Customer Reviews

Panasonic DMR-E30S Progressive Scan DVD Recorder

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With the price of DVD recorders dropping almost as fast as CPUs, nearly every house will have their own. This is the next wave of home video recording. The only thing impairing its advance is the relatively high price of the recording medium.

Panasonic has managed to lower its prices while raising the playing field. Their E30S has a slimmer, sexier profile when compared to its predecessor. With a polished silver appearance, the E30S will be a welcome sight to any home video complex. The only size drawback is the fan assembly protruding from the back causing a problem for our shallow entertainment center ( the E30S measures 12 inches deep).

The E30S has all the mandatory function buttons and connections (menu control, A/V and S-Video). The analog inputs include the same RF cable connections found on a VCR, two sets each of rear A/V and S-Video inputs and outputs, a digital optical output, and a component-video output. The limitation posed by the E30S is that there are no coaxial or FireWire port for digitally connecting a digital video camcorder or a computer.

The supplied remote control is bland at best. With an appropriate arrangement of keys, don't try to use them in the dark. Unlike many remotes, the E30S has no backlit or glow in the dark keys. The functions are pretty straightforward and will cause little confusion after the initial reading of the manual. The aggravating slide door hiding the Open/Close and Input Select buttons is in a poor position.

Many of the second generation DVD recorders never offered progressive scan output. Panasonic has overcome this limitation in the DMR-E30S. Additionally, Panasonic added other improvements while still dropping the price by...

With the progressive scan feature, the E30S can be used for HDTVs. It performed so well at the store that I almost convinced the wife to buy a HDTV to go with it. The E30S reproduced DVDs with minimal movement artifacts, sharp detail, and fewer dancing pixels, thanks to a newly incorporated noise reduction circuit. As a result, the E30S has a video recording quality is much better than that of S-VHS or VHS. There is less noise and absolutely no jitter. And the color is fantastic, much more accurate color in every recording mode. In XP (one hour per disc) and SP (two hours) modes, this DVR measured the maximum 480 lines of resolution; in LP (four hours) and EP (six hours) modes, resolution fell by half, resulting in a much softer picture.

Since we are using this recorder for movies and TV only, we have not reviewed the MP3 recording capabilities of this machine.

With Flexible Recording one can efficiently utilize any DVD medium for recording. The older models would require a movie slightly longer than two hours to be recorded in a four hour mode. This greatly reduces the quality of the recording. The E30S Flexible Recoding feature only requires that you enter the time and the disc will be utilized for the best possible recording quality.

I believe Panasonic designed the E30S to pinch out the VCR industry. Very much in the way that the Sony Beta Max got squashed. The E30S has VCR Plus for easy timer recording, clock, and most of the same features you would expect in upper model VCRs. The only thing missing is tuner except for cable/satellite tuner control. While not having an actual tuner, you can watch one program while recording a different program on DVD-RAM.

I would have liked more editing capabilities. But that is why I have a fully decked out computer. The E30S offers some limited features in the form of play list based editing. But it can not record sound and video tracks separately. Additionally, the menu editing does not allow thumbnail or any other feature for your homemade DVDs. Might as well be reading a pizza menu.

You can use DVD-RAMs and DVD-Rs in the E30S. DVD-RAMs (about $10 for 4.7GB) can be recorded and erased over and over. Additionally, the E30S play list editing and time shifting features work well with the DVD-RAMs. Using DVD-Rs will cost less money (...each in bulk) but functionality is more limited. The saving grace for the DVD-Rs is that they can be set up to play in any standard DVD players (DVD-RAMs can be played only in drives that support DVD-RAM).

The E30S is one of the least expensive DVD recorders on the market. And with prices continuing to drop, the upper models will soon be within reach. I intend this unit to be set aside for the kids room while Mom and I await the newer models.

I have had this model for almost a month now and all I can say is WOW! It is very easy to use (in spite of the poorly written, confusing manual) and the discs it has created have been viewable in all 7 DVD players that I have tested, including a cheapie 2 year old Wal-Mart DVD player. It truly is as simple to use as a VCR. I have been copying home movies to DVD from my Sony digital 8mm camcorder and the results have been impressive. I wish that the unit had a firewire port(like the next higher up model, but without the ($$$) extra cost) for the digital camcorder, but I can live without it. In the normal mode(LP), the DVD is every bit as good as the outstanding picture on the camcorder (or from my DirecTV/TiVO unit), and on the longest play mode, the picture is still quite good. The picture quality on the longest mode is not as good, but unlike a VCR's extreme graniness, the picture just gets a bit softer. Making titles/chapters is a breeze as well. The only con for the device is that you can't record letterboxed video on standard DVD-R discs. Some sort of lame copyright protection I assume. You can record letterbox content onto a DVD-RAM, but these discs are far more expensive than the DVD-R discs, and usually can't be played on another DVD player. This really affects me because I shoot a lot of video on my digital camcorder in 16:9 format for playing on my widescreen HDTV, but when I try to copy the video to a DVD-R, the unit stretches the picture vertically to fill the screen. Same thing for letterbox movies. The only gotcha is to make sure that you are using the correct media. All DVD-R discs aren't the same. The discs were over three dollars at my local CompUSA, but I have found them online for much less than a dollar each shipped! Don't hesitate to buy this unit. You won't regret it. Buy it and enjoy!!! Do some internet searching and you can find a really great price.

The best way to think about this new entertainment appliance is this way: DVD player and recorder + VCR + TIVO. With that said, in many ways the E30 brings the benefits of total digital entertainment right into the comfort of your living room. This unit is great for anyone who wants to edit their own vacation, family fun or "life" videos, or record high-quality video either from television, VHS, or camcorder. So if you've cam-corded thousands of miles of kid birthday parties or recorded 5,000 old TV shows, the E30 gives you the ability to edit right on DVD-RAM and then make a DVD-R to view, share with your friends or even archive. Now contrary to some misconceptions, you CAN record popular DVD-R discs on the E30 that WILL play on your buddy's DVD player, or your grandmother's DVD player for that matter.

But if you really get to know the E30, you can easily title your programs, choose a menu color, set it to skip commercials, divide programs, all while recording very high quality video. If you're looking for a DVD recorder that is quite versatile and covers all the bases, I recommend the E30 highly.

I love this recorder! I never knew how convienient life could be by recording some of my favorite shows to DVD-RAM and watching them in the order and way that I like. This is especially handy for those who enjoy cooking shows.

Overall this is the most best system I have found, but I have had issues with finding compatible DVD-R media. The benefit with using DVD-R over DVD-RAM is you can "finalize" the DVD-R's and use them on any DVD player that supports the DVD-R format including computers and some older players.

I have used 4 types of DVD-R media with 3 of the varieties not being compatible with this recorder. I have found that the TDK brand of media works every single time and works great on all other DVD players I have tested a finalized disc with.

I would highly recommend this unit for anyone who has a TiVo or other DVR and wants to have the same type of functionality of playback while still keeping space on your DVR for more recordings.

This DVD recorder works fine. It does what it advertises...it records DVD-Rs just fine and plays DVDs just fine. Never had a problem with it once for any playback or recording. It is reasonably user friendly and easy to use. You can hook your VCR to it and record VHS tapes on to DVD. You can hook your camcorder to it and record those to DVD. Using SP recording format you get 2 hours of each DVD-R to record and the quality is good, even in LP 4 hour mode, the DVDs look good. It's a Panasonic so you know the quality of the machine itself is solid. I did not utilize the DVD-RAM feature, for right now there's no real need or market for this (YET). So why only 4 stars and not 5? Why did I end up returning it? The inability to rewrite and edit the DVDs. DVD-Rs can't, and although DVD-RAMs can, as stated above, this format/feature/technology right now is not there. There is minimal to no compatablity on DVD-RAMs and there expensive "discs" compared to other rewritable fomats such as DVD-RW and DVD+RW. So because of this non-feature, I gave 4 stars and went and bought instead a DVD+RW featured recorder. One day when DVD-RAM becomes "IT" which I believe it will, I'll come back and buy one of these DVD recorders.

My friend has this unit, I used it over the weekend, and here are my thoughts.

The good points:
The recording quality is pretty good. There were no surprises. In that area, I am satisfied. Getting the recording, on the other hand, was the hard part.

The bad points:
This is probably the most difficult to use consumer electronics unit out there, of any kind that I have used. The user-interface was so non-intuitive that it took a lot of playing around to even figure out what to do. After I figured it out, the design struck me as so boneheaded that it seemed that Panasonic rushed this out to market at the expense of a good interface.

Here is why:
-The manual is terribly written. It reads as smoothly as riding a bike on cobblestone. Take a look at it and you'll see what I mean. It is a poorly designed jumble of pictures, text and icons. Even the simplest task is difficult to decipher.

Further, the index (on the back page of the manual) doesn't even have a "Recording" section. It has ONE line item called "Recording Mode". Now, since this is a DVD RECORDER, I would think that it would have a "Recording" section with several sub sections such as "How to record", "Selecting the quality of recording", etc. Instead "Recording Mode" is the only item listed that has anything to do with recording, which seems to indicate to turn to a page which describes how to do something while the unit is recording.

-The remote control is terribly designed. It is difficult to navigate using the up, down, left and right arrows because they are spaced so far apart. By the way, these are integral to the usage of almost every screen activity, so I constantly found myself stretching my fingers all the time in weird ways to do even the simplest task.

Also, the remote control has a little "door" that you have to slide down, which reveals another set of buttons. Strangely enough, the open/close button is located under this door, which is an inconvenience since inserting and removing DVDs is central to what this unit is all about. (insert DVD, record, remove DVD, repeat). I would have placed the open/close button at the top left of the control, like most other remote controls out there. But no, with Panasonic's unit, you have to first slide down a door and then press the small button which is located in a non-obvious area.

The "play", "pause" and "stop" buttons are not labeled. The only indication of what these buttons can do is indirectly suggested with a small graphic on the center of the buttons. The play icon is a small triangle pointed right, the pause icon is a pair of fat vertical lines and the stop icon is a square. At first glance, that "seems" fair enough, however I tend to watch TV with the lights turned down, and at lower light levels the stop and pause button's icons look the same. All three buttons are the same size. It would have been helpful if Panasonic has made such important buttons more obviously visible. It struck me that either: Panasonic thinks that everybody who watches TV does so with the lights full on, or either they didn't think this one through. Read on, and you may agree that Panasonic fell victim to the latter of these choices.

-There is a button called "F REC", which allows you to specify how much time to allocate for the remaining recording on the disc. So let's say that you want to record at the slowest speed (poorest quality), which will allow you to record 6 hours to the disc, this is the place to set it. (By the way, this button is located under the little "door" that you have to slide down). Once it has been set, you can start recording from this screen. There are "Start" and "Cancel" screen buttons, which are navigated to via the up/down/left/right too-far-spaced-out buttons. Here is a representation of the screen:

Recording Quality/Time on disc left:
X Hours Y Minutes

Record:
Start Cancel

If the cursor is selecting the "Hours" area, you have to press the "down" too-far-spaced-out button to highlight the Start graphic. Once this is highlighted, you press the Enter button (which is the button on the remote control located in the center of the up/down/left/right too-far-spaced-out buttons) to begin. Problem is, when you press the "down" too-far-spaced-out button, the unit defaults you over to the "Cancel" button on the screen, whereupon you have to then press the "left" button to get to the "Start" area. Apparently, the unit always assumes that you have made a mistake with your selection, because no matter where you are, even if you are hovering directly above the "Start" button, you can NEVER simply press the "down" button to get to your intended location. You have to press the "down" and then "left" remote control buttons. It's a real pain after a while.

Panasonic, in their infinite wisdom, apparently decided to "protect" the users against accidental recording by defaulting them to the Cancel button every time you want to record. Ironically, if you did accidently record something, you could simply DELETE it, but Panasonic decided that you should have to explicitly "confirm" you selections in a non-obvious way.

The same thing goes with Erasing a section. The unit defaults you to the Cancel button no matter where the starting point of the cursor was. This is a little more acceptable because erasing a program has more serious ramifications than recording a program, however to add insult to injury when you DO decide to erase a program, there is no *obvious* indication of what is going on during the several seconds that the erase takes to finish.

This next point is perhaps the dumbest design flaw of all related to on-screen indicators. Let's say you are recording a program, and you press the "pause" button to pause the recording. The on-screen pause graphic comes up in the upper right of the screen, and the DISAPPEARS is about two seconds! So, there you are, paused, with NO WAY to realize this fact because there are no indicators on the screen!

I'd like to add to this that for the past 20 years, VCRs have an on-screen indicator that indicates that recording is paused. The indicator is a pair of fat vertical lines that stay on the screen during the span of being paused. It's quite obvious. Why Panasonic decided to remove ALL icons from the screen when you pause a program makes no sense to me.

Overall, very poor design but the recording quality seemed fine. Getting that ok recording was a pain.

Great for taping tv/cable, on DVD-Ram, if you don't have TIVO.
Love watching one taped program while taping another at same time.
Great for recording, in XP or SP mode, from miniDV camcorder (but no firewire. I use s-video)
Nice to edit out commercials with DVD-RAM.
Options more limited with DVD-R (can't take out commercials).
No compatability problems on older DVD players with DVD-R.
LP mode OK for general viewing later, but quality so so.
Sometimes little sound dropouts after you edit, but minor.
Player slow to turn on, initialize, or open disc door.
I RECOMMEND IT EVEN WITH THESE SHORTCOMINGS!!!

I bought the E30 and am very disappointed. A technology like this is so promising. The DVD RAM disc cannot be played on any other player except this machine or a machine that can read DVD RAM. Most DVD players do not have this capability. DVD-R cannot be recorded again once the disk is finalized which limits its usage as a substitute for a VCR. I will be be returning it and purchasing a Philips which supports DVD+R and +RW which delivers on the magic of DVD recording.

I bought and there is better out there, do nt like it