Panasonic DMRE85HS Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive Recording
Well Designed PVR with no monthly fees
This is a great product: no monthly fee for a TV guide, No phone line needed, easy to use and well engineered. We have had the DMRE85H for 4 months now and love it - highly recommended. <br /> <br />The Remote <br />This is the best remote I have from a manufacturer. It is well laid out and organized. It has buttons at the top to operate the TV. You can turn the TV on, increase the volume, and change the channel with this remote. Also the remote has a TV/Video button to change the input source for your TV. This way you can use one remote to set the input to the Panasonic or back to the cable signal. It has a very attractive silver metal top with a black bottom; very sturdy and seems to be well built. <br /> <br />The High-Speed Dub <br />The high-speed dub is very nice. I am able to dub two hours of TV onto a DVD-R and take it on trips and watch them on my laptop. I have a 4x burner on my computer but I have never burned anything as fast as the Panasonic does. Be sure to turn on the High-Speed Dub in the settings! It is a very simple process to select the programs to dub and then select a menu template for the DVD. The one thing I forgot the first time was to finalize the disk. You have to do this to view the DVD on other players. It is a separate step after burning the DVD.  <br /> <br />The Guide <br />I read through the manual before the unit arrived and had no trouble getting around the unit. My wife who had not read the manual starting navigating with only a few questions. It was taking a while to get back to the top menu of the guide once I had scrolled way down in the listing. I realized that pushing the submenu button takes you right back. I love the Program Navigator to view recorded programs. You get a thumbnail image of the show and once you highlight it, it begins to play.  <br /> <br />The Bad <br />As others have mentioned it does take a couple of days for it to completely download the TV guide for a week. Once you are aware of this, it is not a problem. <br />I have cable with no cable box so the guide works great for us but if you have satellite, you will not be able to use the TV guide feature.  <br />As other have also mentioned, the unit only writes to DVD-R and DVD-RAM. It would be nice if you could burn a DVD-RW. <br />Has basic search features for programming, which works fine for us but it does not record programs it \\"thinks\\" you will like as the Tivo does. <br /> <br />Overall the DRME85H has far surpassed our expectations. <br />