Panasonic DMR-EA48VK DVD Recorder

I'll be short and sweet here.

I'm a film and video professional. I've worked in the business for over 25 years so I know equipment. I bought this deck to replace high quality Panasonic machines we've used over the years and finally wore out.

Panasonic is NOT the reliable company it used to be. This deck is made in China and is junk. Yes, there are reviews here and elsewhere from folks who love the deck. They were the lucky few. The failure rate on this deck is extremely high! Do a search online for this deck and words like "failure", "error", etc. and you'll find that as much as half of these decks lock up due to various component errors and can't be fixed locally.

We just pulled one off the shelf to take another old deck's place. It was sitting in the box for a year and should have been just as good as the day it was delivered. I plugged it in and instantly got a "U99" error code. I looked this up online and found that this is common for this deck. You wouldn't believe the number of these decks that are having to be returned.

Since my deck was now out of warranty, I wrote to Panasonic Service. They said to send it back to them with $170.00 and they would "fix" it. That doesn't include the $30.00 to ship it there. Total of $200.00 for a deck that's never worked. I don't think so. So I ordered a Magnavox MDR515H 500GB HDD and DVD Recorder with Digital Tuner for $250.00. This deck has a slightly higher than normal failure rate but that's much better than 50% and most of the hundreds of reviews for the MDR515 are all 5 Star. Plus, for $28.00 you can buy a three year "no questions asked" swap warranty if it fails for any reason including you breaking it! I have been the happy owner of the Magnavox deck (see my Epinions review on it) for several months now and am getting ready to buy another.

Do you really want to take the chance on this poorly built old technology built in China? At least think about it so you don't end up with an expensive door stop like we have!