Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have been using this unit (I paid $240 at Costco) for a couple months now. DVD recording quality of broadcast/cablecast television in it's 1-hour "XP" mode is excellent. Other modes: (SP) 2-hour, (LP) 4-hour, and (EP) 6-8 hours recording modes are okay, but pixelation and compression artifacts become more obvious, particularly in complicated and/or fast moving scenes. And it's QAM digital tuner is excellent at recording SD and HD signals if passed through by your cable company. (I use cable, but don't have a cable box. I just subscribe to basic analog cable, but my cable provider Comcast includes local digital unscrambled channels in this package as well, such as FOX, NBC, CBS, and ABC, something I didn't realize they did until I bought this digital recorder and an HD TV set).
I love using RAM discs to record TV programming. RAM discs allow you to simultaneously record one program while watching another program already recorded on the disc, if your recorder features "chasing playback," which this recorder does. This makes watching an evening of television very easy, and being able to skip through all the commercials. And not having to wait for the recorder to finish all the evening's scheduled recordings before starting to watch. DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs do not allow that feature -- only DVD-RAM discs and recordings.
I'd give this unit even higher marks (a 9 or 10) were it not for it's buggy software driving all of its features. The unit occasionally gets "confused" and locks up -- not responding to buttons on unit or on remote control. You have to unplug and re-plugin to reboot the software.(Actually, this newer model now features a small "reset" button on the front of the machine, to reboot the unit.) This happens about once a week. This is only a minor inconvenience (takes about a minute to reboot), and re-powering it does not make it lose any of its stored channels setup or scheduled recordings memory.
The unit (and interestingly two other Panasonic DVD recorders I have) also suffered a problem with recognizing what date it was for a while if left set automatically. I had to set the date manually for a while (a couple weeks). But now automatic date seems to be working again. I suspect some software bug.
The other problem I have occasionally, is that it occasionally fails to record a scheduled program, for no apparent reason (there's still room on disc). I have not been able to figure out why (although the manual suggests it could be due to digital rights management issues on digital broadcasts, but I'm not convinced of that).
March 2009 Update:
Over time, and especially in the last month or so in particular, the machine's software got buggier and buggier -- lots of system freezes, causing me to have to press the "reset" button almost once a week, or more often.Tonight, it finally gave up the ghost -- the system has completely crashed, and no resets or re-powering will make it come back online.So, I got about a year's worth of heavy use from it, which I guess isn't so bad.There doesn't seem to be any other DVR out there that gets overall better reviews, with all of Panasonic's features (especially on the features that are most important to me).So even with all its shortcomings, so I will likely buy another.
What I really want is a set-top combo HD and DVD recorder with digital QAM tuner, but that doesn't seem to exist anywhere at this point in time.Maybe there's a way to build one using Windows XP 2005 Media Center Edition and an external digital tuner.I have just such a setup going now, which works great, except with only an 2006 analog-only tuner.
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Product Description:
Panasonic DMREZ485VK VCR/DVD Recorder - Progressive Scan, 1080p Up Conversion, HDMI, USB, SD Card Slot, Digital TV Tuner, Remote Control
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