Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant Machine!
Review: I bought this machine primarily to archive old home movies and TV shows (Mystery Science Theater 3000!)that will never be fully released on home video.
Anyway, the 80 hour HDD makes editing a fairly simple process, and will automatically save a scheduled program to the HDD when you forget (like I do) to place a blank DVD-R in the drive. Add to this the fact that the picture/sound quality is among the best out there and this machine becomes a very attractive purchase, especially at Amazon's price.
The only reason I give this only 4 stars is the fact that it only uses DVD-RAM as its rewritable media, which isn't a deal-breaker, but DVD-RW would have been more compatible with other machines. Supposedly, DVD-R is more compatible with other players than DVD+R, which affected my decision to buy this model. As it is, I've tested my newly created DVD's in an older Toshiba player, a Playstation 2, and various computers, and they've worked in all without a hitch.
The TiVo that I already owned has primarily become a fancy channel-changer since I got this, since copying directly to DVD is so simple.
One caveat, which I think others have mentioned: Be sure to read the owner's manual competely, maybe even a few times. There are features in there that take awhile to get used to. Once you understand them, however, you will find this machine simply incredible.
Impress your friends. If you're in the market for a set-top DVD recorder, I highly recommend this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible - it will break and customer service is no help
Review: Just wait this dvd player/recorder will be broken in 4 months and customer service will take it for 2 1/2 months and when you finally get it back it will break again immediately. When it says "Recovery...Bye" - it's all over - just trash it!
Rating: 
Summary: FANTASTIC RECORDER!!
Review: I recently purchased this Panasonic DVD recorder for my digital cable tv and was so impressed that I bought a second one for another television. The hookup is simple, as it connects to your cable tv exactly the same way as the vcr does. Only now, I have replaced two vcr's with these two dvd recorders. I have been archiving old vhs tapes onto dvds by simply connecting the a/v output from the vcr to the a/v input on the dvd recorder, conveniently located on the front of the machine. It's a pleasure to have my wedding video and other home movies on dvd, certain to last a lifetime. Another fantastic feature: I can connect my digital camcorder directly to the a/v input on the recorder and transfer the videos directly onto dvd. And recording from cable tv is fantastic, as I can record onto the hard drive and transfer the program to disc if it is worth keeping, or simply deleting it with a touch of a button if it is not worth keeping. The movies on cable channels that I like are now being recorded onto dvd with excellent results and this recorder records in dolby digital 2 channel. If you can find the dvd-r discs on sale, as I recently did, you can pay as little as a dollar a disc. What a great way to build a movie collection without spending tons of money. However you look at it, this machine is just awesome. I was not disappointed. Great job Panasonic!
Rating:
Summary: Very Good recorder - I tried a couple
Review: This is perhaps my most-researched electronic purchase. Thanks to others
who have left reviews. I spent days researching and concluded that this recorder certainly met my needs and was the best of the three I considered (Sony, Philips and Panasonic). The others did not have hard drives... a major consideration. The comments on the user-unfriendliness of the Philips, and the difficulty with the manual,pursuaded me to return the Philips unopened. I did try the Sony, and although I generally have a positive opinion of Sony products (notwithstanding recent headaches with my expensive Sony Vaio computer), I found the quality of the picture from the Panasonic better than the Sony, and the Panasonic offered a hard drive for about the same price of a Sony without a hard drive.So, Pluses:
- the hard drive
- superior picture quality
- ease of use (the Sony may be slightly better here)
- price Minuses: - no firewire or iLink input ( that was really cheap of Panasonic to omit this on this model while including it on some of its other models)
- Sony plays DVD+R and +RW as well as -R and -RW, but records in -RW and -R; Panasonic records in DVD RAM and -R and plays these two. (I have not used the RAM disk but the DVD -R works very well in my two other Sony DVD players and my Sony computer. Not in my older HP computer). Overall, I wanted a recorder primarily to save my old VHS and Hi8 tapes to DVD and, when I have more time, do some basic edits of some tapes. ( I did not buy this primarily for TV recording, but the "Tivo-like" time slip feature that allows you to "rewind" a show while it is on live, while the recorder continues to record, is a definite plus over the others.) I have transferred over 10 Hi8 and VHS tapes to DVD -R without problems. I frankly think that this machine is much simpler to use than my PC's DVD burner. The Panasonic's picture quality is very good. I am very satisfied with the product. I was very concerned about the alleged loss of quality when one dubs from hard disk to DVD -R. Allegedly, the transfer goes from digital to analog to digital, but I think subsequent comments from others dispelled that concern well. Thanks to the many consumer reviews I read, including on Amazon, I am quite happy with my purchase of this DVD recorder. Incidentally, Amazon does have very good prices on that product.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Live Without It - Easy as a VCR - Only Better
Review: This is a great piece of equipment, I like it more everyday and would hate to live without it now. I use it regularly to record from DirecTV and it works wonderfully. It is just like having a digital quality VCR. I have recorded many television programs and music videos. I burn them to DVD-R and they look perfect and play fine on my Sony DVD changer. Can't tell the difference from original satellite signal. And this is only recording in SP (standard mode). I haven't really seen the need to use XP mode yet. I have also dubbed several old VCR tapes and they turned out excellent. You can't use it just like a Tivo and say record channel 333 (DirecTV) at 2pm to 3pm, but you can set it read L1 (line input 1) from 2pm to 3pm to get whatever channel your satellite receiver is set to. Can easily record any channel and time from my cable feed though, but cable sucks. I hooked up my satellite receiver to this unit and then to my AV receiver and this makes it very easy to hit record at any time. I also have cable and my VCR connected to it. The manual is very easy to use once you figure out a few things, like what a playlist is, etc. They could use a good intro explaining their general concepts. But being very computer literate, I found it easy to figure out.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't want a Tivo box
Review: -
I appreciate the reviewer below's clarification of the D/A conversion issue I brought up in my earlier review. Since Panasonic has a way around this, I stand corrected and thank you. However CPRM is still a big negative when it comes to recording things off of TV broadcasts. Never mind Macrovision or copying pre-recorded, store bought DVDs. We all know that can't be done and hasn't been an option for years. That's not the issue. The issue is being prevented from making a DVD-R copy of a favorite TV programs for your own library, much the same way I used to copy and store VHS tapes for my own personal library. It may not be much of an issue now, but it will be in the next year or two when CPRM flagging become prevalent and your Fair-Use rights are slowly being eroded away by the media establishment. And don't think that won't happen because it will. Sooner than you all think. HDTV broadcasting will see to that. Panasonic's DVD-RAM is a nice format but like the old Sony Betamax, it looks like it will lose out in the format wars to DVD-RW, which will effectively render the DVD-RAM format, inconsequential. This is what I find so troubling about the DMR-E80H. That it'll wind up being nothing more than a glorified Tivo box in a couple of years.
Rating:
Summary: clarification re A/D conversion & DVD-R dubbing: DOES work
Review: I'd like to clarify some misconceptions in previous reviews,
regarding "double-conversion" or slow-speed dubbing of programs from HDD to DVD-R. This unit CAN dub a program from harddisk to DVD-R, in "fast" mode, with NO re-digitizing or re-conversion, even programs w/ commercials edited out and chapter-marks retained.
eg, there is NO quality loss for this dubbing and it goes faster than realtime (1hr to fill disk; time taken depends on size of the program, which depends on the quality & program length; eg, 1hr of SP/2hr-speed program, will dub in 30minutes, to fill half the disk.) But, this does require you FIRST record the program to HDD, with "DVD-R compatible mode" *activated*. You have to make this setting in the setup menus. Supposedly this also deactivates the "Hybrid VBR" variable-bitrate encoding feature, but I haven't seen any impact on picture quality, and checking the bitrate on a computer, it still seems VBR and not constant. It's definitely a good idea to turn this feature on.
It's off by default. If you leave this feature off, or if you choose to dub a program in different quality to fit on DVD-R (eg, 2hr-speed HDD program, dubbed to smaller 4hr-speed on DVD-R), then the unit WILL re-convert from analog during dubbing, and speed is reduced to real-time (eg 2hrs to record 2hr program.) You will lose some picture quality, and any defined chapter marks, although edits or playlists should be retained. This is not a "hidden secret" or a deception. It is mentioned many times in the manual, although it is perhaps not intuitive. re digital video in: this unit does NOT have firewire video in. Some other models do have it (DMR-E100H, DMR-E60, etc.) That feature will let you record digital video (MiniDV/digital8) to DVD MPEG format, on HDD or DVD-R/RAM, with no analog conversion, eg highest quality.
However for home videos, I don't believe this makes much practical difference... it depends on how good the analog (S-video) out from your camcorder is. There may be slightly more noise or quality loss in the picture. If anything, I've seen the analog-in encoding quality to actually be superior to my PC's firewire to MPEG all-digital conversion! The MPEG hardware on this unit seems superior to software encoders.
If you are concerned, you can opt for the more expensive DMR-E100H model (which also has bigger harddrive and SD/PC-Card slot for digital camera memory cards etc.) I personally do not need it since any digital video, I will capture, edit and burn to DVD on my computer, not using this recorder. I am glad Panasonic has provided several models with different features and prices, so that consumers can choose what they need. All TV programs and other analog line-in video of course is encoded once; this is true for any other DVD recorder. Some satellite recorders (eg DirectTV Tivo, or others) use the digital satellite video data directly, but not this unit as there is no satellite receiver.
It would be a nice feature if Panasonic included a "IR remote blaster" to control channels on the satellite receiver, to record those programs... perhaps in a future model. VCRs don't have this either. This is one reason I stay with cableTV :-( If you want this, look for Tivo satellite receivers or other models. While the recorder respects CPRM broadcast copy protection flags, and won't record Macrovision-protected tapes, no broadcasters are using this flag (yet), and I don't think any other recorders defeat Macrovision either. It would be nice to use this to transfer purchased VHS movies/tapes to DVD for safekeeping, and not worry about piracy-paranoid broadcasters, but...so far it's not a big issue. You can always buy the retail DVDs :-) Hope this clarifies the issue for all future reviewers and shoppers.
Rating:
Summary: this is complicated but is worth it in the end
Review: I bought one of these for christmas. IT was hard to understand and very difficult to set up. I thought that my tv was totally screwed up, and I was about ready to return it. Once I realized how to hook it up to my tv with a rf converter which is available at radioshack this made it much much easier. There is a lot of trial and error with this, and it does take a little bit of patience but I have to say that it is ultimately worth it. I have started converting all of my video tapes onto dvd and it has been worth it. I am really happy with this item. The instruction manual is sketchy, so you do need some trial and error. It is important to check in the set ups, because some of the setting default to settings that are not optimal, such as turning off the high speed dubbing. One other thing. I got dvd-r's in 4x. On highspeed dubbing , my dvd recorder will only go to 2x. Even with this, it is worth while. Just realize you have to be patient . THis is about 3 times more difficult then a vcr, so this will probably not be a good gift for a 85 year old visually impared stroke patient. Enjoy this and do realize that it will take a while to get up to speed and master this.
Rating:
Summary: Great piece of electronics
Review: I bought this DVD recorder about a month ago and so far I think it's great. I have read about some of the problems that others have had and I honestly have not had many of these issues. This unit does pretty much exactly as the manual says it will. You will really need to read this manual and then keep it close by for a while as you get used to the machine. I can see how it can be confusing (and was for me too) at first, but with a little time this unit will seem less complicated.
I won't go into everything it does because that seems to be covered in all the other reviews, but I do have a few comments to make.
1.)someone wrote about "the dirty little secret" of this drive, refering to the fact that it converts whatever signal it is receiving into analog and then back to digital when recording to DVD-R (or RAM too I guess). I would like anyone's comments about this process if they care to share them.
The salesperson at the store (J&R) told me that there is actually no way to get a digital signal into this unit. As there is no firewire input, I was told that only Analog will make it's way in (or it's converted). I really don't understand to tell the truth. The salesperson did go on to say however, that this is basically the way all such units are as they do not accept digital signal except via the firewire and this is only for home videos being fed into the machine via a camcorder.
2.) I have used store brand DVD-R's for under a buck a piece and so far they work with this panasonic, my Sony, and my Imac's DVD drive. Memorex also worked well.
3.) I wish it had Component video in, but I really have not seen any player that does.
All in all, a great machine that I am enjoying immensly. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: enjoy very much, yet beware of over-use....
Review: I've had the panasonic dmr-e80h for 3 months and have used it extensively (several hours every day: recording, editing,archiving,
collecting more and more dvds). I enjoy it quite a bit and have mostly praise for its features and functions.
I have a couple of points of criticism. One is regarding editing. The 'shorten segment' feature does not allow for precise frame
cuts. Adding from 1 to 7 additional frames usually does the trick;
yet this haphasard way of editing is somewhat frustrating and not
always satisfactory. The 'play list' has more precision, yet lacks
the 'high speed' feature (I must add that I am pleased with the home videos that I recently edited).
My second point is a bit more distressing. One two occasions, I had spent the whole day recording/editing/archiving and the hdd...
crashed. I could not access anything I had recorded and the newly recorded material was routinely erased . Following the 'recover' instruction (issued when an error is detected) did not reactivate my files.
Read through everything in the manual concerning similar problems - could not find anything on hdd crash, spent a few hours trying everything that came to mind - and finally decided to format the hdd. Yes, friends and neighbours,the dreaded format
function erased everything on the hdd but - joy of joys - everyhing came back to normal afterwards. I've learnt since then - especially after the second crash - not to overwork the hdd
and to archive quickly anything I wish to keep.
I suppose crashes are inevitable on any hdd. It's just good to prepared for them! All in all, I am satisfied with my hdd/dvd recorder.
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