Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
The Best DVD Recorder on the Market
The Panasonic DMR-E80 is the best DVD recorder on the market.  This is the only DVD recorder that can replace the VCR and do much more.<br />There are two great features on this unit that make it stand out:<br />· Hard Drive:  You can record all your favorite programs to the hard drive without fussing with changing tapes.  It is even better if you are on vacation and you want to record more than six hours of programs.  This unit has an 80 MB hard drive that can store up to 106 hours of programs at slow speed.  More importantly, you can edit the recordings on the hard drive.  For example, I am building up a play list of my favorite songs that I want to keep permanently.  I record all the shows and edit each one to save only the tracks that I like.  To save space on the hard drive, I transfer my favorite songs to a DVD-RAM disk for temporary storage.  When the DVD-RAM disk is full, I burn the whole disk to a DVD-R disk for permanent storage.  While the songs are in the DVD-RAM, I can still edit them.  Another example: I am recording the whole third season of 24 and Alias to be watched during the summer months.  With this new technology, I can now watch the whole season of each program from front to back as long as I'm willing to do some work and wait out the season.  To save space on the hard drive, I edit out all the commercials every week.  It will also make watching these two programs more enjoyable later on.  It might be more work now, but I enjoy doing it.     <br />· DVD-RAM:  The DVD-RAM is just like the VCR tape in that you can record over it when you are done.  It has more features than a VCR tape.  You can edit the content.  You can create a play list.  You can go to any point on the disk as long as you have created a play list.  More importantly, you don't have to rewind it when you are done.  I use the RAM disk mainly as a temporary storage area.  If there is something I want to keep permanently, I transfer it to a DVD-R disk because DVD-RAM disks are expensive.  The only downside to this type of disk is it can only be played on certain Panasonic players.  But this is no big deal.  If you want to share some of the recordings with a friend, you can always burn them to a DVD-R disk.<br />I am very happy with this unit.  We have used it continually since we bought it last fall.  I only give it four stars because it doesn't have surround sound decoding capability.  In order to enjoy a surround sound movie, you need to have another DVD player.  Another minor issue is the remote control, which is not as effective as I would like.  You have to point it at a special angle to make it work.  Possibly my viewing area is a little far away.  On the plus side, the remote control has a commercial skip feature.  Every time you press it, the recording is advanced by 1 minute.  Overall, this is by far the best gadget that we have bought for our house.