not be disappointed with the recording quality as far as my tests go.
8) CPRM - yes, it suffers from this just like all new recorders do and will. Get a video stabilizer if it's an issue. Funny thing though - when I first set it up, I was able to record Movie Central for the first hour or so, then after that it started with the copy protect messages. Must be something about the initialization process that takes a while to kick in.
9) one image quality quirk, this may or may not be a big deal for you depending on your sensitivity to it and your setup's ability to deal with it - black levels are not factory set correctly on this unit. Anything it plays back (it's own tuner, inputs passed thru AV1, DVD output, et.) show blacks as very dark grey, not pure black. This looks to be very similar to what is referred to as the VMR9 bug on PC's that took most video card manufacturers over a year to address in drivers when XP first came out. You won't notice it during the day, but definitely will at night. This appears to ONLY be an issue with the output section of the unit, as recorded material that is copied to disc and viewed on another dvd player shows black properly, so at least the recordings are not affected. The Daytek unit also had this issue, however it recorded all material like that too, so if you copied off and watched on an unaffected DVD drive, it still looked washed out. Like I said, the LG's recordings don't appear to be affected, just it's output. Luckily the Sony TV has multiple picture settings, so I have one set with the contrast up 2 clicks and brightness down 2 clicks which fixes this issue, but it would be nice if LG would fix this in a firmware update. I've e-mailed them to ask and am waiting for a response.
10) remote control - I know it sounds picky to be concerned about the remote, but, again, after the using Daytek unit's disasterous attempt at one, it's pretty important - the LG's is great - no issues at all. Key placement, labelling, and organization are all well thought out. Plus it has basic TV controls too, which are a very nice plus to be able to turn on the TV, select the DVDR's imput and control volume all from one unit. Well done LG.
That's it for initial impressions. I am quite happy with this unit so far (was on sale this week for $399 CDN), and the guys a FutureShop were *GREAT*, taking back the buggy and poorly implemented Daytek DVR-950s after 8 months (I got it for Christmas) and letting me upgrade to the LG unit without any issue at all. That is outstanding customer service!
The REAL Joe
1) fast dubbing of EDITED material - WORKS just fine. Make sure you are using the correct recording media. The manual states on page 52 (bottom of first column):
"When you dub the title on the HDD to VR mode
DVD-RW or DVD-RAM disc, the [Fast] mode is not
available for edited HDD title and Clip Recording
title."
I used a DVD+RW and a DVD+R, and it worked at exactly the speeds reported in the table on page 51. -RW's and -RAM's won't work.
2) FF/RW of DivX material - works fine just as it does with MPEG1/MPEG2 material. Make sure you are using the << and >> keys and not the |<< >>| or the navigator/cursor keys. Also, regarding DivX playback, this unit can play old/odd encodes that my previous unit (Daytek DVR-950s) would not, and scales everything perfectly to fill the screen with no black bars all around (another problem the Daytek had, it could not fill the screen with anything less than 640 pixels wide). And the processing done in the LG unit on DivX material is phenomenal in my opinion - stuff that looks marginal when played back on a computer screen looks outstanding on the LG unit - I don't know what they are doing, but it's definitely working!
3) S-video in: no, it doesn't have it, but, at least in my experience, a good quality composite cable (2' short or less, gold machined ends, ultra shielded, 100% oxygen free, true 75 ohms, etc) produces a sharper picture than S-video does anyway. S-video looks softer, blurrier. I tried a 'blind' test with my wife, she can see the difference and agrees. It might be our outstanding TV that makes this difference due to it's internal digital processing (Sony KV32HS510), but it doesn't seem to matter what we connect to it and thru what - the Computer's ATI Radeon output, a DVD player, the Shaw DCT, all direct in or going thru other devices - they all look sharper with composite, s-video looks blurrier. YMMV, depends on your TV I guess.
4) Picture quality - I connected it with RGB component cables and immediately set it to 480p output. During the day, picture looked great. At night I noticed it looked a little blurrier than the Shaw DCT direct to the TV (not terrible mind you, but noticeable enough to bug me). I was somewhat disappointed. Then I started tinkering and switched it back to 480i, and again, just as my experience with s-video vs. composite, it was noticeably sharper. It's probably the Sony's "DRC" (Digital Reality Creation) interacting with the digital processing of the LG unit converting to progressive - 2 layers of digital processing appear to wash out the picture a bit. On the Sony HDTV, the picture is better and flicker free at 480i, so I don't need to use 480p, obviously the Sony is better at converting, filtering and sharpening the picture than the recorder is. You may experience different results with you own TV, so !!EXPERIMENT!! I was fooled into jumping to what are often presumed to be the 'best' settings, and found it was not necessarily so in my case. Let your (or your wife's) eyes be the judge.
5) It has DivX/MPEG4 recording capability, but why you would want to use it and why they included it other than as a novelty, I don't know. You cannot chase-play your recording in MPEG4 as you can in MPEG2. You cannot edit (split, combine, a/b delete) your MPEG4 recordings. Your cannot copy them off the unit to a disc. You cannot use MPEG4 for timer recordings. You cannot easily switch back and forth from MPEG2 to MPEG4 mode (IE, it's not simple for one time use), you have to to into the main setup and either toggle MPEG4 mode on or off, in which case it's used until you switch it again, so basically it's for manual recording where you have time to fiddle with switching the settings. To make it simpler to use, they should have made the 'Recording Mode' button on the remote cycle thru all available MPEG2 modes and then switch to MPEG4 modes, but it doesn't. Regarding quality, in SP mode, MPEG4 recording uses about 1gb/hour (258hour capacity on the 250gb disc), which is roughly equivalent to the data rate used for MPEG2 in LP mode, but the MPEG4 recordings at that rate are noticeably blocky and look much worse than MPEG2 at LP mode. So, like I said, I don't see anyone actually using this mode a lot, since it has some pretty crippled functionality and no real quality or space advantage.
6) User interface - it is *very* good compared to my previous recorder (Daytek DVR-950s) which was a total piece of crap. Every menu on the Daytek unit was written with different shades of screen background color, different fonts, different screen (off)centering, and poor engrish and navigating the menus to get to often used functions was a pain. On the Daytek unit, the timer settings (probably the *most* used function on a device like this) was burried 3 levels deep in the main setup menu, and once you got there, setting a timer was very painful due to the way the interface was configured. The LG unit is way better, I have no real complaints on this end, it looks professionally designed, is pleasing to the eye and very simple and intuitive to navigate. Timer recordings are easily accessed and equally easy to setup. Settings for daily, weekly, individual days, weekends, etc are readily available if you scroll *backward* when you are in the record-date box.
Another small but key detail is that the LG unit defaults to the Harddrive as the playback and record source when you turn it on, which is the way it should be IMO, but not necessarily so - the damned Daytek unit *always* defaulted to the DVD, and had to be set manually to the HDD every time you used it. Who the heck buys a HDD recorder to use discs as the primary recording and playback source??? LG got this right.
7) Recording quality - MPEG2 mode at SP (2hr/disc, 2.1gb/hr) is indistinguishable from the source (digital cable). No interlacing/deinterlacing artifacts or other similar issues (the Daytek unit had a huge problem with that). No need to go to 1hr/disc, I cannot see the difference with recorded Digital Cable. In 4hr mode the quality difference from the source is *barely* noticeable, you have to think about it to see it, but it's still significantly better than VHS tape, and recorded digital cable in this mode is also way better than the same channel live in analog. I use SP for stuff I want to keep (classic movies from TCM mainly), and LP for daily recordings, nascar races, etc. that will get deleted after watching them.
Recording so far has mainly been done with the Shaw DCT and all-digital channels. But the analog internal tuner on the LG box goes thru it's internal digital filtering process, and it really does improve the recorded picture quality, it cleans out all of the grain from the analog channels if that's your only source, you will not be disappointed with the recording quality as far as my tests go.
8) CPRM - yes, it suffers from this just like all new recorders do and will. Get a video stabilizer if it's an issue. Funny thing though - when I first set it up, I was able to record Movie Central for the first hour or so, then after that it started with the copy protect messages. Must be something about the initialization process that takes a while to kick in.
9) one image quality quirk, this may or may not be a big deal for you depending on your sensitivity to it and your setup's ability to deal with it - black levels are not factory set correctly on this unit. Anything it plays back (it's own tuner, inputs passed thru AV1, DVD output, et.) show blacks as very dark grey, not pure black. This looks to be very similar to what is referred to as the VMR9 bug on PC's that took most video card manufacturers over a year to address in drivers when XP first came out. You won't notice it during the day, but definitely will at night. This appears to ONLY be an issue with the output section of the unit, as recorded material that is copied to disc and viewed on another dvd player shows black properly, so at least the recordings are not affected. The Daytek unit also had this issue, however it recorded all material like that too, so if you copied off and watched on an unaffected DVD drive, it still looked washed out. Like I said, the LG's recordings don't appear to be affected, just it's output. Luckily the Sony TV has multiple picture settings, so I have one set with the contrast up 2 clicks and brightness down 2 clicks which fixes this issue, but it would be nice if LG would fix this in a firmware update. I've e-mailed them to ask and am waiting for a response.
10) remote control - I know it sounds picky to be concerned about the remote, but, again, after the using Daytek unit's disasterous attempt at one, it's pretty important - the LG's is great - no issues at all. Key placement, labelling, and organization are all well thought out. Plus it has basic TV controls too, which are a very nice plus to be able to turn on the TV, select the DVDR's imput and control volume all from one unit. Well done LG.
That's it for initial impressions. I am quite happy with this unit so far (was on sale this week for $399 CDN), and the guys a FutureShop were *GREAT*, taking back the buggy and poorly implemented Daytek DVR-950s after 8 months (I got it for Christmas) and letting me upgrade to the LG unit without any issue at all. That is outstanding customer service!
The REAL Joe