I just purchased the LiteOn 5005 from Kmart for $179.99. What a great deal. This unit plays and records DVDR +/-, DVDRW +/-, CD, VCD, and SVCD. Before I bought this unit I was capturing my VHS videos to mpeg2 video on my computer and authoring them to DVDs with Sony's DVD Architect. I have the Radeon 32 ATI All-IN-Wonder video card. One of the aggravating thing, as we all know, is this card is Macrovision detectable. So, I use the Sima CT-1 Copy This! device which cures the Macrovision problem. One of the things I do not like about the Sima CT-1 is the video is processed a little too bright. I found one of those old Radio Shack video processors that I use to control the video brightness and color. It looks pretty good....Well....let me get back to point of my story. The LiteOn DVD recorders, as with most recorders, have firmware that can update recorder system issues. There is a software out there called "LiteOn SMART Firmware Hacker". What it does is hacks the firmware by removing Macrovision detection, making it region free, and adding a 3 hour recording mode on the DVD recorder. To get this software, go to http://ilohacker.tripod.com/ . I hacked the firmware and updated it in the LiteOn 5005 and it works. I now can back-up my VHS tapes without any in in-between devices. Now...I decided to try something else. I took the output S-Video connection from the LiteOn 5005 and hooked it up to the Radeon 32 ATI A-I-W video card on my computer. What I found out was the LiteOn 5005 can block Macrovision on most of my VHS tapes running through it. Now I can back up VHS tapes on my computer as well, with no Macrovision problems. I found this to be very interesting. I killed 2 birds with 1 stone. For those of you who have these units, try it out. Let me know how it works.
