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Panasonic DMR-E80H
Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive (Silver) |
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Reviews:
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I love this machine!
5 out of 5
I've had this machine for over 2 years and I love it. It's completely eliminated any need for me to EVER use video tapes for any reason. Simple and logical to use, record everything to the HD first, then edit it nice and neat and burn to disc.
I wanted to put in a review though specifically to comment on what some other reviewers have said. Someone said they encountered the 'recovery' & 'bye' issue when a burn failed, and that happens sometimes. Especially if you clog up the HD with files, it can have a minor heart attack, but that doesn't mean the machine is broken, it doesn't need to be fixed. Just erase the problem file and it'll be fine again, it's very rare that this happens to me, and it's a minor annoyance compared to all the wonderful things this machine does. Clear off the HD and maybe reformat it and it'll be golden again. Sometimes if gets really confused and has a serious breakdown, I've found I might need to unplug it to just get it to quit trying to figure out what went wrong and reset, but that always works, and once it recovers it's fine again. This is a complex machine, but it's very robust.
Regarding HD failure, that DID happen to me. All hard drives are susceptable to eventual failure, and I ran that thing into the dirt with heavy use, and it eventually failed completely. But you don't need to pay some electronics shop jerk $320 to fix it, that's a rip off. There's absolutely nothing unusual about the HD in these things. I just opened up the case, pulled out the HD, went to CompUSA and bought a new one (got a 120 of the same manufacturer cause they were out of 80's), plugged it in, closed it up, machine recognized it immediately, formatted it, and it's been working like a beauty ever since. Total fix cost was less than $100 to buy the new drive.
My machine has been in heavy use for 2 years, and it's performed like a champ. It's needed a bit of babying sometimes, but 99.5% of the time it's the best recording machine I've ever had, and the other 0.5% of the time you just have to let it recover, perhaps give up on a file or two if they got corrupted (VERY rare, but the machine isn't broken). I won't claim it's perfect, but it's SO good the occasional weakness is so minor that I can't get upset by it.
Hope this helps some of those who already have this machine. Don't give up on it at the tiniest hiccup. It's a tough machine and does a fantastic job if you stick with it.
Oh yeah, one last cool thing I discovered about this machine. Near as I can tell the Panasonic models of DVR/DVD recorders are the only ones that maintain 640 x 480 resolution at LP speed. All the other brands start cutting out lines to save data space below SP, but the Panasonic stays full res, with perhaps a few more encoding artifacts, but I'd rather have some extra coding artifacts than dump entire lines of resolution. Most things look great even at LP, which allows 4:20 to fit onto a single DVD.
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Great unit when it works
3 out of 5
I have had this unit for 2+ years, and it is a terrific machine, until it breaks. I too enjoy the high quality recordings, and the ability to record to hard drive, edit (get rid of those commercials!), and then record to DVD -R or -RAM. However, my unit has recently stopped writing to DVD -R format, giving me the "Recovery" message, and then "Bye". When I took it in for repair, I was told that it would be at least $320. When I called the large store where I bought it, they told me not to get it fixed as it wasn't worth it, but rather to buy a new one. Given that I have about 70 hours of stored programming on it, I really don't want to throw it away (it works well as a DVR machine now), but spending $500+ to buy it 2 years ago, and $320+ to fix it is way too much. Panasonic should allow a trade-in allowance to one of their more reliable units.
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Guys don't buy this Panasonic DMR-E80H
1 out of 5
I have this recorder for about year.For first 6-8 mon. work OK but two weeks ago start my problems.I can't record any program.Try contact Panasonic this is just lost time,customer service just help me make sure that,never buy anything whith Panasonic name. $500 is to much to pay for this recorder.Guy in repair shop ask me $375 to fix.This Panasonic product is good only for how long is his Limited Warranty.
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Horrible, Horrible machine, do not buy
1 out of 5
The recorder works great... for about a year then you'll have buckets of trouble with it. I echo what one reviewer wrote below, all the postive reviews are from people who have just gotten it and it seems like a great fun machine for about a year. First the hard drive crashed and I lost hours of footage. Never did get it working again but at least it still recorded from VCR or TV to DVD-R. Well, after just over two years it stopped doing that too. I finally was able to get 2X or 4X DVD-R's to work on it but nobody carries those speed disk anymore and 8X simply kick it off after 30 seconds. The last store I could find with 4X disks now no longer carries them so after two years I have a $700 paper weight.
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Great Profits for Panasonic, Ripoff for Users
1 out of 5
Bought this a little over 2 years ago. 2 months after one-year warrantee expired, it crashed and had to be rebuilt from scratch (motherboard and harddrive). Lost 15 items stored on harddrive. Now, it's acting up again, with jerky picture recording to HD and washed-out picture (b/w or color), which ends watching or saving to disc clear, fluid picture.
Still plays DVDs OK, but am not wasting more money on another new set of inner workings, and I need the HD recording to work properly for massive VHS archiving program (10% done only).
Incomprehensible user's manual refers you from page to page to complete one process, relies on cartoons combined with tektok, arrows pointing every which way.
Edit function always poor, clips more sound than picture and is erratic about cutting at exact "frame" you've positioned to begin or end the edit, thus giving jerky visual cut at times and always unwanted sound fadeouts/word loss.
Complaints to Panasonic result in the razzberry - caveat emptor - rather than a refund, altho one tech did admit that HD crashing is common. For $50, this might be OK to play with for a year, but not for over $400 and with major archiving work to use it for. Positive reviews should be taken as likely from users who've just set it up; when it works, is a fun toy for technokiddies, but it's just not built to work beyond a year. This complaint echo'd here, at epinions.com, and elsewhere.
I'm thru with Panasonic altogether after this one; out around $900 with repairs (insides rebuilding) included and it only feels like they've taken the money and thumbed their corporate nose at me.
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Buy at Amazon.com
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