Panasonic DMR-E100HS Progressive Scan DVD Player with 120GB Hard Disk
An updated review
OK, the manual is pretty dreadful, but once you succeed in translating it, you've got the best of the crop of the current DVD recorders.  It enables you to do just about everything you'd want to -- with one irritating exception.  In an effort to kow-tow to the Hollywood interests, Panasonic deliberately prevented dubbing DVD disks to the unit's Hard Drive.  That's a significant nuisance, because it prevents the perfectly legal transfer of ones own DVD content.  (To do that, you'll have to use a computer and DVD drive.)  But you can dub back and forth from DVD RAM disks -- an excellent media -- and, of course, you can create DVD-R disks.   It's easy to transfer Camcorder tapes (via either the unit's Firewire or analog inputs) though editing them is limited to fairly basic possibilities.      Overall quality of video is excellent, and (once you surmount that manual) the unit is easy enough to operate.  Now go bury that VHS recorder (once you've transferred all your tapes, of course.)    Update -- one year later.  No buyers-remorse whatsoever and the (noted) small shortcomings remain small and the pluses get larger.    This has become an indispensable unit in our house!  If you watch (and archive) favorite TV shows, you can (fairly) easily strip them of commercials and enjoy them without annoyance.  Makes ALL the difference!  \\"Desperate Housewives\\" shrinks from an hour to 42 smooth minutes.      This one WORKS!