Panasonic DMR-E100HS Progressive Scan DVD Player with 120GB Hard Disk
Panasonic DMR-E100HS
I purchased the E100HS primarily to archive many years of vacation videos. I decided I needed a large hard disk drive to do all the necessary editing before writing them to DVD. All in all, it works as I had hoped.<br />However, I am gradually starting to use it as a VCR, as well, time shifting TV programs, even viewing the beginning of a program before the end has been recorded. Picture quality for this is great and it's nice to know that if I really like the program, it can be stored on a DVD with or without editing.<br />I am disappointed that the Panasonic DMR-E100HS doesn't have a Firewire input so that my newer digital videos must be copied with an S cable. There is a noticable loss of quality (to me, anyway) from the original digital tape, even when recorded at best quality (XP). I have been recording all my archived videos at XP to assure no loss of quality, but this speed allows only one hour per DVD, which adds up to lots of disks. Even at this speed, the DVD does not quite match the digital original.<br />Some small gripes: the on-screen counter to indicate the lengths of video segments stored on the hard disk displays length only in minutes. When you are trying to fit lots of separate video segments on a disk, one-minute intervals are not nearly precise enough. <br />Also, the menus that you can create for your DVDs scrunch up the titles into little rectangular boxes that cut off words in each title, turning them into nonsense. What would it have taken to format the titles into lines instead of boxes?<br />FInally,there is the price. <br />But, overall, I am very happy with this product. <br />By the way, I originally bought the E80, which has a smaller hard disk, but I had to return it when something went terribly wrong and it began to write garbled copies to my DVD blanks just a week after it arrived. The E100 has been completely reliable.