Many people will have heard of Lite-On already, but for those who are not familiar with the name, the company is currently the largest producer of optical drives in Taiwan. Until now it was known for internal and external drives for PCs, but with the LVW-5045 that is about to change in a big way.

The reason is that the LVW-5045 is a DVD recorder with a built-in hard drive and is the first such device to feature a multi-format DVD writer. Add to this the low price and Lite-On could have a real winner on its hands.

Making this possible is Lite-On's 'All Write' technology which enables the LVW-5045 to record to DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW. On top of that it can also record to MPEG1-based SVCD and VCD, enabling extended playing times, and it will also record to CD-Audio discs.

The 160GB Seagate hard drive can store up to 198 hours of recordings in the lowest SLP mode (352 by 288 pixels) but this drops dramatically as you might expect once you start increasing the quality; in the LVW-5045's High Quality setting (720 x 576), the disc can only store 33 hours of video.

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Setting up the LVW-5045 and using it present no problems, thanks to Lite-On's menu-based Easy Guider 2 software. The menu interface takes you through all of the LVW-5045's major functions including Chapter editing/insertion, title editing, program or DVD editing, JPEG slide show and photo album creation in an easy to follow, step-by-step way, and it can be accessed via the remote control.

To give you an idea of how quick this can be, recording from the TV takes you through just six steps; select record, select TV, select channel, select where the recording is going to be stored - either on a DVD or on the hard drive, select recording mode and start recording - job done.

The LVW-5045 also comes with Time Shift which allows you to pause live TV when you are interrupted and then carry on watching the live program from the point you paused it. You can also watch the program you are recording from the beginning regardless of how far into the program the recording is, without interrupting the recording process.

A panel in the front of the unit holds the video input port, two audio in ports and a FireWire DV port for your camcorder or digital camera. The rear panel holds all the ports you would expect to see; video output, two audio out ports, component video and progressive scan outputs, SCART in and out ports and two digital audio output ports; one coaxial, the other optical.

Lite-On's LVW-5045 offers a wealth of features including the almost unique combination of hard drive and multi-format DVD burner at a price that's considerably lower than many of its less capable competitors.