Ilo DVD Recorder +R/ Rw with 80 Gb Hard Drive, Dvdrh04

Rating:
Summary: ILO DVDRHD04
Review: I got this unit as a Christmas gift, and have been testing the heck out of it since. I had to take back the first unit I had - it produced DVDs that skipped or just stopped and froze upon playing the DVD in either the ILO or another DVD player. It also had problems not recognizing some of my DVD +R disks, even though I had bought ones recommended by the Ilo web site.

The second unit I got is behaving much better. Recognizes all my DVD +R disks so far, and recording has gone well. If you are looking at getting one of these, take a look at the date of manufacture, which is shown on the side of the box. Mine is: October 2004. The first defective unit was: July 2004.

I read the other reviews here, and also read elsewhere (on-line forums) about lock-ups/freezes. Ilo has addressed these issues by providing firmware upgrades for their DVD recorders from their web site. That's one thing I do like about this unit - it is upgradeable with firmware that you can download from the internet and install in a matter of a few minutes. The web site is (for the DVDRHD04):

http://www.ilohelp.com/download2.htm

I can confirm that the firmware upgrades do work and help! As soon as you buy this unit, go to the web site and immediately apply the latest firmware upgrade.

I am still testing this unit.. I got mine from Wal-Mart, which has a 90 day return policy on electronics. My 4 star rating is based on performance so far with my second unit, which so far works as advertised. Picture quality is decent. Especially for the price. I imagine there are units that might produce a better picture, but they also cost a lot more. But more time is still needed before I get confident that this unit will perform well for the duration....

MRO

Rating:
Summary: It would be a great buy, if it didn't freeze up
Review: I should have taken this back to Wal-Mart the 1st week that I bought it, as it froze and you have to unplug it, to reset. But it made great discs, I copied a lot of my VHS tapes onto cheap dvd+rs, and all worked fine, but the freezing (locking up of the picture) was getting too frequent. I bought it in October 20th 2004, and I wrecked it on January 28th 2005, as it froze during 'timeslip' at half time during a football (soccer)game. Timeslip lets you pause a 'live' TV broadcast, replay, fast forward,etc..
It is very easy to use, if it didn't freeze so much, then this would be an excellent purchase, especially with the hard drive of 80GB's, the price $310 was a bargain, it is even cheaper now, but be aware of the freezing. Maybe mine was just a lemon, just like my Jaguar!

Rating:
Summary: This is not a good recorder or value
Review: We bought the Ilo DVD recorder from a competitor, not Amazon but after only 6 weeks are returning it. It locks up so badly when trying to edit it had to be unplugged to reset. It destroys the file when it locks up and finally the hard drive locked completely, won't defrag and we lost everything that was on it. Other than that it's fine.