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The ilo recorder already has a cult following.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
ilo DVD recorder: Low-cost way to ditch that VCR


Jan. 9, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   It's time to say goodbye to your VCR. Cheap DVD recorders are here to stay.
   I bought a DVD video recorder on a whim after seeing a Walmart ad. Life hasn't been the same ever since.
   It was by chance that I saw the ad a week before Christmas. I dashed over to the closest Walmart store and paid $140 for a DVD recorder that would have cost $500 a year ago. It has all the standard features of a VCR -- unattended timer recording, multiple speeds, easy playback and fully eraseable content -- along with performance that no VCR could match.
   The recorder is the ilo DVDR04, a brand sold only by Walmart. (It's actually made by one of the large Asian manufacturers and given an "ilo" brand name for Walmart.) It uses inexpensive blank DVD+R or DVD+RW disks and can record up to six hours on a disk.
   At the highest quality setting, called HQ, it makes recordings that are as good as what you get on any commercial DVD. Maximum time for an HQ ("high quality") recording is one hour. The next step down is SP ("standard play") mode, which records with much better quality than VHS tape. Maximum recording time for SP mode is two hours.
   The two other recording speeds are EP (extended play) and SLP (super long play) for a maximum duration of four hours or six hours. Four-hour recordings have about the same picture quality as VHS tape, but six-hour DVD recordings are no better than what I got at the six-hour speed on a second-generation VCR of many years ago.
   The sound quality was outstanding -- it's always digital, even at the slowest speeds -- but the ilo DVDR04 has an odd omission that might make you think twice about buying one: Its designers left out a stereo audio tuner, so you won't get stereo sound when you record a TV show. You can get around this by using your VCR as the TV tuner and piping the signal into the DVD recorder when you need to get stereo sound, but you shouldn't have to resort to such a kludge. (Manufacturers have to pay a license for every recorder they sell with a stereo TV chip, so undoubtedly that's one reason the ilo DVDR04 is so cheap.)
   Because most of us are used to VCRs, the ilo DVD recorder mimics a standard video cassette recorder in many ways. The remote control has typical Play, Pause and Record buttons along with buttons for Fast Forward and Fast Reverse. (You don't have to "rewind" a disk, so the fast-play functions, in forward or reverse, substitute nicely.) Timer recording worked just like it does in my VCRs.
   The ilo DVDR04 has many video and audio inputs. You can connect an external VCR, a digital camcorder (via a Firewire connection -- a nice touch), an external DVD player and an external home theater amplifier. You even get component video output connections and purely digital sound jacks, too.
   Everyone who sees my DVD recorder asks the same question -- will it record rental tapes and DVDs? -- and I always give the same answer. No, it won't make a DVD from anything that has copy protection. But it will make DVDs from your family video cassettes and from any other video source that has home-grown content.
   Unlike a VCR, a DVD recorder has two ways it can record. One method uses DVD+RW disks; the other uses cheaper DVD+R disks.
   A DVD+RW disk works a lot like video cassette. You can record and re-record on a DVD+RW disk hundreds of times -- 1,000 times is the "official" limit -- without having to do anything special. You can set up a menu in the recorder that lets you treat RW disks just like tapes, letting you record over the current content at any time. Or you can choose a safer setting that forces you to click an "Erase" button first. (Fresh disks can always be recorded without this step however.)
   That works fine. The first few times you erase a DVD+RW disk you'll do a double take, because erasing even a six-hour recording takes only a few seconds. It's fast because the recorder does not have to erase the actual data; it simply deletes the table of contents. (The old data is erased during recording, just as it is on a tape.)
   DVD+R disks can't be erased, but you can record on them repeatedly until they are full. Each recording you make an a DVD+R starts just after the point where the last one ended. You might think anyone who records on a DVD+R is crazy, but a DVD+R disk can't be erased by accident. This is a big plus in some situations.
   You can edit the titles and chapter names of DVDs you've recorded, but you can't edit the actual footage. I had no trouble putting together a DVD of family scenes from a couple of old VHS tapes, as long as I used a tried-and-true technique I learned in the '70s -- put the recorder in pause, use the playback machine to cue up the tape, then start the playback a half-second before clicking the Record button.
   Making DVDs from my digital camcorder was much easier. The DVD recorder's remote control is able to control both the camcorder and the DVD recorder, making cueing and copying a simple procedure. Every mini-DV camcorder with a Firewire connection should work fine with the DVD recorder. (The Firewire connection is known by other names, too. It might be called iLink, for example.)
   Even non-DV camcorders should work OK. Just connect their audio and video cables to the audio and video inputs of the ilo DVDR04. You could make video DVDs from still-camera movies that way. Many still cameras can record short videos, and some, like my Sony F707, can record long videos also. Previously, I made DVDs of my Sony movies by converting the files into a format that iMovie could handle on my Apple G4 computer and then making the DVD on the computer. But I'm now able to make DVDs directly from the Sony camera as it plays them back.
   The ilo DVD recorder also proved itself to be a superb DVD playback device. The picture and sound quality was the best I have yet heard. The recorder can also show many kinds of video files (you simply put them on a blank CD or DVD) and will play MP3 audio collections.
   Best of all, to me, among all the extras was the way the ilo DVDR04 shows JPEG images from a any CD or data DVD. The image quality on a big-screen TV will keep you staring at the screen for hours. JPEG slide slows can be adjusted from an image every few seconds to one every minute or longer.
   Another bonus to me as a longtime audiophile: I can use the DVD recorder as a super-fidelity digital audio recorder. I simply feed any video signal to the video input and then use the audio input jacks for my own live audio signals. I have to control the signal level carefully before the audio reaches the DVD recorder because the recorder has no audio level control, but otherwise there's no problem.
   Despite its short time on the market, the ilo recorder already has a cult following. You can read more about the ilo recorder (and find out how to customize its performance) at this Web site: http://www.ss3f.com/ilo/.