Update: December 12, 2005 - My LRH-539 which is less than 5 months old went into the shop for warranty service today.  It is recording shows with the picture several seconds out of sync with the audio, and mysteriously stops recording many programs after 41 minutes and 41 seconds.   Weird.  While I was transferring the shows I wanted to make sure I didn't lose to disks, I also found that it sometimes fails to finalize DVD's.  Not the high-quality device I'd expect for the price.

Update: February 16, 2006 - After about 20 phone calls over the last six weeks, I finally got LG, the repair shop and my original retailer talking to each other after it became evident that they weren't going to be able to fix my unit before the end of February due to parts availability problems.  They got me a brand new unit today and I am very pleased.  The new unit was manufactured in October, so I'm hoping it has newer, less buggy firmware than the other unit.  Of course it messed up immediately - it auto-set the clock but thought today was Sunday Feb 16 not Thursday Feb 16 until I manually set the date (even though it had automatically picked up the correct date and time from our local PBS station.)  Fingers crossed!

The LG LRH-539 hard disk DVD recorder is a first generation product with a couple of attractive second generation features which include a 250G hard disk (the biggest available on the market holding up to 344 hours of video) and dual-layer DVD+R support.  Despite some serious flaws, it makes one slick replacement for your VCR.

Recording on the hard disk is great.  Imagine a VCR that you never have to change a tape!  I find I’m using it to record movies off of the movie channel that I normally wouldn’t get a chance to watch.  I never could do that with the VCR and its 2 hour max recording time.

I run the LG in SQ mode (129 hours max) and the picture quality is good on a 37” TV.  On the 90” projection system the video gets a little crunchy.  This is the speed you will want to choose for movies and such, since 2 hours of video fits on a single layer DVD.  There is a higher quality mode (2 hours on a dual-layer DVD), but I haven’t felt the need to try it.

DVD recording is easy.  I haven’t tried any dual-layer disks, but I’ve used a number of single layer DVD-R disks and have been quite satisfied with the recording.  If you can live without editing your recordings, it will record a DVD in just a few minutes.   The LG creates nice DVD menus for you on each disk you create.  You can continue to add shows (titles) to the disk until it is full, or you can choose to ‘finalize’ it so that it will work in standard DVD players or your computer.  If you prefer, the LG supports eraseable RW disks as well.

The LG shows its first-generation status when transferring from the hard disk to DVD’s.  While you can record all your shows in the highest quality and then reencode them at a lower quality to fit more on a disk, this is unfortunately done in real time.  If you don’t want to reencode, it can record a disk in just a couple of minutes.  Four recording speeds put 1, 2, 4 or 6 hours on a single layer DVD.

Editing is really easy if you want to trim the start or end of your recordings.  Unfortunately, even if you don’t want to change the recording speed, if you edit your recordings, it will still re-encode the video in real time when you record it to disk.  One little edit and your 2 hour movie takes an annoying 2 hours to record to DVD rather than a couple of minutes.

When you make recordings on the DVD, you can add chapters manually, or have them added automatically every few minutes.  Recording to the hard disk isn’t quite as nice since it doesn’t take advantage of the chapter skip buttons.  It would be nice if it automatically put chapter marks every few minutes, or even better, after every commercial break.

The LG has an instant skip button which advances the video 15 seconds at a press.  While this is intended for skipping commercials, the button on the remote is underneath the slide off cover, so you either have to snap off the cover, or leave it open and accept a less than ergonomic remote.  Most of the time I find myself just using the fast forward which goes up to 100x normal speed.

Timeshifting is another big advantage of hard disk recorders, it allows you to pause, rewind or fast forward live TV.   Unfortunately with the LG, I find it often has problems during timeshifting.  A couple times an hour the screen goes black for a few seconds, then comes back in a shower of colored blocks.  Occasionally I have found the unit completely hangs, forcing me to turn it off and on, losing whatever portion of the show I was watching that was in the timeshift buffer.  I also find the picture quality isn’t as good as when I record in SQ mode.  Undoubtedly the most annoying thing is that it displays a little icon in the bottom left corner of the screen to tell you timeshifting is on, and even if you turn it off, it comes back on every time you pause.  Note to LG, I can remember what I’m doing.  If I turn something off, LEAVE IT OFF!

Connections are about what you’d expect, component, digital audio, S-Video, composite and more.  One unfortunate omission is an S-Video-in jack on the back.  There is one on the front (along with composite video, audio, and firewire) but that isn’t entirely convenient if you want to record the best quality picture.  The S-Video and component outs however offer the best possible output picture quality for your conventional or big screen set.

Picture in picture is supported on the LG if you are watching a recorded program and want to monitor a TV channel in a window.  You can resize or move the window which is nice.  To watch the TV channel, just press stop. 

Startup time for the LG is a shocking 17 seconds until picture.  And another 10 when it shuts off.  Another disappointment is that the timer is limited to 16 programmed recordings.  For a system that can record 344 hours in a go, I’d think they could manage to increase the size of the timer record list.  There are also some important missing convenience features in such a pricey recorder: support for VCR+ or TV Guide software for easy programmability, and an IR blaster to control your cable box.

One odd feature of the LG is support for Divx video on demand.  This lets you download movies on your computer and play them on the LG.  When I checked it out, the service only included ancient, obscure movies for $5 a pop.  If you’re looking for new movies, you’re going to have to get out of the house to the video store.

The LG also includes CPRM 1.1 copy prevention software.  I assume this is for the video on demand feature, but it doesn’t sound like a good thing to me.  Fortunately it doesn’t seem to do anything when it comes to recorded TV programs.