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The latest model of Walmart's home DVD video recorder is only $98.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
Walmart adds features and cuts the price of its set-top DVD recorder


Oct. 30, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   Set-top DVD recorders are getting both better and cheaper. If you've been waiting to replace your troublesome video cassette recorder with a recorder that captures video on DVDs, it might be time to make that switch.
   The advantages of recording to DVDs are clear. Your recordings can never rip, tear, jam or wear out, and finding a particular part of a recording takes only seconds instead of the minutes it takes on a VCR.
   Even the sole remaining advantage VCRs have had over DVDs -- the ability to record very long TV shows or movies -- has disappeared in current set-top DVD recorders. Some of them can now record for as long as 8 hours on a standard blank DVD.
   When I wanted a better recorder than the one I'd owned for the last year or so, I stepped down in price and up in features. I moved up from my previous model, a Walmart ilo DVDR04 ($124 last Christmas) to a Walmart ilo DVDR05, which cost $98. That's about as cheap as you'll find a DVD recorder these days.
   Although I have a couple of complaints, which I'll tell you about shortly, I was very pleased with the new recorder. The R05 version has a better built-in TV tuner, a much better user interface in most ways and greater speed in preparing disks for recording. It also has that amazing 8-hour recording mode and an additional mode for 3-hour recordings at the same basic quality I got with 2-hour recordings on the R04.
   The R05 is also smaller and lighter than the model it replaces, without doing away with any functions. It can record from its built-in TV tuner or from three other standard video sources (with separate inputs for each), and it has a Firewire (or so-called "1394") connection to dub from a digital video camcorder. Because it can dub from both analog and digital signals, the R05 gives you an easy way to make DVDs from both your camcorder tapes and your VHS cassettes.
   Like any VCR, the ilo DVDR05 has a built-in timer to record multiple schedules while you're away. If a scheduled recording tries to keep going after the disk is full, the R05 stops the recording and saves whatever it could of the program.
   One feature I found entrancing in the playback menu is a thumbnail preview that shows a still image of the each video segment on the disk. The video stills turn into thumbnail videos, with sound and pictures, that play when you select them. This lets you see any of the videos in reduced size before choosing them.
   Recording quality was as close to flawless as anyone could expect of standard, non-high-definition video when I chose 1-hour HQ mode. Dubs I made of DV camcorder tapes were almost indistinguishable from the originals, and live DVD recordings I made by plugging my camcorder into the Firewire input were spectacular.
   At the slower recording modes, video quality slipped a bit at 2-hour SP mode but still looked good. Even the 3-hour LP mode was fine for most TV shows, and the recorder's 4-hour and 7-hour EP and EP+ modes seemed adequate for dubbing VHS tapes. Alas, the 8-hour SLP mode produced blocky images. I'd recommend it only for material you merely wanted to monitor later, such as news broadcasts.
   The R05 records only on DVD+R and DVD+RW disks; it can't use the -R and -RW variety. I make most of my TV time-shift recordings using DVD+RW disks, which can be erased and re-recorded hundreds of times, but I use the cheaper DVD+R disks for anything I am archiving. You can add to DVD+R disks but you can't erase anything from them.
   I have only two cautions if you're thinking of buying this unit.
   First, it doesn't have a stereo TV tuner; the shows you record will be captured in two-track monaural. You can get around this by using your VCR to tune in the channel and sending the video and stereo audio into the extra inputs on the DVD recorder. (I only did this once. It's a pain.)
   Second, the recorder always seems to start out with the wrong input selected. If you mainly use the unit to record TV shows, you'll wonder why the engineers didn't design the recorder to remember the last setting you used.
   In every other way, this little DVD recorder is a charmer, and the price is just as beguiling as the performance.