Panasonic DMR-ES30VS DVD Recorder/VCR Combo
VCR part Broke.
Okay. Here are some important notes if you plan to buy this product:  1) The manual is not hard as some people said if you read it while doing what it says at the same time. This is called Kinetic learning.  2) The DVD Burner is great with the Flexible recording feature, 1 button recording and a nice interface. That's why I give it 3 stars.  3)If you press Stop instead of Pause while recording, this will produce a short pause when playing back that DVD on some models of players. It was no problem on my Sony player or any Mac computer but did it on my portable. So if you can, just pause if you can.  4) Remember to Finalize to play a DVD on other players! It's in the Disc Management window.  5) The VCR part of the unit crapped out on me. In the middle of recording it would sop and rewind a little. Where this happened, there was a double-take in the recording. I was also getting random pauses in the middle of some DVD's when I played them back on other units.  6) I called Panasonic about this and was on hold for an hour!!!! The guy had no idea how to fix he problem.  7)The Tapes started showing snow. I thought it was a little early for the heads to need cleaning so I took the unit back.  8) I still liked the Recorder part of the unit so I got just that part  by itself (Panasonic DMR-ES20S) and a Sony VCR separately.  9) I still got some random pauses when I played the DVD's on other units. THEN I thought. Hey! The DVD RW's  have never been a problem, just the DVD-R. The RW are TDK brand! the DVD-R are Phillips! I went out and bought some Memorex DVD-R (because I've played those on the portable at one time with no problem and now the recordings are great! Even on the portable! Woo-hoo!    So, even tough I would have returned it because of the  crappy VCR part, a lot of the problems came from cheap blank DVD's! You get what you pay for.    Hope this helps.