I was intrigued by the desktop DVD recorders when they came out a few years ago for a mere $1000. The price obviously kept my interest to a minimum. Back on October 10, 2004, I was strolling through Sam's Club and saw the Lite-On 5101 dvd recorder for $138. They finally came down to a reasonable price. I bought one and put 'er through a series of tests for a couple of weeks.

I started researching the Lite-On 5101 on the videohelp.com forums. There wasn't very much talk about the 5101, but there was tons circling around the new ilo DVDR04 and it's big brother the DVDRHD04 (which contains an 80GB HD). These ilo units are rebadged Lite-On recorders that are being distributed solely through the Wal-Mart chain of stores (You may have heard of them). The folks on the forum were fired up about the ilo's top notch LSI chipset which yields outstanding Picture Quality (PQ). I figured it was time to take a stroll through the aisles of Wallyworld.

To my amazement, the DVDRHD04 was proudly displayed and there was a stack of 5 for the taking. I figured with Wal-Mart's outstanding 90 day return policy, that it was worth it to plunk down my $278 and try out one of these fancy-pants DVD recorders that also house an ample hard drive. This is less than half the cost of the respected Panasonic DMR-E80.

To make a long story short, I felt that the ilo unit had superior picture quality to the Lite-On 5101. It just seemed sharper... even the wife agreed. Sam's Club was very accommodating and took back the Lite-On recorder without any fuss. If you keep all your receipts and treat the customer service folks politely, you would be amazed at how smoothly product returns can go.

Now that you know the background info, lets get on to the mod!

I just can't resist "taking a look under the hood" with all these new technological toys. When I opened up the DVDRHD04, I was pleasantly surprised on it's simplicity and ample space available inside the case. I tossed in an empty Fat32 formatted hard drive, started it up, and formatted the hard drive from the Tools menu. The install was that simple.

If you need help formatting a hard drive larger than 32GB as Fat32, see my guide here.

When I mentioned this to my buddy, we started talking about how nice it would be to skip the burning VOB files to DVD+RW disc step... Of course... the StarTech IDE66BASIC would be ideal! This is the $25 "Economy IDE Plastic Removable Hard Drive Drawer/mobile Frame Rack Enclosure with Fan" that is available at your local CompUSA. If I would install one of these, I could simply slide out the hard drive and slide it into my computer. Actually, I don't have an extra 5.25" slot on my Shuttle SN41G2, so I rigged an external firewire enclosure with one of these Startech hard drive racks.

Unfortunately, the DVD drive is located 1.5" too close to the center of the unit, so the hard drive rack will stick out a bit... aargh!