Panasonic DMR-EH50S DVD Recorder with 100 GB Hard Drive Recording
Issues you don't see in previous reviews
The EH50S is my second Panasonic DVD recorder, the E80H I got 18 months ago worked so well that I decided to buy a second unit for my other home.    I won't repeat the comments you can read elsewhere, but I will discuss the couple issues that have not been mentioned before.    If you plan to perform editing on this unit (such as editing out commercials before archiving to DVD), you will need to do a lot of fast-forward/fast-backward/pause/play maneuvers to skip over the unwanted parts.  In the EH-50S, each press of the fast-forward will take you to a higher speed, and there are a total of 5 levels (2x,10x,30x,70x,200x).  Naturally, you want something faster than 2x or 10x while searching forward/backward (30x and 70x are good choices) to seek out the commercial breaks to edit them out.  The typical key press is to hit fast forward 3-4 times successively to get to the higher speed, and hit play/pause when the unwanted part begins/ends so you can locate the specific points to begin/end editing.    That is where the problem with this unit lies - when you press fast-forward/backward multiple times successively, it queues up your key presses and it can take over 6 seconds after the last key press to get to the speed you want.  It will not execute any other command such as play/pause/stop until it is finished with the queued commands.  So it is a guarantee that you will always overshoot the point you want to stop if you engage high speed search.  6 seconds may not sound long when you read this, but if you are in 70x speed, even 3 seconds is overshooting the stopping point by 3+ minutes of programming, I can assure you that you will swear at this recorder more than once per edit.  As a result, if you edit often, you do not want this recorder (Interestingly, the old E80H, with the latest firmware, provides almost instantaneous responses).  Unfortunately, Panasonic never released a newer version of the EH50S firmware since its release.    This problem is not related to the new hard-drive \\"sleep mode\\", as the drive is already spinning at full speed when you edit.  I work in computer hardware/software for 20 years, I believe it is the result of poor firmware design.  Hard drive sleep mode as a way to improve durability is a marketing gimmick, its true value lies in reduced power consumption and heat generation.  A typical consumer-grade hard drive provides a 600,000 hours of mean-time-between-failure (MTBF), that is 68 years of 24x7 non-stop operation!  You have other problems to worry about if you are still using the unit in 2073.  (The commercial grade drives is in the 1.4+ million hour range, but surely that's not what Panasonic put in the unit).       In LP mode, very fast motion of contrasting color objects (like a person dancing in colorful clothing) can cause an image breakdown: the affected area turned into big blocky shapes.  This is rare, but the problem was not in the older model.  The LP mode in the EH50S is supposed to equal the SP mode quality in the E80H, but it is perhaps only true in programs with little transitions.  With sports program, LP is useless.  You should only use LP mode for something that you don't plan to archive. I definitely consider this the second show-stopper for this recorder.      On the bright side, the dubbing speed is very fast.  In LP mode, it can dub a 60 min video in less than 2 minutes (assuming you have the right disks), which is up to 8 times faster than the older model.  It also allows you to view regular program during dubbing, while the E80H forces you to watch a blue status screen until dubbing completes (which can take a long time depending on the length of the dubbing materials).    Panasonic took some cost cuting in the EH50S, the control on the units is fewer than in the older model, the display is cheaper and less sophisticated.  The brush metal overlay on the older remote is gone, replaced by a full plastic design.  But the unit also costs a lot less, so you get what you pay for.I have cable without a cable box, TV Guide works as advertised.      The recorders is sensitive to power interruption, it displayed a U99 failure message intermittently after a power outage.  I reformatted the hard-drive and the problem disappeared.  In this respect, it is no different than a computer.    Overall, the flexibility to archive to four disk formats is a big plus for me.  I hope Panasonic will release a firmware update soon to fix the image breakdown issue and improve the response of the fast forward/backward keys, as well as the general key press responses.  If they fix these two issues, then I would recommend the recorder wholeheartedly.  In the current state, I believe the EH50S is a couple steps back from designs that is two generations older, which is a huge disappointment.    However, if you rarely edit and just use the unit to record/time-slip programs, then you shouldn't be concerned about the slow key-press responses.    If you edit, I give this recorder 1-star, you will learn to hate the EH50S, so look elsewhere.  If you don't edit and records at SP or higher speed, I give it a 5 star.      I bought the EH50S because of the positive experience from the older E80H.  Now with the sluggish EH50S, I will not buy another Panasonic recorder unless they can prove that the future model is indeed better.    After the release of the EH50S, Panasonic came to a screeching halt in releasing new hard-drive-based recorders since early 2005.  It became the only new model with a hard disk drive, a far cry from the previous lineup (their two higher end models are of the previous generation).  I wonder if Panasonic realized the flaws in the EH50S and is delaying the release of newer and higher-end models.