Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
Yes, there are smudging problems.  Blotchy picture.
There are indeed smudging problems, as an earlier reviewer commented.  When an area of one color, particularly black or dark blue, remains still, it turns into a set of blotchy blocks.  It wonder whether the unit is trying to re-compress and then uncompress a feed (Comcast digital cable signal) that is already compressed?<br />Overall, the image quality is not much better than that of a really good VHS VCR from about 5 years ago, before those machines became the very cheaply built, throwaway commodities that they are now.  When an image area melts into a blotch, the quality is actually worse than good VHS.<br />I spoke with Panasonic's customer support people, who told me that the problem is a problem with the unit.  I have had it for less than a week, and I experienced the problem immediately.  I'll try different cables and a few other things, but I expect I'll end up returning this to Amazon and just wait for the DMR-85H, which I've heard will be available in May 2004.  Perhaps the problem will be fixed in that upgrade.<br />Many of the unit's other features are quite nice.  The hard drive and editing software are fabulous.  Setup and operation are very easy; I had it up and running in less than 30 minutes.  The manual is pretty poor, but if you work with it, you can figure things out.<br />The unit had never rejected or failed to write correctly to the TDK DVD-Rs that I've been using.  The programming interface is very nice, as are the other software features.<br />Unfortunately, the value of all these truly great features is ultimately squandered on the production of a substandard quality picture.  And even when I am not recording, the signal that runs through the machine ends up looking worse than it does when I run the same S-VHS cables directly from my digital cable converter box to my excellent TV.<br />It's a real shame, because there's so much to love about this product.  But I can't justify spending this amount of money on something that 1) actually degrades my existing viewing setup and 2) produces a recording that barely matches (or in some case can't even match) the quality I could get with a $150.00 product five years ago.