Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver
Almost a great product
This is at times a fantastic product and at times an immensely frustrating product.  It is true that you can easily transfer your old video tapes to DVD format and that you can record programming and watch at your convenience.  Unfortunately, neither of these is accomplished without error.<br />I purchased mine on amazon along with the site-recommended memorex dvd-r spindle.  I have used these discs with the DVD burner on my computer and have never had a bad disc.  However, my new DVD recorder failed to recognize them.  After calling customer service (and waiting on hold for approximately 30 minutes), I was informed that panasonic's discs (which are considerably more expensive) were the only verified compatible discs.  Eventually, however, I was able to talk to their service rep long enough for him to concede that TDK discs work as well as the panasonic discs.  I have been using those discs since, but the error rate (wasted disc) is approximately 50%.  The price of discs is dirt cheap so it's really not the money that you lose when you can only use half of your discs that bothers me.  The major source of frustration is that the errors frequently occur after the recording process has been underway for quite some time meaning you have wasted your time and need to try again.<br />Like several other users, I have also had problems with the hard disc.  Three times now I have recorded programs only to find that they are either unwatchable, uneditable, or both.  I suspect that this might be caused by a &quot;bad spot&quot; on the hard drive and this would somewhat confirm others' issues with poor quality control.<br />To it's benefit, it is really nice to have some of my old video tapes on DVD and I have been able to do that many times.  If you are in a hurry to get in on this technology, I would recommend this recorder (with the caveats), but if you can hold out, you might want to let the technology (or quality control) catch up with the great idea.