QUICK PICK REVIEW: JULY 2008
LG RC897 DVD Recorder + VCR
Wish you could time-shift digital TV programs to VHS tapes and DVDs? LG’s got the product for you, but it won’t come cheaply.
With all the current hoopla about the transition to digital terrestrial television, it’s easy to forget that there are still millions of videocassette recorders gathering dust on TV stands across the United States (and many of them are still blinking “12:00” after power failures!).
Believe it or not, I do get emails from time to time asking me how to record digital TV shows to tape. More than one reader has asked how to set up the new NTIA DTV converter boxes for timed recordings, something none of them are equipped to do.
Well, LG Electronics has the answer, although it’s not inexpensive. Their RC897 Super Multi DVD Recorder + VCR is an all-in-one TV receiver and recorder/player. IT receives analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) terrestrial broadcasts, plus analog and unencrypted digital cable (QAM) stations, too. You can program the RC897T to record TV shows to DVD and VHS tapes, as well as dub tapes to DVDs and vice-versa.
Figure 1. It’s a digital TV receiver! It’s a VCR! It’s a DVD recorder!
OUT OF THE BOX
The RC897T looks just like any other VCR/DVD combo. It’s finished in two shades of black — matte for the housing, and gloss for the front panel. The only two controls visible when the front cover is up are the eject/load buttons for the DVD tray (front left) and VCR slot (front right).
Drop the front tray, and you’ll find additional buttons for Play, Pause, Stop, and Record. There’s also a Dubbing button for making quick copies of shows from VHS tapes to DVDs. To the right of the clock, another button cycles between DVD or VCR operation, and a button to the right of that sets the output resolution. (More on how that works in a moment.)
The front panel also includes inputs for an external composite video source with stereo audio jacks, a USB 2.0 port for connecting flash drives to show JPEG digital photos and play back Windows Media or MP3 music files, and a Firewire connector for hooking up a DV camcorder.
Figure 2. The rear panel connector complement has it all, including HDMI.
On the rear panel, there’s the usual loop-through RF connector for antenna or cable hookups (the RC897T will work with external cable boxes, too), a second composite video input with stereo audio, and a full rack of output connections including composite, S-video, analog component, and even an HDMI jack. LG has also included two SPDIF digital audio interfaces — one coaxial, and one optical — for an external AV receiver.
Hmmm…component video and HDMI outputs. What are those doing on a VHS player? The answer has to do with the output resolution button I mentioned earlier.
Although the RC897T records and plays back standard-definition (480i) video, it has built-in downconversion and upconversion circuitry. That means you can watch and record any digital TV program, including those broadcast in the 720p and 1080i HDTV formats. Just bear in mind that everything you watch will be down-converted to SDTV at some point.
And that Resolution button? You can set it to 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and even 1080p/60 output. That means your DVDs (those you record and pre-recorded movies and TV shows) will look pretty good on a new flat-panel HDTV. (Unfortunately, VHS tapes won’t compare favorably as they are limited to about 200 lines of resolution.)
The supplied remote control isn’t one of my favorite designs. It has way too many buttons with similar sizes and confusing markings, so it can take a while to figure out what you need to push to control a given function. For example, menus are accessed by hitting the Home button, which isn’t very intuitive.
Channels are selected by using the Up/Down mousedisk keys, while the Left/Right keys scroll through favorite channels. The Play, Stop, Pause, and FF/RW buttons are a little easier to locate. LG has also provided a separate set of power, input, channel, and volume buttons for your TV.
Figure 3. Here’s the Video and Channel Setup menu…
Figure 4. …and here’s the Audio Setup menu.
MENUS AND OPERATION
The first menu that appears when you push the Home button is the Setup menu. Here is where you’ll set up the antenna input (Air or Cable), scan for channels, set the clock, and activate/deactivate a power saving mode. The next menu defines the languages in use for the on-screen display, DVD menus, audio, and subtitles, and DTV audio.
The RC897T also supports Dolby Digital, DTS, and MPEG audio playback. In the Record Format menu, you can choose from five different image quality levels for DVDs and two for VHS tapes. You can also place automatic chapter stops every 5 or 10 minutes when recording to DVD, or not at all.
The RC897T also controls external set-top boxes, using a separate IR interface on its rear panel. This allows you to set up a scheduled recording from a cable or satellite receiver, taking the output of those boxes through composite or RF inputs.
Finally, the TV Menu is where you’ll set up your favorite channels and edit any previously scanned analog and digital TV channels. The VCR/DVD timer is also located here.
Figure 5. You can edit, save, and delete scanned channels here.
For my tests, I used an off-air feed from my rooftop antenna to bring in analog and digital TV stations from Philadelphia, Allentown, and Trenton. The Gen 6 ATSC receiver is very sensitive to DTV signals, even those that are off the side and back of my rooftop and attic antennas. This allowed me to pull in a total of 35 different terrestrial DTV programs from 15 stations, which almost constitutes a “mini” cable TV system. Only WHYY-50 was not receivable, as their signal is usually very weak north of Philadelphia.
I set the display output of the RC897T to 1080p to drive a Westinghouse L2410NM LCD monitor, and (OK, this was downright silly) Sony’s XEL-1 11” OLED TV. Picture quality on both screens was better than I expected — the internal scaler works quite well, although it doesn’t get rid of all interlacing artifacts.
Setting up a scheduled recording is a piece of cake, thanks to the same crystal-clear recording interface LG has used on older hard drive recorders. You simply select DVD or VCR mode, load your tape or disc, and plug in the numbers. Or, you can simply record on the fly with one-touch operation.
Figure 6. The scheduled recording interface is a snap to use.
For kicks, I recorded the 5 PM and 6 PM HD newscasts from KYW-3 and WPVI-6 in Philadelphia to tape and DVD. As expected, the picture quality from tape playback wasn’t too swift, although it looked a lot cleaner than an analog recording from KYW, and was in widescreen to boot. (WPVI’s newscast held up just as well when dubbed to tape.)
Things improved by several magnitudes when recording to DVD. First of all, the signal stays digital, although it is down-rezzed. And second, signals stay in the component video format. Both of these resulted in surprisingly good image quality on playback, particularly when scaling to 720p and 1080i/p output resolution.
One problem that popped up from time to time was audio dropout on playback through the HDMI connector. This happened whether I was recording to tape or disc, and audio would disappear for several seconds at a time. In analog component video mode, I didn’t hear any dropouts but I did notice infrequent audio “hits” while watching a DVD.
I’m not sure what caused this problem, but it is similar to the reports of audio “hits” experienced by purchasers of LG’s first NTIA converter box, the DTT900. A query has gone out to LG to solve this problem, and I’ll update the review once I have an answer.
CONCLUSION
LG’s RC897 is indeed an unusual beast, with one foot planted firmly in the 21st century (ATSC reception) and the other still standing in the 20th (VHS recording). If you really want scheduled recording of digital TV shows to optical or tape media and don’t mind that they’re recorded at standard definition resolution, then it’s the product for you — that is, if you don’t mind forking over $330 for it.
