Panasonic DMR-E80H Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with Hard Drive , Silver

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.

I watched DVD recorders for a long time, waiting for them to come down in price. This recorder advertised the functionality I was looking for, and was much more reasonably priced than any of its counterparts. So, I took the bait. I was not disappointed. This machine has essentially replaced my VCR, and I am now in the process of transferring several hours of analog video tape. At the SP mode (next to highest quality level), the videos transfer beautifully, and offer tremendous flexibility. There are so many features on this machine that the menus are not entirely intuitive, which would be one of my two small complaints. However, I was able to master them fairly quickly with a bit of repetition. The editing features work well, and the responsiveness of the remote control is very good when you are trying to pinpoint an exact frame. (IOW, when you push the button at a certain point, it stops almost immediately.) This is one great feature of this machine. The editing controls are fairly simple, but it takes several steps to cut, splice, and title any segment you record. This is my other small complaint. Again, with repetition, the process becomes easy to master. The hard drive is another outstanding feature. I wouldn't recommend buying a recorder that didn't have one. All in all, I would highly recommend this recorder, both for it's functionality and economy.

This sounds like other reviews on Amazon.com. After about six months of use, my recorder started losing the ability to recognize commercial DVDs. Then, it locked up while dubbing from HD to DVD-R, went into Recover, and made the disk useless--at $1.50 or so a pop. Then, it stopped working altogether. The repair place that Panasonic sent me to said that they couldn't get a new "deck" from Panasonic for about six weeks. I called Panasonic, got the part expedited, but, when the repair part was installed weeks later it turned out to be defective. That was weeks ago. New repair parts are still weeks out. The parts guy at the repair place told me that these things break constantly, specifically that they were released to the market before the technology was right. So, the Panasonic DMRs are piling up at the shop. It takes a long time to talk to someone at Panasonic (I'm on hold now and have been for about 20 minutes). The people I've talked to are nice but refuse to connect me to anyone above them and essentially are not permitted to do more than pass on the problem to their bosses. The most recent one even said this was my fault because I didn't call every few days to see if they had done anything about the part. When I told him that this was corporate responsibility, he just got evasive and continued to make it my fault. So, if you buy this, expect it to break, expect that there are no parts, expect to get the run around. I paid a lot of money for something that doesn't work and can't be fixed. Anyone for a class action lawsuite?