Panasonic DMR-E80H (80 GB) DVD Recorder

This machine is a gift from heaven. It does everything superbly and is one of the few tech devices I have purchased recently that is well thought out and appears to have been actually used by the engineers designing it. Now if only you could copy pre-recorded purchased movie DVDs it would be a masterpiece.

FEATURES/HIGHLIGHTS: Up to 106 hours recording on hard drive, 12 hours on Ram disk & 6 hours on DVD-R. Time Slip recording (watch a DVD recording while recording another), Auto renewal Recording (automatically records the same program each day/week over the previous one). High speed dubbing feature.Great sound & picture. Progressive scan. Plays, DVD,DVD-A, CD, Video CD, and MP3. Price is reasonable in view of quality/features.

RECORDING SPEEDS: It has 5 recording speed modes for selection. Both the XP and SP modes make virtually indistinguishable copies of the original source while LP is very good and even EP is satisfactory. The XP mode provides better quality sound recordings. Matter of fact, if I record music from satellite TV, it sounds better from the recording than the original??? FR is a flexible recording option, which permits recording to the available disk space. Example: you wish to record a 3 hour item to a disk so rather than having it all in LP format (LP allows 4 hours on a disk) the Panasonic would begin recording in the better quality SP format and subsequently automatically switch to the LP format. Then the disk would be filled but recorded (for the most part) in a better quality format.

MENUS: Ease of use and very helpful. In particular, the navigator is very useful & easy to use/understand. Once you have items recorded, when you select the navigator you get a screen menu showing those items and you just scan and select what you want to watch.

TITLING: You can title your programs for easy future reference.

EDITING: It has numerous editing choices although you may have to use the unit for awhile before understanding and becoming comfortable with their use. For example, you can dub from the hard drive to the ram or DVD-R disk using a high-speed mode or if you prefer you can select the mode to use. Using a slower speed will permit you to copy up to 6 hours to a DVD-R disk. You can also divide recording programs. For example, if you were to record 2 TV shows (one after the other), you can subsequently divide those into 2 separate recordings and title them. Also, you can shorten a segment. For example, say you recorded a movie to the hard drive from TV, which included commercials, which you wanted to save to a disk. After recording on the hard drive, you can quickly scan it (up to 100 X speed) and remove the commercials, then record the movie without commercials to a disk.

TIMER RECORDING: Is a breeze and you can set up to 32 programs and up to a month in advance. Also, while recording, you can watch an item already recorded either on the hard drive or a disk.

VARIOUS RECORDING SOURCES: There are 3 inputs all with "S" inputs to allow you to input sources like a VCR, another DVD, Satellite TV, etc. Plus it has "F" input & output for regular TV.

REGULAR DVD PERFORMANCE: Playing professional DVDs is great with great picture and sound together with ability to change audio/video setting to your own preference.

OUTPUTS: 2, both with "S" so, you can have one going to a VCR and another to your TV or Receiver.

REMOTE: Easy to use but unit's sensor is poorly placed being on the extreme left. If you have it in a cabinet with the door closed it shields the sensor from input so you have to leave the cabinet door open.

WEAKNESSES: My main disappointment is in fact I cannot record my purchased DVDs to a disk so I can have spare ones for my van's DVD player. Other than that, it is just the poor placement of the remote sensor. I would also like the ability to record in 5.1 audio.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Recommended in a heartbeat.