Sharp DV-HR300U DVD Player/Recorder with 80-GB Drive
Good experience so far...
I got this recorder about a week ago.  I was originally thinking about Panasonic, but didn't want to have to buy the top of the line or last year's model to get the ilink for dubbing from my camcorder.  Was a bit concerned since Sharp wasn't such a well known brand to me, but so far so good and this deck is a great deal.  Haven't had any major problems, one DVD-RW failed to initialize, but others are working okay.  I have noticed you can't interrupt the deck and try to do something else during initialization/finalization.  Manual is very complicated (and I am an EE), BUT, I'd have to say I don't see how it could be simple considering all of the functions.  Overall, I'd recommend it (especially at the $379 price I got it for including shipping and no tax!)<br />Few other things...I was also successfully able to use 4x discs (see the next reviewers comments), have not seen the flicker problem another reviewer mentioned, and also the black level seems to be fine (Toshiba bug)