Panasonic DMR-E60S DVD Player/Recorder , Silver
WOW! Very pleased!
I've been extremely happy with the DMR-E60S so far, since I have tons of digital video that I want to archive, and was not about to sacrifice that sweet digital source quality to a standalone DVD burner with S-Video or (perish the thought) analog-only inputs. <br />I connect my Sony camcorder with the DV cable into the front DV input, pop in a DVD-RAM (if I am just doing a straight-to-disk dump) or a DVD-R (if I want to create a basic navigation menu, finalize for playback as DVD-Video, etc), and start recording. The quality of the transfers is fantastic (when using brand-name DVD media) and the finalized discs have played back smoothly and clearly on both my standalone Pioneer player and my computer's DVD drive. To these eyes, the DVDs I've created so far are about as close as one can get to making an identical copy of the source. No  artifacts, no pixel drag, no hesitations, nothin'. <br />If you're familiar with connecting a VCR to a TV, and know your way around your digital camcorder, it will take you (I kid you not) fifteen minutes to get this up and running. It's THAT simple. I had a finalized DVD ready to test within an hour of removing the unit from the box. The manual is reasonably well written, but the instructions most tangible to this device (the ones specific to RECORDING) do not exactly jump out at you. <br />I do suggest spending some time with the documentation just to acquaint yourself with the unit's on-screen options display. It's a fairly easy menu to follow, but learning about the available options ahead of time will make the experience smoother (hunt-and-peck won't be very rewarding here). <br />The remote control provides access to the most common and most useful operations, so you won't be spending all your time hovering over the actual unit trying to get something done. <br />Naturally, creating elaborate menus and doing sophisticated edits (as can be done on a computer system with the appropriate software) are beyond this device's capabilities. But it is possible to create a basic menu of entries on a DVD-R prior to finalizing, and for my purposes that will do just fine (NOTE: this unit was previously rated as 4 stars because I was under the impression that a menu could not be created on DVD-R. Further experimentation showed that this IS possible, and so this unit gets the extra star). <br />To be certain, if your source material is primarily from analog sources, or from a standard broadcast source (cable or satellite TV), there are cheaper units by the same manufacturer that may be better suited. Be warned that making recordings at a low-quality setting (anything less than XP or SP) will disappoint the lines-of-resolution counters out there (grin).<br />If you're shopping for a DVD-based VCR (in other words, you're less interested in resolution quality and more interested in exploiting DVD's generous storage capabilities), again, keep shopping. <br />However, if your primary goal is to transfer video from a digital source to a DVD, you insist on pure digital-to-digital quality, and you don't have the time or interest to do computer-based DVD recording, then THIS is the DVD recorder for you, hands down.