LG RC199H DVD/VHS Recorder Reviews? - Page 3

This is more of an exception than the rule. You should not generally have this restriction. Who is your cable provider?

Cox, New Orleans (actually I'm in a suburb of N.O.) It appears sometimes this happens and sometimes it doesn't. It'll record a few minutes than there's a message (I can't remember exactly) that says it's getting information then that it's copy protected. I wonder if this is the famous 'broadcast flag' I've heard about. I can record to VCR fine but don't want to.

Could be. Or the LG could be very sensitive. There are reports of false positives with other brands. I'd continue to test and wait for others to post their results. And perhaps call the cable operator. Altough I can't imagine everyone in your area with dvd recorders having the same problem. It will sort itself out.

According to the reviews I'm reading on the net, it's a common enough problem. I didn't really get this to record to tv but I would like it to work.
As for calling Cox, since the Hurricane 16 months ago, the 'new' employees are ABSOLUTELY no help. I feel very strongly about that!

I'm connected thru my digital cable converter and that's connected to an amplifier to my stereo system. My digital converter has a built in A/B switch so I can record a pay station and watch a non pay station.
When using it in normal mode, and pressing the audio button, it shows Mono but switching the A/B switch to watch the basic channels shows Stereo. Why is this the case? It doesn't appear to sound any different but I'm just curious. It's connected properly and records and plays dvd's and vcr's just fine so far....with the exception of the often refusal to record 'copyrighted' programs.
I appreciate any info on this.

Paul

Disclaimer: I'm a total newbie, and really know nothing about home entertainment systems.

My girlfriend just got me one of these things for Xmas, intending it to serve as a sort of TiVo or DVR. I don't really need to burn DVDs, or do any of the myriad other tasks this device is capable of. I've read in the thread that recording off of digital cable has been problematic for some people.

I'd ideally like to watch one channel while recording another, and not have to set it to record every week, or try to keep track of when some shows have extended episodes, etc. My completely uneducated hunch is that this is not what what the LG RC199H was intended for. So, I'll ask for the opinions of you experts: is this a good stand-in for a TiVo or cable-company-issued DVR? Any thoughts suggestions are appreciated.

Bad TiVO substitute. Get a real TiVO I only have experience with the ones for DirecTV. I like the performance of the real TiVO branded units as opposed to their new proprietary DVR platform, but either will accomplish what you want.

I apologize for being naive about this unit. I saw it at Best buy this evening and have been doing some reading about the LG RC199H.

My wife is nagging me about transferring here Disney VHS library over to DVD so the kids don't where them out. Can I use this machine to record the Disney VHS tapes to a DVD? If so, what variety of DVD's would best to record on? Thanks for the help. Appreciate it!

rlhurst7

I am not real experienced with DVD recording yet, so take it for what it worth, but I do know that I have had good luck copying VHS to DVD using this unit. It does seem to retain all the quality.

I have the HDMI cable to my Sony LCD tv and tried to click the resolution button on the remote, but can't seem to get it to work higher than 480i. Anyone else have that happen?

On two occasions, the unit locked up for no reason and I had to "reset" by holding the power button as the instruction manual said.

Can anyone tell me how to finalize a DVD disc? The intruction manual says how but I can't seem to find the finalize menu. What is the best DVD format (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW) to go with when recording so that it will work in all DVD players?

I have the same problem with Digital Cable from COMCAST. I bought the RC199 two months ago. It works fine except for recording on DVD. I used the Time Recording on DVD feature once and it worked superbly. Then I used it again when I went away for several weeks trying to record the same program week after week. When I came back I had the bad surprise to see that the recordings had stopped anywhere between 10 and 50 minutes from the starts, although I had programmed them for 62 minutes. This happen with all kinds of channel, either the regular broadcast (NBC, ABC, etc.) or premium channels like HBO. I then tested recording some more and discovered that for certain programs (independently from the channel) I got the message "copy protected". I have not found a way around it yet. Has anyone?

I also initially had problems upgrading from 480i. I discovered that I first had to upgrade the definition when playing a DVD. Then it worked fine when using it on TV. However. my RC199 is connected to a Sharp Aquaos 32G4U which adjusts automatically to the signal, so this feature is useless for me.

This is my first DVD recorder,and this unit sucks,it won't record any television show at all.It doesn't even have a dvd screensaver/background,it's just a solid black screen.Unless you guys can help me to get this thing to do what it is suppose to do,I'm sending this back.

^This thing makes me want to stick with VCRs.

-Also can this thing transfer video from the VCR side to a DVD disc in the DVD side?

If you want to copy vcr tapes to DVD, I have done it once and it worked without problems. But the DVD I made will only play on this unit. The manual says you have to finalize the disc, but nobody on this forum has responded on exactly how to do that. I was just running HDMI from my av receiver to this unit and discovered that if I want to record something off Dish Network, I had to run RCA cables from the DN box directly to the DVD player.

I don't currently don't own an LG so I can't help with finalizing a disc. My advice would be to start with the manual. It should only take a few minutes to figure it out and will be quicker that waiting for somebody to respond. I did have an LG LRM-519 for a while and if I remember correctly the manuals are pretty well written.

Thanks, I'll try the manual again, but following the manual the first time I could not get to the finalize menu onscreen. I won't give up yet.

Finalize is under the Home burtton - Disk Manager - Finalize.

I found the finalize menu, and got it to work. Now I feel really dumb.

I did learn that I could click the resolution button on the remote and only get it to work when playing a VHS tapes. I thought it was supposed to upconvert DVD's also, but maybe the DVD's I was trying to upconvert were already in 1080i.

I'm having trouble playing back any recording made in SLP-VCR mode on other VCRs. I have 3 other VCRs which were bought in the 90's (early to late) (Panasonic and Toshiba) which can easily play each other's recordings even in SLP mode. Not even necessary to fuss with the tracking. Yet recordings made on my new LG-RC199H in VCR-SLP mode are unuseable. Picture jumps, sound weak and garbled, even after adjusting the tracking. Is this a common problem on this or other new VCRs? Note: Plays back OK on itself, just not on my other 3 players. Also SP mode recordings made on the LG sometimes jitter on other players even after adjusting tracking. I suspect both problems are related, just much more pronounced at slow speed.

To my surprise it is possible to hack this machine to play discs from other Regions. I have a fairly large collection of DVD's from England and Australia (1 or 2 from France and Japan) and though I loved the PQ on this machine I was always disappointed that it wasn't region free...... well I found the hack and it does work without risk to the machine. Funny thing is that I think this machine plays these disks back better than the Oppo machine I have. Oh and also if anybody else tries this let me know what the original option value is that you will be changing..... I changed it and didn't write it down..... not that it matters because, the machine works the same and will now play DVD's from other countries but, I would like to have it.

Here's the hack.....


This is hack to enter the system configuration information. Once here you can change many aspects of the DVD including the region code. I have included a link with pictures of exactly how to do this HERE

To start the hack:
Click the home button on the remote, goto the Setup page, highlight the 16X9 aspect ratio and enter in this coded sequence: 1 3 9 7 1 3 9

To change the values of these options hit the enter button and scroll with arrow keys until you get to the option you want to change. For the region code hack replace the value of option 5 with the value of: ff

Changing this value will set unit to region code 0 which should allow any region to be played on the player. Hit the return button to save and exit. Reboot the device - all is well now.

I've had my LG RC199H for about 2 weeks now. I've dubbed a few tapes to DVD+R media. None of the titles that I have copied to DVD+R are recognized by my PC's. I have 2 Dells and a home-brew unit. All are equipped with DVD readers and DVD writers. The DVD's that were burned on the LG unit all have been finalized. Does anyone else have this problem? Any ideas? TIA

I performed the hack on my machine and all appears to be working properly. The original value for Region 1 was "94".

Thanks for the original code..... Probably will never change it back (no reason to) because its an awesome plus to have this machine Region Free as well.

I haven't had any issue playing back burned DVD's from this machine and I've tested them out on some pretty flimsy machines too. I don't want to suggest that this could be the problem but, I've often wondered about buring in that XP mode and whether that would cause some issue with playback on some non LG machines; were they burned in XP?

Actually, they were burned using the dub feature on the LG machine in SP mode. It's the PC's that won't recognize the LG burned DVDs.

I'll try a couple of mine on my PC tonight..... Let you know

I appreciate the help. Thanks.

I just tried playing one and it played perfectly fine. There may be a slight incompatibility with you PC's DVD Rom but, I bet if you try it on another DVD player it will work fine.

Re: Playing Burned DVDs on other Players: This machine is my first DVD Burner. I also have 2 vintage DVD Players from 1999-2000 (one built into a pc the other into a tv). Naturally, ever since the introduction of DVD burners, I've been concerned about backwards compatability. All the literature I've read concludes that DVD-R is the most likely to work of all the recordable formats. Therefore I purchased a stack of Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs (per the LG manual). The results were confusing to say the least. The pc results were consistent in one respect: Any recording that filled up the disk worked. This includes 1 hr@XP as well as 1, 1.75, 2, 2.5, and 3 hrs@ATorSP (with either 5 or 10 min chapters). Short clips (30min or less) would not be recognized by the pc. It was more difficlut to find a pattern with the tv's DVD player. Only 8 out of 30 recordings worked (but only those from 9min to 2 hrs long but not all of the ones in that length range). I'm waiting for a stack of Taiyo Yuden Premium 8X DVD-Rs to try next.

Hi all,
I'm about to buy one of these units on sale at BestBuy and I'm glad I checked here. It still sounds mostly good but I'll have to be careful about media and not assume that our old VHS tapes of the kids are permanently archived if I transfer them to DVD with this. That's a bonus application relative to my original goal anyway.

My boss told me that his wife uses an inexpensive DVD-recorder to record shows to RW discs (which she re-uses) - he didn't know the brand or model off-hand, but the key feature is that she begins recording the show at its start, waits 10-15 minutes, then watches the show with the ability to fast-forward through commercials (as the rest of the show continues to record). I knew that hard-drive based DVR/TiVO etc. could do that, but I was surprised that DVD-recorders could do it.

Can the LG RC199H do that trick (assuming of course it can record at all off our cable box)? We don't watch much TV (mostly DVD movies) and we don't have a super-modern video set up, but I bought the DVD of the first 4 episodes of "24" and my wife is hooked on American Idol and we want to make our "addicted" viewing time more efficient.

Thanks!

I am going to try it if I ever get the time. I think you have to record on the DVD+RW discs that then allow you to mark the comercials or somehow by editing the disc. I'll let you how easy/hard it is to do, but I am new to it all. Anyone else feel free to chime in here.