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Panasonic DMR-E50S
Panasonic DMR-E50S DVD Player/Recorder (Silver) |
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Reviews:
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Works Great for many months...
5 out of 5
I've had my unit for 1.5 years now. Bought it when it first came out and I must tell you, the Time Slip is great when you must record a show and will miss the first half only. (especially a football game that I don't know the score) It acts like tivo and still keeps recording while allowing me to watch from the beginning. It has the ability to record on a Ram disk which allows you to erase and rerecord. Picture looks great at SP mode (2 hr mode) If you copy a show that's just slightly longer than 2hrs you can set the recording for flexible record and it will give you the best recording possible at the fastest speed. Other recorders can't do this and must be set at 4hr mode. This feature is great when copying DVD's etc. NOTE!! One time I went to record a tv show and I was getting errors like crazy. The DVD door would not open, I thought I broke the machine. It turns out that I had a bad fingerprint on the READ side of the DVD and the I cleaned it with a tissue and it worked MINT!! Watch out for those dirty DVD's.....Great product!!! You will never record with a VCR again!
DK
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Excellent product
5 out of 5
I've had this unit for a year and am very pleased. I haven't recorded anything for permanent storage, but I use it practically every day to watch the evening news. Here's how: my wife and I are usually still eating dinner when the program begins, so I simply turn the Panasonic on when the news starts, and go back to the table. When we are done eating, and the news isn't finished, we start watching from the beginning while the recording continues. This way we don't miss anything and can skip the stories we don't care about. The picture is essentially broadcast (cable) quality. It works!
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Good Starter DVD Recorder
4 out of 5
I have used this recorder extensively for over a year with no problems whatsoever.
This is an excellent and easy-to-use DVD recorder for those of you who intend to use this as a way to transfer your old non-Macromedia copyright protected VHS tapes to DVD or as a way to record programs off the television. It has a very quiet fan and is fairly easy to use. Some people have complained about the remote, but I think the remote is fine.
The flexible recording speed (FRS) feature is great and rare on the lower-end DVD recorders. It allows you to record for a specific amount of time. Many recorders including this one allow you to record at one, two, four and six hour settings. The problem with squeezing six hours of video onto one DVD is a major sacrifice in quality as you increase the amount of video on the DVD. The four-hour setting is similar to VHS quality. I do most recording at the two-hour setting as I see little-to-no difference between this and the one-hour setting. What makes the FRS feature on this model so helpful is it allows you to record for a more specific amount of time. For example, if a movie is two hours and seven minutes long you can set the time for this exact amount as it will not otherwise fit on the two-hour setting and the four-hour setting will result in a significant loss of quality.
This unit allows you to enter titles by keying in letters, numbers and symbols via the remote...a little tedious, but still a nice feature. The unit is also one of the more attractive DVD recorders and has a sleek look to it.
As far as the negatives of this unit:
1.) There is no firewire connection (IEEE port) so if you use a mini-DV or HI-8 Digital camcorder and want to transfer your video to DVD it will not be done digitally. You can still use the RCA composite or S Video jacks, but this is not as good as using a DV firewire port.
2.) It has no hard drive. This is not a big deal with me as the DVD recorders that come with hard drives are overpriced. It is counter-intuitive that I can buy a quality 80 GB hard drive for my computer for $30 on sale; however, it seems most DVD recorders charge a minimum of a $100 premium for a tiny hard drive. I store everything on DVD-Rs anyway since I would hate to lose data as a result of hard drive failure. This is also one of the relatively few models that allow you to record on DVD-RAM disks in addition to DVD-R disks. Good if you are not sure you want to keep something as you can keep rewriting on a DVD-RAM disk. The only catch is you will need another player / drive capable of reading DVD-RAM (or another DVD recorder) if you want to then transfer video you decide to keep.
3.) This machine is quirky about the type of media it will accept. I recommend you stick with media manufactured by Taiyo Yuden. This includes Panasonic DVD-Rs and the Fuji DVD-Rs made in Japan. Be careful, some of the Fuji DVD-Rs are made in Taiwan and are not Taiyo Yuden. You can also pick up non-branded Taiyo Yuden DVDs from a variety of e-tailers. Using cheap media on this recorder will cause the recorder to lock and enter recovery mode. It is very difficult to get the media out of the player as there is no pin release like you find on many other drives. You can easily find a 50 pack spindle of Taiyo Yuden manufactured DVD-R for under $20 if you shop around / wait for sales.
4.) When the recorder finalizes a DVD-R for playback on all other DVD players, it creates a very simplistic title menu with a blue screen and yellow bars. I prefer other recorders that provide you with an actual thumbnail of the video clip in each chapter created.
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Guys, you'll need to read the manual....
3 out of 5
I pride myself on being able to figure things out with the user manuals. Not with puppy...Simple operations become a frantic search in the manual on how to do these things. I haven't had any problems with discs compatiblities. I bought a Sima SCC2 digital color corrector to compliment this unit. With this I'm able to back up my videos and DVD's. The quality on the XP mode is incredible, can't tell between broadcast and the dvd copy.
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NEVER again
1 out of 5
I purchased this unit from Circuit City in Feb of 2004.
38 days after purchase it quit working. (I live 60 miles away)
Circuit city will not take it back after 30 days PERIOD.
SO, took me OVER two months to get it shipped and returned back to me due to the fact that Panasonic gave me the WRONG shipping address and it went to Texas before getting to PA.
Anyway, Now it is back to not recording and not ejecting discs AGAIN.
first time it said it couldn't read discs. now, it won't open or close. "CLOSE" stays on the display.
Panasonic's customer support leaves a lot to be desired!
I have no problems with circuit city except for they COULD have been more helpful with WHERE to ship this to. All they gave me was the typical 800 munber that is listed ont he web. THey also COULD have shipped it back since it was BARLY out of warranty. Or at LEAST swapped the unit out. Overall, I bet this unit hasn't been used more than 10 times in 6 months and will probaly be back in the shop for another TWO months!
Never again Panasonic! NEVER again!
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