Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
1 Week and Solidly Addicted!
I've had my E80 for one week and I'm addicted!  My old SVHS machine is gone and my wife and I are recording shows on the hard disk drive (HDD) and letting them buffer a little before watching them while they record, so we can pause, stop and skip commercials.  The stand-alone \\"Tivo\\" aspect of this machine was the primary selling point for me and we are now using it fully.<br />One nice feature is the ability to set it to record a daily or weekly show and then record over the previous one each time.  My wife watches \\"Wheel of Fortune\\" and I watch \\"The Daily Show\\" pretty regularly, so those are now set to record every day -- but they don't accumulate on the hard drive.  There is always just one of each on there -- the last ones that ran.<br />I had been concerned about video reproduction on our 48\\" rear projection TV screen.  But the SP setting on the E80 delivers an excellent picture, better than my old SVHS.  The top XP setting is even better -- pretty much indistinguishable from the original signal.  I used high-speed dubbing to move one program from the HDD to a DVD-ram disk.  It took 8 minutes to dub a 30-minute program and I had no problems following instructions from the manual.<br />We have played a few DVD movies and the video and sound reproduction are excellent, better than my old Sony DVD player.  The first movie I played was my usual \\"test\\" scene -- the \\"Battle of Carthage\\" from \\"Gladiator\\" with lots of light and dark contrast and loud, widely-separated DTS audio.  Superb!<br />The manual is fairly straightforward, as those things go, and I found the setup to be uncomplicated.  I did not find the disclaimers in the manual about things that might conceivably happen (but probably won't) to be ...disconcerting .... The way I read it, the warning about the possibility of a \\"disk becoming unusable\\" if you get a power failure during recording refers more to DVD disks than the HDD. In general, I find that remotes could be better designed and this one is no exception.  I would make it larger with larger buttons and make it work from a greater side-angle but that is nit-picking.<br />Some of the specs I have seen listed for this machine contain inaccuracies.  There are accurate specs for it on the Panasonic website.  People with camcorders should know that the E80 does not have a digital input.  It does have one optical digital output to run audio to your receiver. The optical cable does not come with the unit, btw.<br />Judging from one week in, this is fine machine and I already love it dearly.eption.  I would make it larger with larger buttons and make it work from a greater side-angle but that is nit-picking.  <br />Some of the specs I have seen listed for this machine contain inaccuracies.  There are accurate specs for it on the Panasonic website.  People with camcorders should know that the E80 does not have a digital input.  It does have one optical digital output to run audio to your receiver. The optical cable does not come with the unit, btw.<br />Judging from one week in, this is fine machine and I already love it dearly.