Panasonic  DMR-ES40VS VHS / DVD Recorder Silver
What a disaster this purchase was!!!
First the good news: when it worked properly, the quality of DVD's dubbed from old VHS tapes was great. <br /> <br />Now, for the REST OF THE STORY... <br /> <br />I am a law enforcement officer in NC and bought this product for just ONE reason and ONE reason only: to dub all of my old VHS home movies onto DVD. <br /> <br />I wanted a machine that was easy to use, i.e. with the push of 1 button, and based on a Consumer Reports recent review of the Panasonic DMR-ES30, I went to get one. <br /> <br />The ES40 was on the shelf so I figured this was an improved model, so I purchased it instead. <br /> <br />What a disaster!  <br /> <br />1. The directions are terrible. The process called \\"finalizing a disk\\" (WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR DUBBING FROM VHS TO DVD) is not included in the section about dubbing from VHS to DVD. You find it buried elsewhere in the manual. You CANNOT play your dubbed DVD on another player WITHOUT \\"finalizing\\" your dubbed disk.(By the way, GOD bless those of you who are trying to read this manual for other purposes!) <br /> <br />2. Most of my dubbed disks would NOT finalize, therefore I wasted almost 2 hrs per disk, and with the amount of VHS tapes I want to dub, life is too short to waste on this sort of nonsense. Dubbing is done in real time so you're either going to have to sit in front of the TV monitor or do it overnight, but when you can't finalize your disk you've wasted all that time. <br /> <br />3. One nice feature that is buggy, also, is that Chapter Markers are put in place onto your DVD whenever your VHS tape changes scenes, or at least that's the way it's supposed to work. However, this isn't always the case. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Potluck. Otherwise you're gonna be stuck having to fastforward through your DVD to get from scene to scene, which is another time-wasting event.  <br /> <br />4. Some disks would not finalize because it said \\"there was not enough room to finalize\\". In other words, I recorded too much on it!! Why in the world is there not some sort of automatic function that would stop the dubbing so you could have enough room left to do whatever has to be done for finalizing a disk? So, you're stuck guessing how much is too much. I just started doing only 1.5 hrs or so, but what a waste of disk space. <br /> <br />5. For those disks that did finalize, the machine TOTALLY froze up after finalizing, and I could not remove the DVD unless I unplugged the unit and let it reset itself. This happened 100% of the time. <br /> <br />6. Customer service at Panasonic is terrible. The wait time alone was up to 1 hr, and then the poor rep on the other end didn't have a clue or passed the buck by saying it was \\"probably the media, i.e., the brand of DVD disk, I was using. Yeah, right. I tried Verbatim and Sony discs and I still get the same frustrating problems. <br /> <br />I finally got fed up with this machine and took my unit back for a refund at my point of purchse. The ONLY ES40's on the shelf were RETURNED units!!!!!!! Does that tell you something, too? <br /> <br />Therefore, buy this unit at your own risk and be prepared to put up with alot of unnecessary, time-wasting problems. <br /> <br />