Page 1 of Liteon v Ellion

I`m looking to buy a DVD with HD at around £250 and have narrowed it down to the Ellion DVR-950s and Liteon 5055GDL+. Both have 250GB HD and Timeslip which as I record a lot of TV are the most important things to me but can anyone give any advice on ease of use or reliability on either to help me choose. The Ellion appears to have only 8 timer recordings which doesn`t seem a lot to me but it has (according to the stuff I`ve read) a USB port which the Liteon doesn`t, other than that they seem to be on a par, any advice welcome. Thanx

Have you browsed the Liteon users` forum?

http://ccgi.mgillespie.plus.com/liteon/smf/index.php

You would learn a lot about their machines there. I have no experience of the Ellion so cannot comment at all about that one.

One definite bonus for the Liteon is that it will come with a 2 year manufacturer`s warranty, which is not to be coughed at.

One major disappointment with the Liteon is that it does not multi-task. i.e. you cannot record to HDD while watching a DVD or vice versa. Can the Ellion?

The Ellion 950 does allow you to record to HDD and play a DVD at the same time. You can also Record to HDD and watch and navigate forwards and backwards and pause the program you are recording. That is the only good news about this make.
The HDD edit facilities are abysmal, you can delete, dub to and from or re-name recordings but nothing else - you cannot edit out adverts etc.

My advice would be to avoid Ellion like the plague.

This is the third machine machine I have had from them. Non have worked well (or at all).
I was given an Ellion as a Christmas present and that broke down after one day. For reasons too complicated to relate here, it was sent for repair and came back with more (different) faults than it had when sent. After a second attempt at repair that failed to eliminate all of the faults, I then received a replacement but this was a dud from the word go. In three months of ownership the machines were usable (almost, never perfect) for about two weeks. My present machine also proved faulty after a month, was repaired and seems to be OK(ish) having survived for about 9 months but even this one is prone to latching up occasionally and has the occasional timer record hiccough.

If you do a search for Ellion on here you will see that others have also had bad experiences with this brand (and also re-badged versions )

I have some doubts as to whether the company is still extant as for over 6 months they have not answered or acknowledged any e-mail enquiries.
If you check out their website - Company > News section : HERE you will see that other disgruntled owners have hacked into it - these messages have not been removed which suggests the site is no longer maintained ?

This item was edited on Friday, 21st April 2006, 11:04

Thanks for this, I`ve just been to read the Liteon forum and although there seems to be a couple of things to tweak all the other problems seem to be applicable to any unit and it`s just luck of the draw but I`ve def taken the comments on board about the Ellion and will be avoiding it like the plague. Thank you again for your help

Why not just save up the extra and buy a Pioneer or Panasonic, :/

Seems that I was wrong when I said ".....If you check out their website - Company > News section : HERE you will see that other disgruntled owners have hacked into it - these messages have not been removed which suggests the site is no longer maintained ?...."

Just checked their site and the hacked messages have been removed !
Perhaps they read this board.

You never know but that the next thing will be that they will start answering email enquiries or even sort out why the firmware update proceedure just doesn`t work.
I`m sure that the updates would give some improvement to the performance of their products but everyone I know of that has tried to install them has failed to do so.