Last time I checked, there were five different recordable-DVD disc types — a potential compatibility catastrophe. Wouldn’t it be great if someone invented a player that could play all kinds of DVDs? Even better, what if it was also a recorder?
LG, apparently able to read my mind, created the LRY-517, billed as the world’s first “universal” DVD recorder. Besides being the first to both play and record DVD-RAMs along with DVD-R/RWs, DVD+R/RWs, and even DVD+R DLs (double layer), it can also play DVD-Video discs, audio CDs, and CD-R/RWs as well as read JPEG, WMA, MP3, and DivX files. Wait! There’s more! The deck boasts slots for eight different memory-card types and includes a four-head VCR. Whew. All in all, this recorder is about as universal as it gets. Well, not quite — it can’t record to CD-R or -RW.
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What We Think
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| A recorder that burns to most any DVD disc or VHS tape, but falls shy of its promise of universality. |
The LRY-517 is as austere-looking as a Quaker on Sunday, so it won’t win any awards for industrial design. Its front panel is remarkably plain. Two loading slots, one for disc and one for tape, stare down at you. A lower panel flips down to reveal — most notably — a FireWire (IEEE 1394) input that lets you quickly jack in a DV camcorder and dump your home movies to tape or disc. Excellent.
The feature set is sparse, but with a few niceties like an AutoPlay mode for DVDs that automatically starts movie playback, skipping the menus and annoying trailers. Another nice touch: the menu for your discs shows up to nine thumbnail images containing the opening scene for each chapter. Click on a thumbnail, and the scene starts playing in low-res inside the thumbnail. Once you’ve seen enough to know you’ve got the right chapter, you can select it for full-screen playback.
RECORDING & EDITING Of course, the crowd pleaser is the DVD recording capability. Never burned a DVD before? Relax. This player makes it super simple: Drop in a blank DVD, select a recording mode, and hit the record button. That’s it.
There are the usual four recording modes — XP, SP, LP, EP — and a standard 4.7-GB disc yields recording times of 1, 2, 4, and 6 hours, respectively. Recording times are approximate because the deck uses variable bit-rate compression, so capacity depends on what’s being recorded. The recorder’s real perk is its readiness to dump bits to any DVD disc you feed it. I particularly like that it accommodates DVD-RAM discs because they allow simultaneous recording and playback — you can start watching the beginning of a title while the rest is still recording (and you can even monitor the progress of the recording as a picture in picture). Killer.
As you delve deeper into DVD recording, the LRY-517 will accommodate your greater sophistication. For example, you can format DVD-RW discs in either Video or VR mode. The Video mode creates discs that are playable on conventional DVD players after the disc is finalized. The downside is that you’re limited in terms of editing. Conversely, the VR mode allows extensive editing, but discs can be played only on other decks with a VR mode.
Speaking of editing, that’s one of the most important features that a DVD recorder can provide. It’s easy to dump programs onto a disc, but you’ll soon want to organize and edit them into more conveniently watchable forms. In VR mode, the LRY-517 lets you either edit the content directly, or edit a playlist that determines how the content is played, leaving the video itself unaltered. You can delete an original or playlist title/chapter, delete a part of a title, name a title, divide one title into two, combine two chapters into one, rearrange the order of playlist chapters, hide a title/chapter, overwrite a previously written title, and protect a title against accidental erasure. Various editing functions, however, depend on the type of disc used. For example, you can delete part of a title only on DVD-RW (VR) and DVD-RAM discs, move a playlist chapter only on DVD-RW (VR), and divide a title only on DVD+RW discs. Ultra confusing — and not quite universal.
I was bummed that the player lacks a commercial-skip button and that you can’t move data from memory cards to disc or tape. On the upside, you can manually delete commercials from a recording by searching for start and end points, or designate commercials as chapters and delete those chapters — tedious, for sure, but better than nothing.
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The Short Form
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| LGUSA.COM / 800-243-0000 / $450 / 17.375 x 3 x 14 IN |
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Plus
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| •Widest disc compatibility of any recorder. •Simultaneous recording and playback with DVD-RAM. •Easy tape-to-disc dubbing. •Flexible editing features. |
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Minus
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| •Can’t record on CD-R/RW discs. •Editing features depend on disc type. •No commercial skip. •No program guide or IR emitter.  |
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Key Features
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| •Records and plays DVD-R/RW, -RAM, +R/RW, and +R DL (double layer) •Plays DVD-Video, audio CD, CD-R/RW, JPEG, WMA, MP3, and DivX v. 3/4/5 •Memory slots for SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, SMC, xD, MD, and CF •Built-in VCR •front-panel composite- and S-video inputs, stereo audio input, DV input •back-panel component-, composite-, and S-video outputs; composite-video input; 2 stereo audio outputs and 1 input; optical and coaxial digital audio outputs |
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Test Bench
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The LG’s progressive component output was typical for a DVD player, which means good on film-based material but with jagged diagonal edges on video-based programs. Vertical progressive resolution was fine, but some test patterns produced very jerky motion rendition (not visible in movies). As usual, recording performance was excellent at the two top recording modes (XP and SP), and static resolution test patterns looked unusually sharp in the LP and EP modes. However, the typical blocking and mosquito noise kicked in as soon as there was significant image motion. — David Ranada
Full lab results |
RECORD/PLAYBACK PERFORMANCE I burned all kinds of discs, verifying that the recorder really does handle both + and – DVDs as well as double-layer DVD+Rs, which played fine but occasionally stuttered or skipped during layer changes. As you’d expect, picture quality has nothing to do with disc type (they’re just bit buckets), but it has everything to do with bit rate. For example, I recorded an episode of ABC’s Lost, a prime-time soap opera apparently inspired by Lord of the Flies. The XP mode looked as good as the broadcast feed, with sharp picture quality. Details were clearly visible even in visually complex, quick-edit flashbacks of the plane crash. In SP mode, still scenes weren’t quite as sharp looking, and details, such as rain falling in a tropical downpour, were slightly blurred by MPEG motion artifacts, but the picture was still very good.
The LP mode was watchable, but the picture was very soft, and MPEG encoding artifacts such as blocking were plainly visible — for example, details on the sand beach became homogenous blobs. The picture was worse than a high-quality VHS recording. And the 6-hour EP mode looked terrible, like something you’d see streaming over the Internet. Moving objects, even slow pans, were completely surrounded (or obscured) by mosquito-noise artifacts. I’d use this mode only if I was down to my last minutes on my last disc. In all modes, sound quality was quite good (for off-air dubs) and, of course, stereo only.
I spent some nostalgia time with the VCR — no problems. Nice to have around for playing old tapes, or to make a recording if you run out of discs. I was pleased that I could dub from tape to disc, and vice versa, but only at real-time speed. You can’t make tape or DVD dubs of any copy-protected DVDs or tapes.
BOTTOM LINE Diversity is a good thing, usually, but not always. When all these different recordable-DVD formats hit the market simultaneously, some people predicted Armageddon, or at least a bunch of frustrated consumers. In fact, it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a pain. LG’s LRY-517 cuts through all the hassle and just deals with it — recording and playing regardless of disc type — with the caveat that its editing capabilities depend on the kind of disc you use. Throw in extraordinary memory-card compatibility, a DV input, a VCR, and you’ve got something happening. Okay, so, there’s no hard disk. And A/V snobs wouldn’t be caught dead with a VHS deck in their stack. But there’s no denying that this flexible component does more than most other recorders.
TEST BENCH
By David Ranada
DVD VIDEO PERFORMANCE
All results are for the component-video output set to progresssive-scan format. Test patterns were widescreen (16:9) except for onscreen resolution.
Vertical luminance response (re level at 100 lines)
200/300/400 lines: ±0/±0/±0 dB
Horizontal luminance response (re level at 2 MHz)
6/8/10 MHz: ±0/±0/+0.3 dB
12/13.5 MHz: ±0/–0.1 dB
Onscreen resolution: 540 lines (4:3 image)
In-player letterboxing: good
CD AUDIO PERFORMANCE
Output level (with –20-dBFS input at 1 kHz): 195 mV
Noise level (re –20-dBFS output): –74.6 dB
Excess noise (with/without sine tone)
16-bit: +0.65/+0.65 dB
quasi-20-bit: +10.9/+10.5 dB
Noise modulation: <0.5 dB
Frequency response: 20 Hz to 20 kHz +0, –0.085 dB
As a DVD player, the LG’s progressive-component output was typical, which means good on film-based material but showing jagged diagonal edges with programs made from interlaced-video sources. Vertical progressive-scan resolution was fine, however. Several test patterns produced very jerky motion, but this was not visible in movies. CD playback was unusually clean for a DVD recorder.
As usual, recording performance was excellent at the two top recording modes (XP and SP). The recorder takes the preserve-resolution-at-all-costs approach so that static resolution test patterns produced full DVD horizontal resolution (540 lines) in all recording modes. However, as soon as there was image motion in the longer LP and EP modes, the usual artifacts (blocking and mosquito noise) kicked in, to a distracting degree in EP mode. The deck did produce unusually sharp EP recordings — as long as hardly anything moved.