Panasonic DMRE50S DVD Player/Recorder , Silver
What a great piece of technology!
I bought this DVD recorder for the sole purpose of transferring my home videos onto DVD.  I was concerned at first that it would be rather complicated to achieve this...boy was I wrong.  For me, it was a simple as plugging the camcorder into the front loaded set of audio/video ins (SVid and standard RCA).  I pushed play on the camcorder and record on the DVD player.  2 hours later, I had a DVD copy of my video!  I have found no issues with DVD playback capability.  The DVD played on my Xbox, my computer DVD drive and the kicker, an 8 year old RCA DIVX (yep, that is right Divx) player.  It was simply fantastic!<br />Now for the breakdown:<br />The Good:  Looks sleek, recording is a breeze, no apparent compatability issues with my other DVD players.  With Tivo, this beauty really shines!<br />The Bad: The remote.  Not very ergodynamic for the hand.  The buttons are rather small, with more buttons hidden by a slide out compartment.<br />The Ugly: Initial setup into an existing home entertainment center.  This piece of equipment wants to be the main hardware that you run all of your audio and video through.  I have DirecTV, Tivo (seperate units)and a A/V receiver.  The initial setup screen wants you to plug in your video source directly into the back of it.  Well, thats not really possible/practical with my setup.  In other words, it wants to be like the old VCR days where you take your signal and run it into the box.  For me, Tivo accomplishes this and I don't need to have my cables running from the satellite to this to TIVO or whatever.  That being said, this unit will not complete the auto set-up where it detects all of your channels etc.  You must have this plugged into your main video source in order to take advantage of the timed recordings and the VCR+ features.  So, everytime I shut it down, when I restart it, it goes back to the initial setup screen and I have to cancel out of it.<br />For the piracy enthusiasts out there:  good luck.  This is not a DVD copier.  It will proudly display it's inability to record since the source has copy protection on it.  Although I'm not sure how it knows this (it can even detect it on VHS tapes)you can't use it to copy your DVD movies or VHS movies.  Now I'm sure there is some workaround or other gadget you can buy to decode that stuff, but for me, I don't want it for that.<br />All in all, this is a sweet piece of hardware for my entertainment system.  I have no problem recording from the satellite or from recorded Tivo programs that I want to save on to DVD.<br />Oh, and by the way, even with Super Saver shipping (free) this baby was on my doorstep in FOUR days!It will proudly display it's inability to record since the source has copy protection on it.  Although I'm not sure how it knows this (it can even detect it on VHS tapes)you can't use it to copy your DVD movies or VHS movies.  Now I'm sure there is some workaround or other gadget you can buy to decode that stuff, but for me, I don't want it for that.<br />All in all, this is a sweet piece of hardware for my entertainment system.  I have no problem recording from the satellite or from recorded Tivo programs that I want to save on to DVD.<br />Oh, and by the way, even with Super Saver shipping (free) this baby was on my doorstep in FOUR days!