Panasonic DMRE85HS Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive Recording
So near, and yet so far
This machine infuriated me because I loved it, but two different units failed within the first two weeks. <br /> <br />First of all I want to say that I am not one of those people who are technically challenged, so believe what I say. I have two degrees in electrical engineering and have designed (not built, designed from the gate level up) computers and for the past twenty years have earned a good living writing commercial software. I mention this only to dispel any possibility that the problems I experienced with this model will be dismissed as \\"pilot error\\". <br /> <br />I am not going to bother describing the nice features of the unit. Many others here have done that. I am going to describe my horrible experience with it. <br /> <br />I bought my first DMR-E85HS at Circuit City around February 24th, brought it home, set it up, turned it off for 24 hours as recommended so the program guide can download, and then turned it on and starting getting to know it. Everything was fine for the first day or two. Then, I found that if I was in the program guide view and tried to exit to watch TV, I could not do so. Instead, the program guide display remained on the screen but with garbled colors. The unit locked up and had to be reset to get out of this state. From this point on whenever I went in to the program guide this would happen. <br /> <br />I had read the reviews here and so was aware that other people had experienced similar problems with some units of this model. Hoping that I had just been unlucky enough to get one of the bad ones, I returned it to Circuit City and took home another unit of the same model. <br /> <br />This one worked beautifully for about a week and a half (although I never tried burning a DVD during that initial period). Then, it too began malfunctioning. It refused to change channels, go into the program guide, or do many other functions involving watching TV. Resetting the unit (by holding the power switch for 10 seconds) restored normal functionality, but after a few hours it stopped working again. This continued to happen for several days until I got fed up and decided to return this one too. <br /> <br />However, I had recorded a couple of programs on the hard drive which I wanted to keep, so I wanted to dub them to DVD-R before bringing it back. When I tried to do so I experienced an even more severe problem. When I started dubbing, the unit reported that dubbing was in progress, then within about 30 seconds turned itself off and displayed the message \\"SELF CHECKING\\" on the display panel. I reset the unit, and tried this a total of three times, and each time got the same results - a very nice white coaster. I never did get the unit to burn a DVD. I was, by the way, using TDK discs, not that that should matter. At that point I wanted to put a hammer through the thing, but I restrained myself so Circuit City would give my money back, which they very agreably did. Incidentally, there were two other DMR-E85HS's on the shelf behind the return desk the day I brought mine back, and the clerk allowed that yes, a lot of them had been coming back. <br /> <br />The frustrating thing is, if this unit ever worked I would have been very happy with it. Yes, it is not a perfect design, as others have pointed out. But it certainly fulfilled my wishes in a DVD/HDD recorder. Too bad. It's hard to understand how Panasonic, which I have always found to be a supplier of high quality electronics, could possibly have produced such a flop. <br /> <br />By the way, before I returned the second unit I called Panasonic tech support to see if there was any way to do a more thorough reset/reboot of the thing, or if there were any firmware upgrades for it. I had to wait on hold for an hour. When I finally got through to someone he denied that there were any known issues with this model, even after I pointed out that many people had reported problems here on amazon. All he suggested was that I try plugging it directly into the wall outlet instead of into the secondary power outlet on my cable box. (I did try that, but of course it didn't help.) So I have to give Panasonic support the same grade as the DMR-E85HS: useless. <br /> <br />