LG external USB2 16x DVD+/-RW w/ AV capture £95

Jon_C

Just ordered one of these from https://www.bigpockets.co.uk where it is in the sale for £95 plus delivery (only a fiver off but that's not what interests me with this product).

I'm no expert but it looks like one of the best DVD+/-RW drives on the UK market, at least in the sub-£200 range.

It's probably about £40 more than similar external drives but in my view it's worth paying the extra for the killer feature of AV capture.

This means you can treat your burner as a DVD recorder for TV programmes (if connected to a set-top box) or simple dubbing from VHS and camcorders.

I'm thinking this will be very handy for when I have my laptop with me at a friend's house or whatever. My grandparents have some VHS tapes they would love to have transferred to DVD but as I don't have a VCR (sooo old-school!) it means I can do it all at their place.

The drive also writes to DVD-Ram which is a nice touch, especially for anyone with a Panasonic (or similar) DVD recorder.

Any thoughts?

Link:
http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product.php?lang=&product_id=3773&session=68e0019ab7c04662350c44fb9ba350c8

Description:

LG GSA-5169D Super Multi External USB2.0 DVD Rewriter with AV Capture

Max Writing Speeds:
DVD+R 16x
DVD-R 16x
DVD+R Double Layer (DL) 8x
DVD-R DL 4x
CD 48
DVD+RW 8x
DVD-RW 6x
CDRW 32x
DVD-RAM 5x

includes a full software package of Nero Express 6, PowerDVD, PowerProducer Gold and InCD which is all that you need for your day-to-day tasks, but you get another piece of software in the box too. One Touch DVD is a software package which simplifies the tasks of capturing, editing and authoring your movies and it works in one of two modes to make your life as easy as possible. If you want to make a home PC movie easy and fast, you have big chances to make it. But only after that the hard part begins. The copy and sharing of these CDs or DVDs to family and friends can be a painstaking process, boring and not so fast. But the new Super Multi DVD Rewriter from LG, called LG GSA-5169D, an external unit that connects to your desktop or laptop computer with Windows XP SP2 through a USB 2.0 connection, might help you.

The new LG product supports any CD or DVD format and has relatively big writing speeds: 16x DVD-R and DVD+R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R Dual Layer, 4x DVD-R Dual Layer and 5x DVD-RAM, 48x CD-R and CD-RW.

Though, LG GSA-5169D is much more than a DVD writer because you can use it also for capturing video. In the back of the unit you can find four ports for connecting the LG GSA-5169D to different multimedia devices, like a television, a camcoder or a digital camera. Also, two more RCA sockets are available for stereo sound, an S-Video connector and a composite port.
One Touch DVD offers features like rotation, zoom and transitions that will make your video project to have a professional look. For simp0lifing the process, the push of a single button will write on a disk your new creation. Also, the LG GSA-5169D unit has a One Touch button that will automatically launch a wizard for the novice users that will get help for writing and recording DVDs.