Panasonic DMRE85HS Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive Recording

I would have given it 0 stars if I could have. This is probably the worst DVD recorder that Panasonic has ever come out with. I had been using an older model for almost 3 years, and the features were perfect for home editing and recording. I heard that some improvements were made, so I checked it out, since the one I had was getting old. I returned it the very next day, because the so-called improvements are horrible. If you are just an individual wanting to do home editing and recording, which is who this is marketed to, this is not the model for you!

The older models allowed you to create a playlist by placing starting and stopping points whereever you wanted them. You could even create a playlist that showed the same thing 50 times straight in different time frames, if you wanted to. Any editing you can think of, the older models could do. But these newer models do not allow you to do that. You must create chapters before going to make your playlist. Then, however it is set up, that's all you have to choose from. You create your playlist by picking which chapters you want, if you can even remember what's on those chapters by this point. You cannot scan through and put starting and stopping points whereever you want. Pathetic machine!

I'm sure that Panasonic sees these changes as an improvement, but they are not. My suggestion is that if you want to do some actual editing, which is the only reason you would buy a DVD recorder with a hard disk drive and not a cheaper recorder without an HDD, buy one of the older models from ebay or other places like that.

Three Panasonic models that I know are safe for you to buy are:
DMR-HS2
DMR-E80H
DMR-E100H
Go with one of these instead of the newer models!

I couldn't be happier with this recorder. I am not techno savvy and initially had some problems getting it to work with our current home entertainment set up. Panasonic support was great and in the end, wouldn't have been needed had I read the instructions more carefully.

I have been able to burn copies of uncopyrighted DVDs, record and burn from the TV, VCR and even my older 8mm camcorder. I simply plug it in to the VCR or TV and can burn whatever I have taped to DVR.

I have recommended this product to co-workers and plan to buy another myself.

Although it is expensive, it is impressive. I have one and it stores up to 213 hours on mine. The maps are great, but you might need help if you are a novice at using this technology.
The picture quality is excellent. It is like you are watching from a movie DVD. I love that it automatically records your TV shows without the commercials with commercial skip and a timer. It is like a TiVo and you probably will never need to buy CD's.

Has worked without any problems. I manually set timer
to record shows and watch from HDD or burn to DVD-R if
I want to save the program. DVD-r's made are of good
quality at SP and I love recording movies collecting
them. Editing out commercials is very easy. I make
DVD's of children's shows for my kids so they can watch
Sesame Street whenever they want.
120 gig HDD for 399? this is a fantastic deal.
Time-slip is very cool, you watch your recording before
it's over & FF thru commercials, very cool indeed

I have an older version, DMR-E80H, 80gig, with the old navigator (pre-TV guide), which I love.
I bought the DMR-E95H, 160 gig, tvguide navigator, mainly because I wanted more disk space. I was going to sell my older one. Unfortunately, this is so unreliable that I have kept my old one to use, and I'm stuck with this very expensive lemon. I wouldn't feel right trying to sell this to someone else.

There is a lot of good ideas and potential here, but most of it doesn't work reliably, and what does is poorly done. Many nice features in the original navigator are gone.

What do I miss about the original navigator? I works like a VCR with some cool features. You program in a show (date, time, speed, repeat, etc), you can also add a title so you always know what you recorded. You can also set it for `renew' which means it records over the old space each day, good for things like the news, it won't fill up the disk and you don't have delete things to make space. You can go in and edit any of this, say a show is on a different time one week, just go change the time, and then change it back. And if one show overlapped another, you could select the one with priority, but the other would record the rest of the alotted time.

On the new navigator, you can manually set it to record instead of using the tv guide functionality, but you can't edit after the fact. If you make a mistake, you have to start over, if the time changes, you have to delete it, set a new record program with all the info, and then do it again to put it back to the normal time after. If you just want to change the record speed, you have to redo everything. If you want it start late, because the ABC shows are all running late these days, you can't edit it, you have to start over.There is no longer a renew feature. And if the first show overlapps with the second, you only get the first and nothing of the second.

Why do I use the timer record instead of tvguide, because it's a good idea but a useless unreliable piece of junk. The booklet tells you that you can't start a show the same time another show is ending, ie if a show ends at 9Pm and another starts at 9PM, the second won't record. On occasion it does, usually it doesn't, no rhyme or reason. So I set everything to end one minute early, requiring the timer setting.

Now, if you forget to turn the recorder off at night, or you're up late watching it, it doesn't pull down the programing and when you record something you get no title. But you can't just set the title you want when you set up the recording like on the old navigator. But the tvguide system doesn't even have all the main channels... it's missing some of the HBOs, SHOtimes, Starz, etc.

The tvguide interface is crap. I have hundreds of channels, and if I were to use that to see what was on it would take all day. You can't page through the channels, you can't hold the down button and just cruise through the channels. No! You have to repeatedly hit the down or up button to go through the guide. Talk about carpal tunnel syndrome. And to make matters worse, each time you go to a new channel it changes the station being viewed and freezes up while doing so, making the whole process take longer and making it impossible to view one show while looking to see what else is on. Sometimes if you hit the buttons real fast you can go over 4-5 channels before it happens, but it still happens. They should talk to Comcast about how to do an online shedule viewer. Even their worst versions where better than this. There is no search function. You can go to the alphabetical sort screen, but if you want something at the end of the Ms, you have to go through it one item at a time, over and over and over.

All that would be bearable if the system was reliable, it is not. My old system has only crashed a couple of times in 2 years, and went into "self check" as soon as it came on. This new system (less than a year old) crashes at least once a week, and I have to force it into "self check" to repair itself, usually twice, and then turn it off and on again, in order to get it to work right for awhile. It freezes for no apparent reason, not recording but on. You can't change the channel, cause it thinks it's recording, but it's not, and it's on the wrong channel anyways. They only way out is to go through the process of holding the on (on the recorder) down for at least 20 seconds so it shuts off. Then turn it on so it starts system check fixing what ever is wrong, again. I went away for a week, and came back to find it had frozen on the second show it was to record and had done nothing after that.

I bought this for more disk space, and I've discovered it acts the most unrealiable if I use more than 100gig, which is a little more than half the disk. It also acts up more if I record and watch and delete a lot of shows, the reason you'd have it to begin with. It also tends to crash/freeze more often if I leave a disk in the dvd tray. For a couple of months I could reliably make it crash by putting a ram disk in the system, and then it did it only every other time, but it looks like it's moving into every time again.

I wrote to Panasonic, who said to take it to an authorized repair dealer, but there are none around here. I bought it through Amazon, but through one of their third parties who doesn't take returns. So it looks like I'm stuck with this crap.

I regret having recommended Panasonics to so many people I know, but that was the old style of course. To say I'm dissapointed in the system is to say the least. To say I'm disgusted that panasonic won't replace it or refund, is really disgusting.