LG RC797T Tunerless 1080i Upconverting DVD Recorder VCR Combo
By: LG Electronics Average Rating: 2.0 Total Reviews: 8
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 On: 2008-07-15
5 months after I paid almost $300 for this piece of junk, it stopped finalizing DVDs. I called LG, and they told me I could send it back for repair under warranty. HOWEVER, I had to send them $69 just to look at it. Some warranty! AND, I had to have it boxed (tossed the original box) professionally, and take it to the Post Office with the fancy label they sent me. Sounds easy, unless youre handicapped and cant get around. Considering what I paid for it, plus the additional $69, I could have bought an HD TV set! Never, never again will I buy anthing LG, since my LG air conditioner (about 8 months old) just went poof!
On: 2008-03-18
Another typo on amazons part... This model does have a tuner, for all the good it will do you! Bought mine when they were newer on the market, and paid $300.00 for it.
It lasted about 6 months before I started experiencing problems with it reading DVDs! Also, some part on the faceplate trim began just separating from the assembly. I viewed about a couple VHS tapes through it, never even got the chance to learn the complicated instructions on doing any DVD recording... its basically a piece of cheap, but expensive junk! Wish I could have given it 0 stars...
Whats even worse, is that LGs warranty sucks as well! Labor 90 days, parts, 1 year.
After contacting LG, they sent a shipping label to return it back to them for repair, but at an additional cost of $69.00 for the repair, since the labor warranty had expired.
Considering I only got about 6 months use out of it, and it seemed to be falling apart just sitting in my stereo rack, I demanded either a new replacement unit, or after paying the $69.00 repair charge, a fresh new warranty, as if was new after the $69.00 repair. They refused and returned it back to me unrepaired.
LG only warranties their repairs for 30 days, and I wasnt about to put out $69.00 on top of the $300.00 that I already spent, on an obvious lemon, that wasnt right from the beginning!
No doubt sometime after that 30 day repair warranty expired, and my one year parts warranty expired, I can only see this unit giving me problems again! And at that point, having $369.00 invested in it, and needing even more repairs!
I got 5 years use out of my previous DVD unit! That was a Denon, and gave me great service. Compare that to about 6 months, out of an LG product, and Ill never trust them again!
Most would not believe all the time it takes to install and wire this unit into a system, eliminating, a VHS player, with the main television tuner in it, and the previous DVD player.
Then after the problems began, pull this out to send for repair, needing to rewire in a VHS player just to have a television tuner, and a cheap $40.00 Wal-Mart special DVD player to get everything working again, and just so one can watch basic television or a movie.
These combo units are junk! A television tuner, a VHS player/recorder, and a DVD player/recorder all in one, and if one part goes bad, you might as well say its all bad, as you loose everything by pulling it out!
After my experience with this LG product, I can honestly say that I will never buy another LG product again! Between a poorly manufactured product, and extremely rude customer service, I have already walked away from an LG LCD computer monitor that was on sale, and went with another brand not on sale!
If I were to ever consider a similar product, I would go with the Panasonic. At least they offer a 1 year, parts and labor warranty.
Do look at warranties offered! Got 3 years on that LCD computer monitor I purchased! So it wasnt on sale, but in the end well worth the extra money spent, over something with only a 1 year warranty, not to mention really bad customer service!
If LG doesnt resolve this, check back for a video review, where this LG will be run over by a semi dump truck!
 On: 2008-02-07
This product has one advantage: a built in tuner that allows you to watch one show and record another, so long as you have your cable feed split. One coaxial cable must go to the LG, the other to the TV. Then, you run RCA cables from the LG Outputs to the TV Inputs so you can play a VCR or DVD (the LG will send the signals through those RCA cables to the TV).
The downside of this feature is that there is NO way to see which channel it is tuned to other than putting it on your TV monitor. So, if youre watching channel 9, and you want to record channel 6, you MUST stop watching channel 9 and put the LG on your TV monitor to see which channel you are going to record. In every other VCR I have ever owned, the clock on the display would change to the channel when you were switching channels, then change back to a clock after about 5 seconds. Not so with this clunker. They feel it is more important for you to know what time it is than what channel you just surfed to. I called them and they said its true, you cannot see the channel on the LCD display, only the clock. "But I have a clock already" I replied. "Now you have two!" was their response. No, now I have one again because this thing went back to the store within one week (see below).
The major problem is, well, it doesnt work. It constantly goes blank when Im watching a TV show, playing a VCR, and most frequently occurs with DVDs. All Blocksbuster DVDs simply wont run on this piece of junk. They start, but then go grey, then the picture reappears, and repeats over and over. For what I paid I would expect it to work for at least 3 days.
So the jurys out: this is a poorly made item with not so great features, that doesnt merit consideration. It has many other programming flaws (for instance when you push DISPLAY, it appears on screen for about 3 seconds, then disappears, so you cannot fast forward to a certain spot without REPEATEDLY pressing display) that I would not recommend this to anybody but the garbage man (where all junk belongs).
LG: Life is Good? I hardly think so. It will be a long time before I purchase another LG product. Theres a reason they constantly get rated behind Sony, Philips and Panasonic, and I just found out why.
(I would have given it one star, but the built in tuner feature made it two.)
On: 2008-01-30
Bad first. The DVD player freezes up on a fairly regular basis, in most cases with rented DVDs. This requires you to get up and manually hold the power button to reset the machine. After resetting you may get lucky and the machine may resume playing from the previous DVD location. However, the result many times is a message informing the user that the disk cannot be read or there is no disk. I then have to play the disk in another player to finish watching the DVD.
Good. I originally purchased this unit to transfer VHS recordings (home movies) to DVD. The machine performs this function flawlessly. I have created several DVDs from VHS and from digital camcorders with no problems.
On: 2008-01-02
We bought this just before Christmas, and installed it in hopes of being able to watch DVDs, Videos, and record our old VHS tapes onto DVDs for the future.
First, this is unnecessarily complicated to operate, and not at all intuitive. I have DVD players, and VHS recorders all over the place, and have no trouble managing them, but this thing needs the handbook in your lap to operate it. It should be called a decoder, not a handbook.
Second, I was stunned by the slow speed of changing channels. You type in channel 10, the screen goes blank for a few seconds, then it goes to channel 10. OK, I figured its because of the capability of doing hundreds of channels, so it has to wait to see if Im gonna add another digit, but no - It does the blank screen, and several second lag for every change, even when you just press up, to scroll through the channels. At this rate, it will take a week to scroll through all the channels.
It plays VHS tapes OK, and it records VHS OK.
DVD records everything as digitized boxes - like an overblown photo, in the 6 hr. record mode. At 4 hrs, its mostly OK, but anything moving fast will look pixelated/boxy, too. It started out playing OK, but soon started doing the abrupt stop, then boxy fade to the next scene, that seems to be a problem with all DVDs that Ive seen. (Not many).
The DVDs I recorded in this would not play in my other DVD player, either, even after I finalized it.
Now, less than one week after hooking it up, I hit play, and after 30 seconds it seized up, and just got stuck on the DVD. I tried everything to free it up, and even tried to eject it, but no luck. It would not let me switch to VCR, and it would not power down, either, so it basically had my TV held captive, with one frame permanently stuck on the screen, and no way out. We messed with it for 15+ minutes to try to get it to let go, but were ultimately forced to disconnect it.
Needless to say, I will be returning it tomorrow. To the Store, NOT to LG.
On: 2008-01-01
We bought this just before Christmas, and installed it in hopes of being able to watch DVDs, Videos, and record our old VHS tapes onto DVDs for the future.
First, this is unnecessarily complicated to operate, and not at all intuitive. I have DVD players, and VHS recorders all over the place, and have no trouble managing them, but this thing needs the handbook in your lap to operate it. It should be called a decoder, not a handbook.
Second, I was stunned by the slow speed of changing channels. You type in channel 10, the screen goes blank for a few seconds, then it goes to channel 10. OK, I figured its because of the capability of doing hundreds of channels, so it has to wait to see if Im gonna add another digit, but no - It does the blank screen, and several second lag for every change, even when you just press up, to scroll through the channels. At this rate, it will take a week to scroll through all the channels.
It plays VHS tapes OK, and it records VHS OK.
DVD records everything as digitized boxes - like an overblown photo, in the 6 hr. record mode. At 4 hrs, its mostly OK, but anything moving fast will look pixelated/boxy, too. It started out playing OK, but soon started doing the abrupt stop, then boxy fade to the next scene, that seems to be a problem with all DVDs that Ive seen. (Not many).
The DVDs I recorded in this would not play in my other DVD player, either, even after I finalized it.
Now, less than one week after hooking it up, I hit play, and after 30 seconds it seized up, and just got stuck on the DVD. I tried everything to free it up, and even tried to eject it, but no luck. It would not let me switch to VCR, and it would not power down, either, so it basically had my TV held captive, with one frame permanently stuck on the screen, and no way out. We messed with it for 15+ minutes to try to get it to let go, but were ultimately forced to disconnect it.
Needless to say, I will be returning it tomorrow. To the Store, NOT to LG.
 On: 2007-12-24
Received LG RC797T Tunerless 1080i Upconverting DVD Recorder VCR Combo
in three days (as promised) and powered up right out of the box works perfectly. Only draw back is the tiny buttons on the remote other than that it records DVDs and Tapes equally easy. Very happy I purchased this item and would recommend to family and friends.
On: 2007-11-19
In response to the other reviewer I wasnt lucky at all! I BOUGHT this receiver with hard earned cash on July 23, 2007 by the middle of October it had stopped playing DVDs completely although it would still record TV. I called LG at the end of October due to a busy schedule and asked if there was something they could do.
First things first...DONT EVER CALL LG! Their product service sucks to put it lightly. I was told, "let me take your number and well call you back." That was at 9:00pm at night. Uhh...what time do they think I want to be up chatting with them anyway??? They finally sent me a shipping label and told me to pay them $69 and they would fix it. Gee thanks...So kind of you LG!
I searched on the net and there is a problem with this reciever reading bought DVDs. Its the number one complaint with this receiver. I urge anyone to look around before buying this receiver. This receiver should be on recall!!!!
If it stops on you after 90 days theyre going to charge you $69 to fix it! Thats unreasonable to say the least for something that cost this much. After one year its $69 + parts + freight! Im not even sure I want to pay them the lousy $69 dollars to fix it considering it only worked right for about three months to begin with.
 On: 2007-10-19
I really dont know how to rate this item. I bid on it at a bowling league fundraiser. I bid $70 and was the high bidder. My grandson hooked it up to my AV equipment and showed me how to record from an old tape to a DVD. I immediately forgot how and had to read the instructions over several times. I am somewhat of an expert in that phase as of this moment. There are so many more functions to learn that Ill be busy for a long time.
The finished discs are awsome, if you will pardon the oft quoted phrase. This unit will play everything on the market as far as I can see. My grandson is a true whiz with AV equipment. Lucky me. I have had this unit one week today and I am having the time of my life. The formal name of this unit is LG RC797T DVD Recorder/VHS Recorder. By the way, while recording from VHS to DVD, one can watch another program on TV at the same time. Neat. Everthing becomes enhanced with the finished discs. I am blessed.
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