There are many differences between the ilo dvdr05 MU, and ZU. So many I felt like I had to list them.
The ZU from the get go wasn’t even close to the same level of features/bugs as the MU.
After 2 weeks of using the ZU, I didn’t feel like burning $100 in an ash tray.
The interface is so different that these units should not be sold in the same box.
The thing that bothers me most about the ZU is that there is no Mo-Fr scheduling option, other than that it’s been a good unit. I keep waiting for a firmware update where someone somewhere decides to add Mo-Fr, until then I’m forced to make a trip to the scheduling menu every Friday night and disable the option.
| Function | MU | Points | ZU | Points |
| Source | Click source 3 times, or click source once, and then right/left 3 times | -1 | Click source once, then left once | +1 |
| Plays DVD-Video | Nope failed at every attempt | -5 | So Far | +5 |
| A-B Editing | Yes | +2 | No | -2 |
| Delete Title Bug | Not that I noticed | +5 | Sometimes deletes the whole disk when only selecting 1 title. Firmware upgrade causes nothing to be deleted. | -5 |
| Mo-Fr | Allows you to schedlue Mo-Fr, Daily, Once, and Weekly | +3 | Only Once, Daily, Weekly | -3 |
| Scheduling Length | Allow you to set the length of your scheduled recording. 1:00 for 1 hour. :30 min etc. | +3 | Annoying … set date time. Even 11-22-05 is required spans a day when the time is changed. Not a good feature. It’s cumbersome. Firmware upgrade made it a little better don’t ask my why or how. | -3 |
| Specific Brands of media required | If you advertise you work with DVD+RW you should work with DVD+RW/+R NO MATTER WHAT BRAND IT IS!!!!! If I had a VCR that didn’t work for memorex VCR tapes, but would for maxcell I would return it and not even think twice! If the box says DVD+RW then it should work with any brand of dvd+rw. | -10 | If you advertise you work with DVD+RW you should work with DVD+RW/+R NO MATTER WHAT BRAND IT IS!!!!! If I had a VCR that didn’t work for memorex VCR tapes, but would for maxcell I would return it and not even think twice! If the box says DVD+RW then it should work with any brand of dvd+rw. | -10 |
| Skips when recording | I costantly had this thing skipping. | -5 | Doesn’t seem to – more testing required | +5 |
| Plays Preview from title/edit menu for selected title | No – Just a still image | 0 | Yes – At first seemed like a cool feature … it gets a little annoying. | 0 |
| Firmware | Downloading official firmware, and installing voids your warrenty if not told to do so | -5 | Downloading official firmware, and installing voids your warrenty if not told to do so | -5 |
| CM Skip During Schedlued Recordings | Can’t use the commercial skip button during recording a scheduled event. | -2 | You can skip commercials whenever you’re recording | +2 |
| FF, REW speed while playing | Up to 20 x. | +3 | Only up to 3x | -3 |
| Red Rec Bubble | No red record bubble while recording | +2 | Annoying record bubble while recording | -2 |
| Memory | Remembers where you were on the disk if you insert it. With an option to turn it off | +1 | No memory, and no way to turn it on/off | -1 |
| Audio Options | You can select a lot of different Audio options | +2 | None | -2 |
| Video Quality | At 8hours it was worse than the zu. The MU skipped shoot it skipped no matter what. It would have been great at hop sckotch | -3 | 8 hr mode was just about as good as a VCR at 8 hrs using a T-160 tape. | +3 |
| Record back to back shows on different channels | The MU did not do this out of the box, after a firmware upgrade it did, but always skipped. | -5 | Out of the box you could record shows back to back on different channels, it didn’t complain at all. | +5 |
| Overheating issues | It seemed like this thing needed to operate inside a fridge. | -5 | Yippie seems to operate all day long at room temprature 60-80 F | +5 |
| Weird Sounds While Playing/Recording | Yes the more high pitched chirping sounds, the worse the skipping on playback. | -5 | No | +5 |
| Schedule Events | 8 | -1 | 10 | +1 |
| Operates 24hrs a day | It would’t even last 1 hr without complaining. | -10 | It has worked after leaving it on, and running for several hours, and even days. | +10 |
| Repeat | Repeat options are title, chapter, a-b, and all. | +2 | Repeat title, chapter, and a-b. | -2 |
| -34 | 4 |
If you are going to get one of these, I recommend getting a ZU. The main reason is – for the most part – it worked out of the box. I would not recommend getting either of these. Due to the fact that if you buy a product, and it clearly says on the box what it should do, and it doesn’t, then why buy it? I believe it’s called false advertising. 2 out of 2 products had something that didn’t work quite right. For $100 I expect the equipment to function. I don’t feel like going back a 3rd – and possibly a 4th time to find a functioning device. Maybe I’ll watch for the next firmware upgrade, and install it for the ZU.
The ZU has 2 major issues. #1 Doesn’t delete titles right. #2. No Mo-Fr for scheduling.
The MU never really worked right.
Things I don’t understand. Why only 8/10 events? You can write the date, in 3 bytes, time in 2 bytes length in 2 bytes input device or channel 1 byte. By my count that’s 8 bytes total for an event. That means in 1k – thats 1024 bytes – I could set up to 128 events. That of course is programing in an 8 bit world. The ‘date’ could also serve for setting Mo-Fr, Daily, or Weekly. So it’s totally possible to do it in 8 bytes per event.
Since this is not an 8 bit world. I could write the date as utc 1133873781 today that’s 10 bytes for the time. I’d also set up the length as a utc. So 1 hour from now would be 1133877381. That’s still only 21 bytes including a space. I could still keep the input device/channel as 1 byte. Because there are only 140 channels at most, and then I’d make 141 dv, 142 input 1, 143, input 2 144, and svideo 145. This still makes our string we’re saving 24 bytes – 1 more space 1 more byte and a \n (that’s a new line for those of you who don’t know aka return – enter). So for the sake of argument we could make it 25 bytes long. In theory this set up would work until Sat, 06 Sep 2014 22:50:07 -0600. Then the device may suffer from something similar to ‘y2k’. With a bloated data structure like this you could still program 40 events In 1k
Granted I don’t know that much about C++ or even Machine language, but I’m pretty sure if you gave me a year I could write a pretty decent timer set up with an 8 byte per even structure.
Overall the dvdro5 ZU has worked much better than the MU. I must say this about the MU, if my experience hadn’t been so bad with it, it’s features would have worked nicely.