Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD Recorder

TIME TO GET RID OF VHS AND GO DIGITAL!! I ha ...

Posted Mar 25, 2005 - TIME TO GET RID OF VHS AND GO DIGITAL!! I have now decided that is the way to go - The main reason I got a DVD recorder in the first place was to transfer my home VHS movies and LARGE VHS movie collection(not store bought but recorder from TV) to DVD. My collection is getting old and the tape quality is deteriorating. Plus I wanted to be able to edit out commercials and unneeded material. So far I have been very pleased with this model. The large hard drive is more than enough space I need to record and edit. I find the SP or XP speeds are the best in terms of quality - even then I can get about 15 2 hour tapes recorder into the hard drive. Once I copy to a DVD-R I can erase that part from the hard drive anyway so I don't need the full 213 hour hard drive capacity in the longer record modes.Editing is a breeze with the dubbing options and many, many other DVD options. And recording onto a DVD-R is easy - I have been able to follow the onscreen instructions more than I've needed to search the manual. The only down side is that I would have preferred a unit to be able to record in both DVD-R and DVD+R. I had to make a decision though because I could not have afforded to get one with EVERYTHING I wanted. But, both DVD- and DVD+ are now compatible with about 85-95% of the players out there, so I was not so stuck on having to burn onto both types. DVD- is a very safe bet to record onto. This unit is a very nice, affordable recorder. I would definitely recommended to anyone thinking about going digital to get a DVD recorder with a hard drive. I have not used the machine to record onto DVD-RAM - I probably will since I have the capability but it's not that compatible with what I need right now. The TV Guide feature is a nice alternative to having to pay for Tivo(which I refuse to do). I don't have cable or satellite - I have just plain regular over the air free television channels. The TV Guide features are very convenient and easy to understand and manuever through. The only down side is the DVD recorder has to be turned off for it to receive the information through the antenna - no big deal for me - All in all a very good unit - I would shop around though for the best price. I appreciate the comment posted - And I do want to address it - According to the manual this unit will NOT play DVD+R or DVD+RW. The other formats it says will not play are DVD-ROM, DVD-RW,CD-ROM, CDV, CD-G, Photo CD,CVD,SVCD,SACD,MV-Disc, PD, Divx Video Disc. The formats that will play according to the mnanual are DVD-A, DVD-V(such as store bought movies and music discs),CD-R/RW), and Audio CD(recorded audio and music including cd-r/RW recorded in MP3). I hope this helps. I am happy to receive and respond to any comments.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Everyone should have one

Posted Jul 20, 2005 - This has been the best electronic purchase that I have made yet. I bought this unit last year in time for the Olympics so I could have much more recording capacity than with a VCR and so that I could archive some of my extensive VHS collection (home movies and TV shows). I definately would not recommend buying a DVD recorder that doesn't have a built-in hard drive. The hard drive works great for recording TV shows or dubbing off VHS tapes and then being able to view or edit before recording down onto DVD-R (yes it would be better if they also allowed recording onto DVD+R). This unit has 3 inputs, one of which is in the front and worked great for hocking up one of my older VCR's to transfer content to the DVR. I have this unit running through my stereo in one of the VCR slots and have regular cable (am not using a cable box and have not upgraded to digital cable yet). The 120 GB hard drive will hold about 56 hours of material recorded in SP mode. I recommend using either SP (good quality and 2 hours will fit on a 4.7GB DVD) or XP (the best quality and 1 hour fits on 4.7GB DVD) mode. The editing features of this unit are great and you can delete any part of a show that you want or even divide shows up into smaller segments as well as editing/creating titles for your programs. Another handy feature is the FR dub mode that will adjust the recording mode to fit the programs you select onto the space available on the disc (say dubbing a 3 hour TV movie onto a DVD that would only be able to fit 2 hours in SP mode). I will say that I have had an occasional problem a few months ago with dubbing problems and some glitching with the TV Guide, which did not surprise me considering I have dubbed off more than 250 DVD-R's. I called customer service and after explaining my problems they gave me a couple resets to try. The 1st one was in the mauual and calls for holding the power button (on the machine not the remote) down for 10 seconds, which will cause the system to reset itself. The other one was not in the manual and called for me to hold down both the channel up and channel down buttons on the machine for 5 seconds (while the unit is on). Since trying that I have not had any more problems and did not have to send in the machine for repair. I love being able to fast forward or go backwords at either 2x, 5x, 15x, 50x, or 100x speed and be able to see everything at the same time. In the old VCRs you only had one speed in viewing mode and to go any faster meant stopping the tape and hitting fast forward or rewind. It is also great to be able to watch a show from the harddrive while recording a show or to watch the current show you are recording and be able to stop or restart it while the show is being recorded. If you haven't broken down yet and purchased a DVD recorder, I don't think you can go wrong with this unit or one of the newer Panasonic models with even larger harddrives as long as you have either cable or are getting your channels over the airwaves. If you are using satellite then you may need a unit that has TIVO capabilities, as the TV Guide on this unit will not work if you are using a satellite.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

DMR-E85H DVD Recorder (Progressive Scan, 120GB Hard Drive)

Posted Sep 22, 2005 - Okay, i purchased this highly priced unit to have hard drive recording. It does that extremely well. The ability to time-shift is a great experience. I record everything to HDD, edit it and then transfer the video to DVD. The remote looks very complicated. All the buttons are simple mixed up. Maybe i will get a hang in some time. The lack of support for DVD+R/RW is bad. I had a great stock of them. DVD-RAM support is great. It has 2 video outputs which comes handy. 3 inputs inclding DV and 2 s-video input (or is that 3?) What sucks the most is that TV Guide doesn't work with satellite signals, rendering that feature useless for me. Ideally for such a high-end and high-priced unit i would have expect these extra features: 1. upscaling to HD 2. playing HD video (like linkplayer) 3. DivX playback 4. network connectivity. 5. USB drive and media card support. With thse extra features i would have paid @200 more(bringing the price to $700). For the available feature-set the price would have been right at around $300.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I'm very pleased with it. It works flawlessly. I p ...

Posted Jan 6, 2005 - I'm very pleased with it. It works flawlessly. I particularly like the Flexible Recording feature. You specify a particular amount of time or a particular program with the timer and it gets you the best video quality in the allotted space. The DVDs play fine on my other DVD players. The TV Guide Program Guide is disappointing. That's not Panasonic's fault though. I have several premium services (Starz,Encore,Cinemax,etc) and many of the channels have no listings. Also downloading the updates is spotty. It may give you information for a week ahead, but not for two days ahead. Not very useful unless you have nothing else. I find it much easier to use the cable company's program guide and manually program the recorder.

98% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

The DMR-E85H is a great improvement over the previ ...

Posted May 11, 2004 - The DMR-E85H is a great improvement over the previous model, the DMR-E80H! The hard drive is now 120GB which gives you 213 hrs. in EP model, up from the earlier model with only 80GB which only gave you 106 hrs. If you wanted 120GB hard drive, you needed to spend $1199 for the previous model. Now this model has a list of $699.99 with even more options. The TV Guide On Screen feature displays the channels and time just like a cable TV's preview channel. You just click on the name of the program and the program title and length and channel is automatically entered. The best part is that this is all free and operates through your existing cable channels. No need to connect via phone line and pay monthly fees like Tivo! The menu screens for your DVDs now gives you a thumbnail picture of the program along with the text information. It automatically selects an image from the start of your chapter (or program). If you don't like it, you can change the thumbnail to another image into the chapter/program. All in all, a great buy for the money. In one unit, you get a DVD recorder, editor and TV Guide programming feature.

96% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Great solution when moving from a VCR to DVD type ...

Posted Dec 9, 2004 - Great solution when moving from a VCR to DVD type recordings. I generally want it for recording TV programs or movies, then watching them, then deleting the space. The disk drive gives you the capability to record a couple hundred hours. The TV Guide feature would be a lot better if it supported satellite TV rather than just cable TV. However, it is pretty easy to set up to record (and then ensure the satellite TV is on the proper program.) The installation was fairly easy, but I do not have too many good things to say about Panasonic's customer service availability. It seems their help line is constantly busy, but if you do get through the technical staff is very good. Overall, I think it is a great solution if you want to get rid of your VCRs and not worry about how many programs have filled up. Plus, I don't feel the need to pay a Tivo subscription.

96% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I bought this unit for use with my standard cable ...

Posted Mar 27, 2005 - I bought this unit for use with my standard cable service and it's an excellent choice for that purpose. It's a whole new ballgame compared to my last recording device - a standard VCR. Anyone else moving from that fifteen-year-old technology to this may find, as I did, that there's a lot to learn. It records to both the 120GB hard drive as well as CD-Rs. Both types of recording work differently from VHS tapes. The best way to get acquainted with all of the options is just to try them out. Yes, the "Operating Instructions" are not organized very well, but as I worked with the unit, it helped to clarify the instructions (a little backwards, granted, but satisfying when you figure something out). The EPG really works well, I think. There should be more powerful tools for editing the EPG listings (like separating turning channels on and off and putting them in the order you want). In a more perfect home entertainment universe, the TV-Guide listings that are retrieved during the 24-hour wait would be both more comprehensive and less cluttered. But after I got it all set up the way I wanted it, it's just there and it works great and I don't think about it any more. And there are no more bills to pay for the service! DVD playback appears to me to be excellent, but I'm no expert. This is a progressive scan playback machine and the quality over my previous DVD player is evident. Anyone buying this would expect that. I've transferred a few VHS tapes to DVD and all of those functions work as advertised. Hooking up the old VCR to the jacks on the front of the DMR=E85H is easy. Can't do a high-speed dub from tape to DVD-R, but the quality of recorded DVDs is good. Frankly, during the first few days, I wasn't sure I was going to like this machine. Since the EPG listings filled up to the full 8 days worth (which took a week or so), I've been very satisified. I think my initial expectations were unrealistically high for the free TV-Guide EPG service. Now that I've seen how it gradually fills in the listings over a period of several days, I understand that it's working "as advertised" and that patience is a virtue with this DVR.

94% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

I had researched dvd recorders for almost a year. ...

Posted Jun 17, 2005 - I had researched dvd recorders for almost a year. The only reason I researched for a year was because it took me that long to convince my wife that we "needed" this as a replacement for our VCR. I ended up buying from beachcamera.com, one of the stores listed here on PriceGrabber. My buying experience with them was great! I opted for the free shipping and received it in 2 days. Once out of the box, the unit was pretty easy to install. I chose to do it a little differently than the instructions showed, mainly because I didn't want to split my cable signal to both the DVR and the VCR. (Since we don't record on the VCR any more, I have it set up as an input to the Panasonic.) It takes about a day to have all the TV Guide fields populated. Recording is simple. Either push the "record" button while watching a show, use the TV Guide feature, or use the VCR-Plus feature. The VCR+ feature will allow you to start recording a few minutes before and after the show's time so that you can catch it all. (I also found that you can do this with the TV Guide feature after it's set; just do a program check and set the before and after times.) Editing (or shortening a program) is simple. My 15-year-old daughter asked that I record "Dawson's Creek" episodes for her, so rather than just throwing the episodes from the hard drive to a DVD-r, I edit the commercials out. This allows me to record in SP (2nd highest resolution) and get 3 episoded on each 120-minute dvd. Dubbing is easy, but a little time consuming. Simply choose what you want to transfer from the hard drive to the DVD-r and you're set. Dubbing from SP to dvd-r takes about 15 minutes. Also, you have to remember to finalize the disc to allow you to watch the dvd on other dvd players. After awhile it's not a big deal. The feature I like the most is that I can watch a show that I've already recorded and record another show at the same time. With our VCR, if we wanted to watch something we'd already taped while taping something else, we'd have to wait until it finished taping. Now that's not an issue. Time slip is another great feature that allows you to go to an earlier part of the show you're recording and continues to record. This was what ultimately sold my lovely bride on the unit, because I was able to get her caught up on an episode of "Desperate Housewives" that she had missed the opening scene from that night. Once she said "Whoa...." in a Keanu Reeves-type fashion, I knew she approved. Oh, and our old VCR? It's still hooked up, but we haven't used it in, oh, at least 4 months now.....

78% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Have been using it for about 14 days. The menu is ...

Posted Jun 19, 2005 - Have been using it for about 14 days. The menu is very easy to navigate. A great function is the 'shorten' function where you can cut off commercials when editing.

75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review

Avoid this machine

Posted Oct 15, 2005 - The DMR-E85H was made by geeks for other geeks. For the rest of us, the thing is overly complicated, it misbehaves, and the manual is indecipherable. A couple of examples. One day I tried to view the onscreen guide only to discover that it showed “no listing” where only the day before I had seen the usual set of programs, stations, and times. Unable to retrieve the guide’s listings, I hired a high-school techie from down the street to make it behave. After his two fruitless visits that included slicking the hard drive and going through the setup again, I returned to the store where I had bought the monstrosity and watched the manager’s eyes glaze over as I first tried to explain the problem and then tried to warn him against selling perverse products like this one. I then went off the New Zealand for a few weeks, and when I returned, the guide was back (without the recorded shows I had deleted, of course). Now as I write, the machine has decided to up and responds to no command whatever from the remote or unit itself. The manual is no help. The index is grossly incomplete, and the text is dense and mysterious. Don’t buy the DMR-E85H unless you wear a propeller beanie and like a real challenge.

0% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?

Comment about this review