Panasonic DMREH50 Multi-Format Compatible DIGA DVD Recorder with 80GB Built-in Hard Disk and SD Slot Best Buy

Most Excellent bit of kit - 10 Apr 2006

53 out of 53 found this review helpful.

I bought this to replace a cheaper equivalent which was not cutting the mustard as far as a DVD recorder goes. Rather than scour reviews and spend ages agonising over minute specification details I plumped for the Panny as their reputation seems as good as any other in my price range.

Straight out of the box it is easy to set up whether Scart RGB, SVHS, Composite or Component connection is required.

The 142 Hour quality setting is ok but not for anything that you wish to keep rather than simply record, watch and delete. I use the 80 hour setting (LP) which is great, no visible "Blocking" or blurriness.

Burns Great to Datawrite Titanium DVD-R 16x disks, DVD RAM is good as well although I cannot see a real advantage to this when you have a Hard Disk built in. Can record to DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD-RW & DVD-RAM media.

One point that I noticed on some other reviews is that this machine does not record Widescreen to the DVD. This is somewhat inaccurate as the whole picture is recorded, just the signal that tells the TV to switch into WS mode is not. This means that either you see no difference (As TV Set to WS permenantly) or you have to set TV to WS manually. (One button press usually)

About the only negative I have found on this is that the manual is slightly over-complicated and does jump around somewhat.

The SD Card slot is a bit gimmicky as it takes quite a while to load photos from it and you can only store them on HDD, no burn to DVD function there unfortunately. But this was a bonus feature as far as I was concerned and I have no real need to use it when I have a Laptop for Piccys.

All in all if you are already considering this one then I reccommend that you take the plunge - you will not be disappointed.

panasonic excellent as usual - 24 Jan 2006

52 out of 52 found this review helpful.

I wanted to buy a DVD Recorder and, as always, looked at the reviews on Amazon which in the past have been very useful. Having read the reviews on this product I decided to go for it, having a Panasonic T.V. and digi box I thought it would be easy. It took a little while to install (probably due to operator incompetence!). The quality of the recordings is excellent and once I worked the system out it is easy to operate. I have recorded several old self recorded videos onto Disc using long play (4 hours per disc) and the quality is excellent. The 80gb Hard Drive, I've found, is plenty. As one of the other reviewers the only thing that stops me giving it 5 stars is the quality of the handbook - yes the information is there but it is poorly set out, having to jump back and forwards to pages for each function. On the whole extremely happy with this recorder.

Superb quality recording - 27 Oct 2005

93 out of 93 found this review helpful.

Great Machine, well built, quiet, easy to set up (it took a while to get it to talk to my Philips Freeview box but this was NOT the fault of the Panasonic which makes it easy to adjust the input parameters to match another machine), plenty of connectivity (although the lack of firewire may disappoint some), superb quality playback and recording even the long play mode (4 hours on a DVD, 70 odd on the hard drive) which is on a par with VHS, even the 8 hour mode is acceptable though I'm not sure I'll ever use it. Almost instant recording start from cold, other functions take a bit longer so I guess it can save video to a buffer while it boots its operating system. Generally easy to use with a reasonably well designed remote. The learning curve is steep but the machine does do a lot. Simple editing of titles is possible on the hard drive. This is mainly limited to deleting sections (ads for example), entering chapter marks, making playlists and various file mangement functions like entering names and changing the thumnails of titles. DVD-RAM compatability makes it easy to transfer titles to a PC for further editing though. Dubbing edited titles from the hard drive to DVD is simple and quick (at least once you turn high speed dubbing on, for some strange reason it is disabled by default).

A few things stop it from getting five stars. The manual is poor, well indexed and complete but badly laid out and fails to explain anything (Panasonic should have a look at Canon's excellent digicam manuals). The SD card player is an almost useless gimmick, the quality of pictures displayed on an ordinary TV is very poor and they appear slowly. The layout of buttons on the front panel is less than intuitive in use. Because the power button is under the DVD slot and the eject button is on the other side of the machine often turn the thing of when I want to eject a DVD! 80Gb is also a bit mean for the HDD, although it's proved to be plenty so far including a 160Gb drive should only have added fractionally to the cost.

I've had it for around 4 months now and despite the minor gripes I'm very pleased I bought it. I'm not sure any of the competition in a similar price range beat it.

142 hours on hard drive - 13 Sep 2005

137 out of 140 found this review helpful.

The panasonic DMREH50 is a stunning dvd recorder with in built in hard drive of an 80 gb capacity that is capable of storing up to 142 hours of your favourite programing. The mackine has a timeslip function which allows you to start watching a program before the recorder has finished recording and On a dvd ram disk you can get up to 16 hours recording depending on the quality of recording you chooose i.e. long play, short play and extended play. The machine records onto dvd ram, dvd-r and dvd-rw disks. After you have recorded and whish to play back the program the machine has a direct navigator function which dispalys frames of every program you have recorded so no more winding forward to find what you want. one thing more the machine has a built in sd card reader so you can view your photos back on your tv. Panasonic have created a machine that is well worthy of 5 stars, with nice little extras thrown in and remember to buy a scart lead as there is not one included in the box

This has the lot - 14 Jun 2005

162 out of 165 found this review helpful.

The Panasonic DMR EH50 carries on from where last years models left off and then improves upon them.

This model pretty much has everything now, it features the -RW format, convenient for those who want to view a recorded disk in another room and don't have another DVD player that plays RAM, or if you want to view the recording on a PC DVD drive, also Panasonic have doubled the recording picture quality on 4 hr play, I can vouch that is actually slightly better than the standard 2 hr play was on last years models, it looks fantastic.
The reason I bought this was for the Hard Disk, it is much more convenient than using disks, great for dubbing and editing, and now that the quality of 4 hour record has been doubled, your actually getting about 70 hours worth of high quality picture recording onto the 80GB hard disk, you can fit 140 hours onto the HD if you use the longest setting but the picture quality on that setting is more like VCR quality, you can also record and play at the same time, I know you could do that with previous RAM models, but you were limited to the space of the RAM DVD disk which meant it wasn't always possible to watch and record at the same time if the space the programmes took was more than the disk could fit, now that is no longer a problem because you can record to the HD and watch a DVD, or vice versa, also you can watch a studio bought DVD and record something from the TV onto the HD at the same time, you've basically got two DVD units in one with this model.

There's not much else to add that isn't in the general description, the unit just does it all now, I guess you can say DVD recorders are finally there in respect of having the reliability and features that you need, this unit is value for money, it's well made, reliable and versatile, one critisism I don't like the fact that hard drives make a high pitched spinning noise, it's not too loud but it would have been better if it was completely silent, you don't get that on a PC hard drive so why on these?, although with the sound on from the TV you don't tend to notice it.