Panasonic DMR-E50M DVD Recorder

Well, the E50 is a great DVD recorder and worth the price. I bought two of them for professional video editing and have found some problems that look like Panasonic just got in a hurry on their engineering at the last minute.
The first thing is a nasty problem that you will run across if you record often enough on DVD-R. When a new DVD-R is not properly read (typical of cheaper DVD-Rs), the E50 will go into "RECOVER" mode. Here is the rub, it usually does NOT recover and will not eject the disc. Killing the power will not work either. According to Panasonic, the remedy is to send it to a service center. I chose to forget the warranty on both of my E50s because I just did not have time to wait...I removed the cabinet cover and the drive cover and removed the disk...all was ok then (I don't buy cheap DVD-Rs now). Panasonic should have equipped the machine with a "pin-hole" hardware-driven eject or something. I have not encountered this problem with DVD-RAM discs.
The other problem I have is with the playlist. This feature allows you to get "frame accurate" editing on video material you've recorded on a disc, but it is not easy. Even though you can slow-roll to the exact frame for cuts, the time counter in the playlist editor only displays in whole "seconds". Why Panasonic did not give the same refinement to the edit time counter that they gave to the scene edit feature, I don't know (you have to count the frames and write down the number).
Another "time counter" problem is in the front display panel. For example, if you "pause record" to assemble some scenes onto a single recording, the true "assembled" time of the recording is off from the counter by as much as 15%. No, it is not a typical "preroll" ailment...these recorders are on time, every time. The problem is in the timer display...if you use a stopwatch on each scene while recording, the elapsed time will add up correctly.