Lidl DVD HD Recorder

boy_wonder

http://www.lidl.ie/ie/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20060522.p.DVD

Any use?? whats TARGA like or better investing in a well known brand?

ChilliNuts

Can't help you out but it certainly looks interesting. Please let us know how you get on with it, if you do decide to buy it

boy_wonder

Will do.
Its not in store until this day week so hopefully i'll have a bit of feedback by then.

aidan_dunne

Bought one of these last time they were on sale in Lidl just before Christmas. Assuming it's the same model as the one I bought (and judging from the pic on the Lidl website there, it looks like it is or maybe even a slightly newer version), it's a damn good unit for that price.

I haven't had any major problems with it yet. I've only had two fairly minor problems with it really so far. Firstly, a Channel 4 tuning issue, which is more of a Chorus problem than a problem with the unit itself, because Channel 4 here on Chorus analogue in Portlaoise is really low on the band and just out of range of the tuner in the unit. I managed to figure out a work-around for that, though, by hooking my VCR up to it and recording C4 from the video via the SCART.

Secondly, sometimes when "splitting" recordings, say to cut a chunk of ads off the end of a programme or something like that, sometimes it then refuses to play the newly created "split" part. In fact, usually you can't do anything with this new part, you can't re-merge it to the original and try again or anything, and end up having to just erase it. It's only happened to me a couple of times, though, so it's not too big a problem but I've learned from those experiences and now, especially if it's something important, I usually create a backup onto a DVD+RW before I start editing the recording on the hard drive just in case something goes wrong and it happens again. I contacted Targa about it and they said they've never had any complaints about it or know of any similar issues with this particular model so maybe I just got a slightly dodgy unit or something, who knows. But, as I said, it's not too much of a problem once you make a backup anyway so, apart from that and the Channel 4 thing, I'm very, very happy with it so far.

Check out this thread here.....

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054856999

which was started when it went on sale the last time and you can read more about my and other's experiences of it.

sweetie

It seems to be a rebadged liteon 5045. I also had the problem outlined below with my original liteon (from dixons) which was annoying but I put up with it until it wiped the entire hard drive one day whilst recording. Avoid and stick with pioneer, panasonic, sony or toshiba for a few quid more.

aidan_dunne wrote:

when "splitting" recordings, say to cut a chunk of ads off the end of a programme or something like that, sometimes it then refuses to play the newly created "split" part. In fact, usually you can't do anything with this new part, you can't re-merge it to the original and try again or anything, and end up having to just erase it. It's only happened to me a couple of times, though, so it's not too big a problem but I've learned from those experiences and now, especially if it's something important, I usually create a backup onto a DVD+RW before I start editing the recording on the hard drive just in case something goes wrong and it happens again. I contacted Targa about it and they said they've never had any complaints about it or know of any similar issues with this particular model so maybe I just got a slightly dodgy unit or something, who knows. But, as I said, it's not too much of a problem once you make a backup anyway so, apart from that and the Channel 4 thing, I'm very, very happy with it so far.

Snake Plisken

Got it before xmas no issues with it, the only small gripe I found is that on playback of NTSC material it auto converts it to PAL for my TV, I prefer if I could manually switch it to output NTSC, but you can't, it leads to slight jumpy playback.

Cheers

Snake