Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
updated review: great machine, mark/edit/dub, archive VHS
(Update to my previous review after several months of usage)<br />First, one correction to an older review-<BR>- Edit/Mark/Dub:<BR>you CAN edit out commercials etc. on the harddisk, make &quot;chapter&quot; (skip-to) marks, and dub to DVD-R in Fast mode, eg without re-encoding or losing quality. You must first record programs in &quot;DVD-R compatible mode&quot;, mentioned in the manual.<BR> I haven't seen any quality difference w/ this setting vs &quot;VBR&quot; mode, and it's great-  I can mark chapter points to skip to during playback (also marking the ads, so I can jump to them quickly during editing), edit out commercials (&quot;shorten segment&quot; feature, not &quot;playlists&quot;), and then dub it to DVD-R for archiving. Editing saves space, besides removing commercials, and the chapter marks are retained, for dubbing.<BR>This makes for a really nice feature for home videos also- besides editing out &quot;mistakes&quot;, you can also highlight exactly the spots you want to, eg first scene of the birthday party, landmarks during travel, etc.; viewers of your DVD can now just jump to exactly the &quot;interesting&quot; points YOU defined, skipping boring parts :-) Some other brands just put auto-defined marks eg each 5minutes, not under your control.<BR> Editing is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The pause/frame/slow ffwd/rvs make it easy to exactly find your edit points.<br />- Input TBC/Stabilization:<BR>For VHS/8mm or other video archiving, the &quot;input TBC&quot; (time-base corrector) is a GREAT feature- it's what seems to make the videos &quot;look better than the original tape&quot;, mentioned in other reviews. It stabilizes the picture and removes the analog tape &quot;jitter&quot; or horizontal wiggles, and sometimes helps stabilize colors also. This is a very important feature for those who want to archive old videos, and I don't see it on other competing brand models.<BR>For quality, either SP(2hr) or LP(4hr) mode seems to work well; while LP has half the resolution (352x480 not 704x480), analog video doesn't really have that much resolution anyway, so you don't lose very much detail; only downside is LP still shows more &quot;motion artifacts&quot; in fast-moving scenes.<br />- Progressive Scan:<BR>For playing back movie DVDs, I was pleasantly surprised with the Progressive-scan output to my HDTV... it made a much bigger difference than I expected. It seems to enhance the DVD resolution, not just be a line-doubler, like my HDTV already has built-in. Diagonal lines and curves seem much sharper and &quot;anti-aliased&quot;, if you know the computer term. It still does a good job with video sources as well, and it's easy to turn off Progressive mode w/ the remote if you want to (for one thing, closed-captioning doesn't display in progressive mode.)<br />- Stability:<BR>While there may be other (PC-based) ways of making DVDs of your TV shows or videos, there is one big benefit to buying and using this DVD recorder: it doesn't crash, it simply works. No software incompatibilities, no bugs, installation/upgrade problems, etc. Not to mention, recording &amp; editing &amp; burning DVDs doesn't tie up your computer for hours :-) (just the TV)<BR> There will always be some small issues with DVD-R and player compatibility; you can't escape that, it's not Pansonics fault.<BR>One note, since this does have a hard-drive, I suggest buying AT LEAST a surge protector, if not a small UPS (battery-backed power.) Same goes for Tivo/Replay. It's also pretty cool to record a show on battery during a power outage, and watch it later when power comes back :-)<br />Some small complaints:<br />- the remote and operations are complicated. Lots of buttons, and you do have to read the manual a lot. Once you understand what it tries to say, it's pretty easy :-)  (Recording is easiest of all- set the channel, recording &quot;speed&quot; (quality mode), and hit Record button. Done. They have a &quot;dub&quot; shortcut key to copy a playing program to DVD-R also.)<br />- While recording a show, although you can watch another show, you can't edit or delete anything.<br />- VCR+ and &quot;programming&quot; to record shows is still like a VCR. No &quot;TV schedule&quot; listings like Tivo, eg browse shows/channels and &quot;select&quot; to record... and if the schedule changes times, you have to update your program manually.<BR>It also means you have to &quot;type&quot; in names for your programs, a small pain.<BR> This is a BIG benefit to the Pioneer DVD Tivo Recorders... However, Tivo doesn't let you edit out commercials :-(<br />- Burner is &quot;1x&quot; speed to DVD-R, which means it takes 1hr to burn a full disk. DVD-RAM is 2x speed, eg 30minutes to burn a disk. Panasonic has higher-speed PC DVD-R drives, nicer if they had used those models.<br />- &quot;Finalized&quot; DVD-R menus are pretty boring, just text w/ some themed background image etc. No &quot;thumbnail&quot; pictures of the video, and no chapter (scene selection) submenus- only lists each separate program (Titles, in dvd speak.)<BR>However, if you wanted to, you could use the divide feature to split one recording into multiple pieces, and name them separately, so they show up in the menu screen.<br />Besides these complaints, HIGHLY recommended if you want to do any DVD recording, or a &quot;cheap&quot; tivo-like recording of TV; even as a backup to existing Tivo or VCR.<br />Amazon has a GREAT price on this, and DEFINITELY pay the extra for this model w/ harddrive.. the editing-&gt;dub to DVD-R features are very key, and not much more $$ than the DVD-R only models.