Panasonic  DMR-ES40VS VHS / DVD Recorder Silver
Cautiously satisfied
I talked with a couple knowledgeable salespeople and read many online reviews of DVD recorders last fall before deciding to go with Panasonic. I ultimately decided to get this DVD/VHS combo recorder last November at Costco, because I wanted a setup that would allow me to transfer from VHS to DVD in a small space. The salespeople I talked to highly recommended Panasonic, saying it was basically the only company that made reliable DVD recorders. All the others tended to break and get returned for some reason. <br /> <br />The good: <br /> <br />Its VHS-to-DVD and DVD-to-VHS transfers work well. No complaints. The video and audio quality is good, depending on the recording mode you choose. It plays DVD rentals well, also, though it lacks a few of the controls you can get with dedicated DVD players, such as audio enhancement selection during play, instant on/off with subtitles, different POVs during play (I only saw this feature enabled on 1 DVD I have). Those are niceties. The essential controls are there. <br /> <br />It records TV programs well, also. No complaints there either. <br /> <br />If you want maximum flexibility and want to use recordable DVDs the same way you would a VHS tape, then I'd recommend you use DVD-RAM discs with this model. The recorder offers the ability to delete tracks, edit tracks you've recorded, and set chapter points, but only if you use DVD-RAMs. You can get DVD-RWs for it, but your options become more limited. You cannot edit tracks or set chapters on RWs. You can delete tracks, but unless you delete the very last track you recorded, you don't gain any space on the disc. <br /> <br />On DVD-RAMs, if you delete a track, you regain the space it used, for further recording. You can also edit chapters, merging them, or delete chapters you don't want. This is a useful video editing feature. If you're only interested in one part of a show, you can set a chapter point before and a chapter point after the part you want to keep. Then you can gointo the chapter editor and delete the parts you have \\"marked off\\", leaving only the part you want to keep. I read a previous review from someone who said they used this to get rid of TV ads in their recordings. Yep, you can use it for that, too. I have no idea if deleting chapters actually frees up space on the disc. Overall the flexibility it offers is nice to have. <br /> <br />Whenever you put in a DVD you've recorded, you can bring up a menu of thumbnails with track titles. You can \\"arrow\\" around to the track you want, and play it. Very easy. The DVD recorder picks an arbitrary point in the program for its default thumbnail. It offers a nice facility if you want to change it. You can change the title as well, though the way you go about doing it is kind of clumsy and laborious. I don't consider this a big minus, since it's hard for me to imagine a more effective way of doing it, short of hooking up a keyboard. <br /> <br />A nice feature it has, to compensate for the difficulty of setting titles, is if you schedule a program, you can set the title of the recording right when you schedule it (only applies to DVD recording). Very nice for things you record weekly. <br /> <br />By the way, the manual does not explain how to schedule weekly programs. The way you do it is when you enter the screen where you set the channel, the date and the time, etc., when you get to the date, hit the \\"down\\" arrow, rather than up, on the remote. You'll see selections for \\"Weekly Sun.\\", \\"Weekly Sat.\\", etc. <br /> <br />The bad: <br /> <br />In my opinion the best parts of this unit are the DVD and VHS recorder drives. So far they've both worked flawlessly, as have the track management features. Something went wrong though when they designed the other parts. <br /> <br />The one consistent problem I've had with it is its program scheduler is unreliable. Sometimes when I set it up to record a program, it does it. Other times, for some mysterious reason, it doesn't. I can never predictwhen it'll work. Perhaps the unreliability comes in when recording to DVD. <br /> <br />The first unit I bought lasted for 4 months and then it died. The first symptom that something was wrong was the clock had reset itself 2 hours fast. I was able to turn it on after that, but could get no video output. The VHS and DVD drives worked. The LED display worked. But something was clearly wrong. I took it back to the store in February and replaced it with a display model. It was all I could get. Apparently this model was being phased out. So far the replacement has worked, but it has a tendency to \\"weird out\\". Perhaps it's just this model. I unplugged it when I went away on a trip. When I plugged it back in, the clock set itself 6 hours fast, and the unit started exhibiting other odd behaviors. The VHS and DVD drives worked fine, but the \\"control logic\\" for the unit (I'll call it) was acting strange. It seemed to clear up when I went into \\"Setup\\" and reset some options. I expected that since it had been off for so long that all options would've reset to factory defaults, and that nothing would be scheduled for recording. It was six of one and half-dozen of the other. All scheduled recordings were still there, but the \\"Setup\\" options had either reset to factory defaults or had become mysteriously set to options I had never selected. When I went to rent a DVD, it told me that the parental control setting was too high to play. I hadn't seen it do this before. I tried to change the setting but it wouldn't allow me to do so, asking for a password I had never set. I had to look in the manual to learn how to bypass this (which worked), and I was able to reset the parental controls. After being back 3 weeks the unit hasn't really malfunctioned...yet. I'm hoping it'll last a good long while. <br /> <br />In short, the unit's VHS and DVD drives work great, but the firmware that manages the unit's functions is buggy. Hopefully they'll fix this with their next model.