 Excellent Converegence Deck |
| Review Date: October 3, 2006 |
| Reviewer: N. Santiago, San Bruno, CA |
Several people have written excellent reviews of the Panasonic's ability to edit and record TV, in addition to VCR-DVD archiving, and I suggest looking at those reviews below. I would just like to add a few comments on my, so far limited, experience with this deck.
-HDMI upscaling is very good, and in my opinion is as good as my stand-alone Toshiba DVD player with HDMI upscaling. In addition, all video is upscaled to the format of your choice, and is a nice feature. Because of this, I found video playback of recorded shows to be of excellent quality. Very close to actual broadcast, if not the same on certain channels.
-TV Guide setup was simple, and asked for your postal code. The deck takes around 24 hours to get guide data, and I recieved 2-3 days of programming after about 18 hours. You must also periodically place this unit on standby in order to recieve updated TVGOS content, which is sent over the cable during late evening, and early morning hours, from my observations. My setup: analog cable directly fed into the Panasonic deck (no cable box), HDMI out to HD-ready TV. After reading the manual, TVGOS is not available to everyone, please be sure to check with your local cable co. just in case, if this feature is important to you. In additon, do not autotune this deck for channels, doing so loses the TVGOS capability, unless you do not want TVGOS.
-DVR capabilities: excellent video quality, TVGOS does a decent job of organiziation of channel listings and recording que. Recorded shows are shown as thumbnail videos and is a very nice feature of this unit. You can watch any thumbnail video saved on the HDD. The deck also has VCR+, but I do not use this feature, however some you propective buyers may like this feature.
-The deck is silent. the fan is quiet, there is little to no noise (just HDD noise at startup) emanating from the unit at all. very nice to see imo.
-The deck can record when in standby mode, thereby conserving power consumption, again a nice feature.
-The manual is not an easy read. Very technical, however this deck is not for the average user. Be prepared to spend some time reading certain parts of the manual in order to setup this deck properly.
-You can watch a DVD movie or VHS movie while simultaneously recording on the HDD, in additon to watching HDD content you have previously recording while the deck records. Nice feature, and for me, was a must have.
-This deck has high speed DVD burning built in, and allows for 1h-2h of content to be burned in 20 min or so. One caveat: For example, if you have high speed recording set to "on", you can burn a DVD fast, but you cannot record in dolby audio, nor widescreen. Therefore if you are recording a show (say CSI in widescreen) and you have this unit set for high speed recording, the picture will be in 4:3 format on the DVD. Something to consider.
-This deck cannot simultaneously output digital audio from HDMI and Toslink. you are made to chose one or the other. If you want Toslink, the unit disables Audio from HDMI, and vice versa. Not a big problem, but an annoyance when I want to watch a DVD movie through my DTS decoder (that does not have HDMI inputs).
-This deck has component inputs for recording, but only supports 480i (normal NTSC) and 480p (enhanced TV). so if you wish to record HD content, you are out of luck. I recorded OTA HD content in widescreen into this deck and found it to look and sound excellent, even though it was recorded in 480p.
-Last but not least, This deck is not constantly recording to the HDD, therefore TiVo-like features such as pausing live TV is not possible with the touch of a button. You must first record what you are watching to use the pause feature. I own a TiVo box and I love its capabilities, and the fact that anyone from young to old can use the TiVo interface within 30 min to an hour, but I don't like the monthly fees. If you are like me, and wanted to break free from the monthly fee, then I highly recommend this deck. |
Check your Cable box if you want to use with Digital Cable
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| Review Date: December 17, 2006 |
| Reviewer: William L. Brinkman, |
Just a quick note for anyone who is thinking of purchasing this unit, if you plan on using the DVR using the TV Guide function, make sure that you check that your digital cable box is compatible. I have Comcast, and am using a Motorola cable box, model DCT700. After three days of wondering why the TV guide would not download, I called Panasonic. It turns out that only the following Motorola cable boxes work with this unit:
DCT1000
DCT1200
DCT1800
DCT2000
DCT2224
DCT2500
The TV guide downloaded fine when I didn't use the digital cable box and ran the cable directly into the unit. |
Great alternative to fee based DVR's
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| Review Date: January 23, 2007 |
| Reviewer: J. Weiker, CHARLOTTE, NC USA |
I have been using my DMR-EH75VS for about a week and love it. I have standard analog cable and the TV Guide function works perfectly. VCR plus also works provided you program in all your channel conversions. I can easily program a show to be recorded in less then 10 seconds.
People keep criticizing the manual but I have found it to be complete and accurate!
Burning DVD's and DVD-ram is super easy and the VCR works perfectly.
My only real complaint is the editing functions which are tenuous at best. It is time consuming to edit out the commercials before burning a disc. It can be done but it requires good mastery of the remote.
Happy here and no $13 - $20 per month fees! Seems like a lot of money to me to pick a TV show.
Update 1/29/07 I have successfully edited out commercials and burned a few DVD's and the editing works fine if you are patient. My one wish to make this unit an A+ is a "skip a day" button on the remote for the TVGuide. You have to scroll ahead to move to upcoming days. I wish they had made that easier! |
Transforms the way we watch TV!
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| Review Date: February 7, 2007 |
| Reviewer: D. Culley, Phoenix, AZ USA |
I knew up front that I wanted a device that combined VHS, DVD, and HDD, and this may be the only device that fits that bill to date. But it has significantly surpassed my expectations. There are lots of little things the specs just can't or don't tell you about...
- The TV Guide feature is wonderully integrated into the overall functionality of the device. Gone are the days of having to figure out the nuances of programming your VCR, and possibly making a mistake like putting AM instead of PM. Now you scroll through channel listings, or search by title name, or search by genre of program, and whatever you like, you click record once to record once, or click again to record weekly or every weekday. So easy... and the search capability lets you see what's going to be on, in a much more friendly and better-organized manner than a paper TV Guide. You find out about interesting programs you would have otherwise never known about.
- You can have the device off, on, and/or be watching another recording when a show you've set to record comes on, and it doesn't cancel the recording.
- Your already-recorded shows on HDD or DVD are browsable via a menu that can show thumbnails of the program (it automatically generates a thumbnail from the start of the program but you can change it) or not, and you can sort it several different ways to get to what you want easily.
- It comes with a handy IR thingy that lets it automatically control your cable box.
- One reasonably-easy-to-use remote for HDD, DVD, VCR, cable, and TV!
Okay, I do have a small wish list:
- The device could be a little quicker. For example, when I want to delete multiple programs, each deletion takes a few clicks, and there's just enough response time lag in between those clicks to make it annoying.
- The remote lacks a Mute button for the TV.
- Idle power consumption of 16W... isn't that kinda high? Add to that the fact that you must leave your cable box turned ON.
- Make it a little smaller... the depth was about an inch more than our entertainment center allowed.
- It has an SD memory card slot... but I wish it had CF.
- I'm also hoping the next generation will have WiFi, to stream video or audio either to or from a PC.
Overall, the pros far outweigh the cons. Nobody else even comes close to what Panasonic has delivered here. |
Great Product for the price.
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| Review Date: January 23, 2007 |
| Reviewer: sinecostan, CA, USA |
The features I use most of the time (recording TV programs to or to burn a DVD later, convert home videos to DVDs, etc.) seem to work very well, once you know how to get it to work the way you want. This component allowed me to get rid of my VCR and DVD player from the shelves. Some nice-to-have features:
- a better manual. The manual is very hard to read, and asks you to jump between pages several times before you get to find out how to accomplish what you want to do. I guess they optimized by writing every operation only once. It does not hurt to repeat some things a few times ...
- a learning remote will be nice. I still need my TV remote control to turn CC on/off, and my stereo system remote control to control sound.
- fast copy from DVD to disk will be useful. I make DVDs from tites in hard disk, but once i erase them from the hard disk, there is no way I can make a copy of the DVD!
- Chapter menu when burning DVDs. When you copy a title onto DVD and play the DVD, the menu indicates only one item -- the title.
- Grabbing frames from video. I should not need to buy/install software on my computer to grab a frame from the video to make DVD labels (say). |
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