Rating: 
Summary: Complete waste of money for one reason...
Review: The unit is well made. The hard drive idea is great!! It only works with DVD-R disks and DVD RAM disks which kind of stinks, but hey, I can live with that. So how did Panasonic screw this one up to make it essentially worthless to me? Well, read on...The primary reason I bought this, and missed this nuance in the reviews/descriptions was that I wanted to time shift rented DVDs. I thought I would be able to back up a limited number of DVDs to the hard drive, watch them, and then delete them later to record another movie etc. I didn't want to buy a DVD burner and have tons of DVD media hanging around, and the integrated hard drive seemed like just the ticket. Panasonic, in all their brilliance, blocked it. You cannot copy a DVD, copy protected or not, to the hard drive unless it is a DVD-RAM disk. I can understand not allowing someone to copy protected material to another DVD, but to block it from copying to the hard drive makes the unit a dust collector. I went out and bought a DVD burner and use DVD+/-RW for time shifting my viewing now. Another negative is that Panasonic made it so the thing won't even play any DVD with a + in it. DVD +R or DVD +R/W, both of which work dandy on my other DVD player and in my comupter. So I have to have a separate DVD player to read DVD +Rs I burn with my DVD Burner. Lamo. I can't even use the thing as an expensive DVD player. This unit is just plain not worth the money unless you have a ton of VHS or taped material you want to move to DVD or if you are into video recording and want to copy that material to DVD. That it does well. You can also record unprotected DVD material through the analog inputs and edit it. And finally, you can use it to record TV shows to the hard drive or DVD, but I already had Replay TV which does a much better job of that. So, the lack of being able to send a DVD movie to the Hard Drive drops this puppy to 2 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: First One a Dud
Review: Got it home, set it up, then began recording my favorite tv shows and movies. I like to edit out the commercials, which is a fairly easy process on this device. But on the second "dubbing" of the movies to a DVD-R disc, an error occured, the unit shut down, then rebooted with the words "RECOVER" on the display. Every time I tried to burn this movie to any DVD-R or DVD-RAM, I got the same error. After reviewing this movie on the hard drive, I noticed that the hard drive version had a point in the movie that caused it to stop in the middle of the movie. The hard drive was slowly getting errors on it, eventially causing the unit to shut down completely and never would recover again.( this happened over the course of a week) I took it back to Circuit City after only 1 1/2 weeks and got a replacement. So far so good on the second unit. Other than that issue, I like the unit, the controls, and flexibility of it. I do wish it would allow me to make copies of purchased tapes onto DVD-R...the system will not allow this.
I strongly recommend purchasing a warranty on this item.
Rating: 
Summary: In response to Mr Dane C Cobb's review:
Review: Mr Cobb, you obviously got a defective unit. I've stated this before and I'll say it again: the DMR-E80H does EXACTLY what it is advertised to do. I have burned more than 70 Memorex DVD-R discs, NEVER had a failure, and those discs work in all DVD players I've tried (and I am just a normal home user, I don't work for Panasonic :) I cannot comment on the quality of Panasonic's customer support, but your remarks like "should never have been marketed" and "run don't walk from this loser" are simply way off the mark. I am systematically transferring about 300 hours of home video to DVD-R using my DMR-E80, and it works very, very well. Forget about doing this on a PC, if there IS a technology that's not ready to be marketed, it's video capturing and DVD authoring using a home computer - the Panasonic, on the other hand, effortlessly breezes through this process. After doing a little research on the Web, I believe the DMR-80H is the best-selling of the current breed of DVD recorders available on the market, and I'm not surprised: it really is an excellent product. Mr Cobb, I hope you get your unit replaced or fixed, you'll find that it beats anything else available to amateur home video enthusiasts out there today. Good luck.
Rating:
Summary: A Followup (amended)
Review: The fact that the recording unit I purchased was defective, does not alter my overall opinion. Generally it is a bad idea to buy new electronic gizmos right as they come online. Just 6 years ago, a standard DVD player would have run you [a lot of money]. If you just have to have it, for archiving or other purposes, then it might be worth it to you not to wait until the price becomes more reasonable - if you can wait, it is probably best to do so. If history is any indication, better and less expensive units will be available before you even notice you missed buying this particular one. That being said, my first review of this was overally harsh - but it doesn't change the fact that I purchased a defective unit (and so could you) and was given the runaround about it for nearly 8 months by Panasonic.
Rating: 
Summary: Great product
Review: I bought the Panasonic DMR-E80H mainly to transfer a huge collection of videos onto DVDs. I have yet to do this but have had lots of fun recording onto the unit's hard drive and/or DVD-R. The picture quality is excellent (I've only recorded at the XP and SP speeds) and I love the commercial skip feature. Set up was very easy and I did a test recording about 5 minutes after I hooked it up. There are a ton of buttons on the remote, the majority of which I haven't used yet. My only complaint is that the manual can be confusing, what else is new? For this reason alone I gave 4 stars and not 5. When I tried to watch a video tape it took me a while to figure out that both the DVR unit and my TV had to be set to Video 1. To all of the people complaining that they can't watch one thing while recording another, or have to program the cable box to change channels for multiple timer recordings, I say -- you obviously don't have Cablevision as your provider. :-) If I want to watch one thing while taping another, my cable co. requires a 2nd cable box plus an A/B switch. I didn't expect the Panasonic DVR to be any different from my VCR in this regard. Yeah, it's a pain to program your cable box, but this isn't Panasonic's fault. Overall I'm very pleased with this unit and am glad I bought it. I use it more frequently than I ever used my VCR.
Rating:
Summary: Can't use effectively with a cable box
Review: First off, I love using this product. However, one thing they neglect to tell you is that if you use a cable box (whether with regular cable or digital) that you won't be able to use the timer recording feature unless you set your cable box to the one channel you want to tape while you're gone - meaning, if you're on vacation for a week, there better only be 1 channel you want to tape. This is incredibly limiting.
Rating:
Summary: Panny is fine with me.
Review: Ok, Ok, I've got to chime in here. A lot of lone star reviews (are you all Texans?) prompts me to stick up for this unit. I am probably like many consumers here: purchased the unit to replace a VCR and watch live TV time-shifted. I also wanted to archive my family hi-8 videos to DVD. Heavy editing was not my desire. I love the instant recording to hard disk drive. Watching a show I started recording 20 minutes earlier and being done in 42 minutes vs. 60 minutes is great. Editing out segments (commercials) from movies I want to keep to DVD is also very nice. Have no big needs for editing beyond that. If I did, I would transfer via DVD-RAM to my PC and edit there. I purchased an extended warranty in case this technology hiccups. And, I know it will be surpassed by something better in a year or two. So what! I will enjoy this now and replace it down the road, retiring this unit to the bedroom. I keep the VCR only in the event of an emergency. BTW, the picture quality is excellent generally; add that to the convenience and you can see why Panasonic has sold so many of these. The unit is also dropping in price now as the E85 is coming out next month. A good time to invest in this.
Rating:
Summary: works good for me
Review: I got this unit for Christmas 2003, and have loved it ever since.
I really can't say that about very many electronics I've purchased. First, ease of use.
There is a small quirck in the system, in that you often switch to
the box and it is already playing. None of the remote controls really work at that point, so you (I) quickly learn to press "Stop", and then the "functions" button will pull up a menu for you. Then everything works fine. On the Plus side, Timer Recordings work GREAT, and are really, really, easy to setup and monitor. The box will automatically
switch between several different inputs (Cable box for premium content, or direct attach cable) or channels if you're recording several different programs. Also a "BIG PLUS", pressing "Stop" or any other key will not stop a recording in progress.
(...) Also a Plus: the fast forward and reverse seek of 2x to 100x
are addictive. I can't imagine working with any less. Quality:
Superb. I haven't even tried the "XP" quality setting yet, the "SP" setting looks so much better than standard VHS.
DVD (-r or +r) disks burned with "SP" play on everything I've tried. We transfered several VHS tapes to DVD, and I swear that the DVD looks much better than the original VHS source. Fun things to play with:
Playing one recorded show while recording another still blows my mind. Seeking back to the beginning of a show while you are still recording works great. Open Issues:
I still have not found the magic incantation to take a DVD disk from my computer and transfer it to the Panasonic hard disk. NITS:
Moving through the menu of previously recorded shows is still a bit slow. Not a biggie. Encourages you to keep the hard drive
list relatively small. (Burn 'em to disk to save) Security:
No Tivo (...). No extra per month charges. No one will ever know what I am watching or recording ever. Hope this helps.
Rating:
Summary: I need to chime in here...
Review: I've had my unit since late January and I've got to say I'm very happy I got it. After reading some of the earlier reviews here, I purchased an extended warranty so I feel protected for several years. My expectations were modest: record TV to hard disk in lieu of a VCR; watch a game in progress while it is still recording; archive any favorite TV shows; and probably most importantly, archive high 8 family videos for posterity. Editing needs are limited to eliminating commercials and limited editing of the family videos. This unit has performed flawlessly. I love having it. I deducted one star for the poorly written manual, and the somewhat non-intuitive interface for certain functions. The remote works tolerably well there are a ton of buttons on the remote. However, If your needs are for heavy editing, this is not the unit for you, unless you want to transfer to PC. Otherwise, if your needs match mine, come on in, the water's fine.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have never been marketed
Review: The bugs are definately not out of this technology yet. This machine chews up discs - wasting many for this and that idiosyncratic reason. If you have the money to waste on DVD-Rs, then this is the machine for you. I noticed one person gave this piece of junk five stars, despite the fact that it wastes discs and has numerous bugs - I guess some are just fixated on the newness of the technology - these are the same folks I suspect who rushed out to buy the top loading VHS machines for a cool $1000 back in 1979. How many things that can go wrong with this junker with the slick silver trimming are actually too numerous to list here - if you plan on working on a time consuming video project, run don't walk from this machine, the hard drive has a nasty habit of simply dumping everything from time to time. Of course you could back your project with DVD-RAMs, if this clunker decides it wishes to dub to DVD-RAM on that particular day. That isn't always certain, some DVD-RAMs it will format, some not, and even when formatted the machine has a nasty habit of going into 'recover' mode, everytime you try to change the contents of the RAM disc. This machine only accepts two media - DVD-R and DVD-RAM, so don't expect to use those more widely available DVD-RWs with this. Even the media it supposedly accepts, it struggles with. I am very good with electronics and work professionally in video editing - I can only presume this junkers high rating is due to people just not understanding or having used this machine enough to know what all the gremlims are - if you read this you should take my advise, wait about two years, better products will be on the market by then with all these bugs worked out.
| 
