Panasonic DMRE85HS Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive Recording
Very Pleased
I bought this unit a couple months ago.  I have to say I am extremely happy with it.  One thing I was concerned about was fan noise, or the vibration coming from the unit during operation.  I keep my TV and DVD player in a teakwood cabinet and if any of these components is prone to vibration then it will have the whole cabinet resonating, which can be an unnerving sound if, as is the case in my apartment, my desk is right next to the unit.   <br /> <br />This unfortunately happened with the Pioneer DVR-510-H-S DVD recorder.  When I set up the Pioneer and plugged it in I immediately heard continual fan noise and, worse, a sort of low level hum like a transformer, which permeated the room.  I had to take the Pioneer back, which was unfortunate because otherwise I really liked the look and operation of that unit.   <br /> <br />So when I brought the Pioneer back, it was back to the drawing board.  I knew I wanted a DVD player with hard drive recording capacity, and that led me next to the Panasonic DMRE85HS.  I read the reviews and would say they were positive on whole, and with no conspicuous mention of fan noise or excessive vibration, so I took the plunge. I saw the Panasonic at CompUSA for about $600 and I also saw them online at NewEgg.com for $485.  I printed out the NewEgg.com ad and brought it into my CompUSA and showed it to the manager and he knocked $100 off the CompUSA price, so I got the unit for $500 (unfortunately plus 8% sales tax--thanks City of Atlanta!) and got to walk out with it that night. <br /> <br />Got it home and set it up but couldn't do much with it after running through the setup menu because you need to let it sit overnight (and several days would be even better) once you plug it into your cable, to enable the TV Digest programming to download.  I've seen many complaints about this in the online reviews but I have to say it seems mainly to be a problem with people's patience rather than with the unit itself.  If you leave the thing alonelong enough when you first buy it and set it up (say, at least for 8 and as many as 24 hours) you will be well on your way to having most of the full 7 days of TV Guide programming info downloaded, or at least that was the case with my unit (of course, I don't have a cable box--my cable goes right into the wall).  At that point, further downloading will just happen at night when you are not using the unit.  Since those first few days of watching the programming gradually fill in, I have had no problems with missing programming info when I needed it. <br /> <br />Anyway, now that it is up and running, I LOVE the thing.  I am not a huge tv watcher (I can spend as much time online as on TV) and one reason I often get irritated with TV is that you have to watch what THEY want, when THEY want you to, and sit through the commercials THEY want you to see.  Well with this thing, I just go on the TV guide menu for instance, especially under the \\"SORT\\" command, under which all programming is listed alphabetically, and I go to the shows I know will be on and that I want to watch, and I tell the unit to record them, and then when I get home from work at night, I don't have to sit through Larry King or Bill O'Reilly or whoever--I can watch that episode of Apprentice that I really wanted to see or last night's The Daily Show, which comes on after I'm headed to bed.  The fact that I never have to get up and insert a VHS cassette--i.e., the hard drive does it all, with the remote as teh control--well that's just awesome to me. <br /> <br />I've already recorded some shows that I thought my father, for instance, would enjoy, then burned those shows from the hard disc to a DVD-R, then brought the DVD disc over to my parent's house one night where we all watched the shows on their Phillips DVD player--all with no problem whatsoever. <br /> <br />This is cool too:  I bought an extra-long S-video cable to hook my computer to the unit (it has an S-video input on the front panel) and thenused my tv as a monitor while I worked on my computer.  While I was working on the computer with the TV as monitor, fed through the Panasonic DVR, I hit \\"record\\" and the Panasonic's hard disk then started recording the monitor as I was working.  In other words, all the movements of my mouse, my opening and closing of programs etc.  Not sure just how practical this capacity is, but for instance, if you needed to show someone how to do something on the computer, you could create a DVD-R instruction video of the steps you take in operating a particular piece of software or in accomplishing a particular computer task (or create a video record of having done some particular thing on the computer if needed for work, for legal purposes, etc.). <br /> <br />All in all, from my perspective, I highly recommend the Panasonic DMRE85HS.  Are their improvements that could be made to it?  Absolutely.  Someone mentioned that the \\"commercial skip\\" button is pre-set at a certain interval that doesn't always match the length of the commercial break.  Yes, this is an inconvenience, but overall  the commercial skip button is still a breathtakingly powerful and wonderful button for someone who's been at the mercy of commercials all his life.  Someone else mentioned that you have to scroll through the program listings--that you can't just jump from one channel to another when you use them--which is true and an annoyance but not enough of one for me to hate this unit.  And of course, as others have said, the manual is a bit confusing at times, but mainly in terms of finding the right page for your problem--once you find the right page, the instructions I think are fairly straightforward. <br /> <br />Anyway, I hope this helps.