Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
Everything my VCR ever wanted to be, and much more!
After about a month of use, I love this machine! Usually I'll wait longer before posting a review but this unit is just so neat that I feel obliged to share my experience.<br />Appearance: I was a little apprehensive about adding a silver unit to my all-black home theater setup, but the unit looks really attractive. Silver seems to be an emerging trend, and the mirror finish in the center looks surprisingly good when the unit is powered on. No complaints here.<br />Build quality: Very solid feel all round, the initial build quality seems impressive compared to some other consumer electronics on the market today. Evidently some reviewers have been experiencing quality problems, but so far my machine has been working flawlessly.<br />Setup: A breeze! I use a splitter to feed cable directly into the RF input, with the digital cable box feeding the S-video input on L1, as well as the RF input on the TV. This yields a very flexible setup for independent recording and viewing. A VCR feeds into L3, leaving L2 free for a camcorder or other device.<br />The hard drive: Absolutely the one feature that sets this unit apart from the rest. Don't even consider buying a recorder without a hard drive, it adds enormous flexibility. I won't be surprised if the models without hard drives start disappearing off the market relatively soon.<br />Features: No need to repeat all the features here, suffice it to say that I agree with all the positive reviews about the features of this machine. It absolutely changed the way I watch and record TV. One of my main goals is to archive stacks of old VHS tapes on DVD, and this machine offers everything I want in that regard, and a whole lot more. A real-life example: we recently took family from abroad on a trip up the coast, using two camcorders. Back home, it was an easy exercise to record all the video on the hard drive, edit the programs to remove bloopers, and then create playlists to combine the footage from the two camcorders into chronological sequences, with titles, etc. The playlists were dubbed to DVD-R and the results are impressive! Video editing is always time-consuming, no matter how and where you do it. I actually prefer doing it on this machine, rather than using my PC to laboriously string pieces of video together, fighting through a bunch of fancy software editing features I don't really need.<br />I record in SP mode most of the time and I cannot distinguish the recording from the original source material.<br />User manual: I found the manual useful and accurate, but I'll concede that it is a little cryptic in some areas. All that is required, though, is a little experimentation to get the hang of all the different features. The manual is not nearly as bad as portrayed in some other reviews!<br />Media: I've been using only Memorex DVD-R so far and they have worked without fail. Not one coaster, and after finalizing they work in all my other DVD players, including two computers.<br />Picture and sound: Very impressive. I feed the optical audio output into my home theater system and the sound is superb. So is the picture quality. The focus of this machine is its recording and editing capabilities, but as a progressive scan DVD player it is no slouch, either. Very good.<br />Panasonic did a great job with this machine. Some nice-to-haves in a follow-up model would be Firewire input (the DMR-E100 has it but not worth the extra money), component video output and the ability to change channels on a cable box. I don't consider any of those essential, though - as it is, the DMR-E80 is a great addition to any home theater. <br />Don't be put off by uninformed reviews - do yourself a favor and check out this machine, it rocks!