Panasonic DMR-HS2 Progressive-Scan DVD Recorder/PVR with 40 GB Hard Drive (Silver)
Highly Recommended with a couple of drawbacks.
I purchased the DMR-HS2 primarily to convert my 80 tape VHS collection to DVD. The editing functions on the unit are perfect for doing this. You can record the entire tape to the hard drive (or DVD-RAM) and then use the \\"divide program\\" feature to split up the six hours into individual programs. The \\"shorten segment\\" feature is easy to use and allows you to cut commercials or other sections you don't need. Entering titles is a bit tedious and they are limited to 64 characters (40 on DVD-R), but Panasonic did the best they could short of having a keyboard port.<br />Once you have all of your programs divided and titled, you can dub them to DVD-R. A well thought out menu lets you pick the programs and order to dub and tells you the length of each program. After adding each program, you are told how much time is left on the DVD-R. This allows you to make very efficient use of the remaining time. Dubbing occurs in real time for DVD-R and 3x for DVD-RAM. <br />After dubbing to DVD-R you can enter a title and finalize the disc which takes about 5 minutes. You have a choice of 9 menus. The menus are pretty basic, but work well.<br />There are four recording modes (XP, SP, LP and EP). The SP mode is excellent, but only allows for two hours per 4.7 GB disk. The LP mode is of good quality, allows for 4 hours per disc and is what I use for everything. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with EP and don't record anything in this mode.<br />One other major drawback is that you are unable to dub from DVR-R back to the harddrive. If you need to make a copy of something you've burned to DVD-R, you need to play back with a DVD player and suffer the associated quality loss. After figuring this out, I decided to put my entire collection on 9.4 gig DVD-RAMs. You pay about a 40% premium over purchasing two 4.7 gig DVD-R, but you 1/2 the number of discs you need and can make unlimited copies.<br />One other note. If your VCR doesn't have SVideo out, plan to purchase one that does along with a high quality SVideo cable. It is a small price to pay for a huge improvement in picture quality.