Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
Great for Archiving Tapes
I am constantly searching for a machine that can digitize my 10+ year old tapes since I need them for repeated viewing.  I use a VCD recorder from Tarapin before but the picture quality is not good at all and sometimes the video and audio do not synchronize.  When DVD recorders start to be available in the market, I definitely want to get one and preserve my tapes on DVDs.  This machine does everything I need and more.  The harddrive let me dub the program into the HD, edit it, add text titles, and re-dub it to a DVD-R.  XP mode is definitely the best.  However, I find the SP mode is still very acceptable.  Frankly, I cannot tell any difference between the original (new) tape from the DVD-R dub in SP mode.  In additional, the recording process is much more stable than the Tarapin VCD recording.<br />For editing, it's very simple.  Playlist is very easy to compile.  Cutting and deleting portions of a program are also very simple.  Entering text may not be the most enjoyable part of the process, but certainly faster than fiddling with your cell-phone text entering.  Overall, it suits everything I need to do.<br />So far I have only tried DVD-Rs by TDK.  For compatibility, the DVD-Rs can be played on my Daewoo DVD player and my friend's Apex DVD player, but not on my no-brand DVD-ROM of my PC.  I will test them with more DVD players later.<br />For TV recording, this machine works pretty much like a VCR with no &quot;VC.&quot;  Because of the hugh hard drive (80GB = about 35hrs in SP mode; 6hrs max for each program), I don't think I need any re-writable media... [BTW, my PC hard drive has only 60GB...]<br />Overall, it's just about 100 dollars more compared to the basic DVD recorders with no hard drive, but the machine really worths every penny!