Customer Reviews

Panasonic DMR-EH50S DVD Recorder with 100 GB Hard Drive Recording

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

After researching for a DVD recorder with hard drive for several weeks it became apparent that this new model coming out would be worth waiting for. I had almost settled on the E85HS model but after reading the reviews it seemed it had a lot of problems and was pretty limited to the types of disks it would record to. This new model has solved all that with several more types (read specs) to record to. The TV GUIDE downloaded just fine and works like a charm. I haven't recorded too much just yet (only have had it for a week) and have had no problems with it freezing up. The TV GUIDE editing works well and you need it as the stations on my system came in random order. I just rearranged them and turned off the channels that I didn't want. This device can certainly replace TIVO that is for sure. Be sure to follow the intructions about giving it time to download the TV GUIDE stations. It needs to be left off (standby) for at least 24 hours. I had to play with it for the first day or two so it took me a little longer to get up and running. Also, the manual is a bit daunting but I found by playing around you could figure out most of the remote functions. As you can tell, I didn't get this machine to convert VCR tapes. I wanted something that could replace my converter box from my cable TV company (RCN) and have TIVO capabilities. This unit does that magnificently. I am now using my converter box upstairs with another tv so I can tune in music channels and use the "on demand" channel. However, this unit will work with the converter box with the included IR Blaster so it is a very versatile recorder and tuner box. I'll come back later and add addtional information about my recording and editing experience.

7/7/05 update: I finally got around to editing and dubbing a TV recording to DVD. It was a very easy process overall. The only thing that slows you down is trying to read the instruction manual. Once you are on the editing screen ("Shorten Title" as it is called) it is pretty intuitive and with a little trial and error it was a pretty fast operation. Now my son-in-law has a commercial free copy of the Eagles concert. One thing to remember is if you want to utilize high-speed dubbing you need to turn it on before you start. This means even before you start recording a program. Once it is recorded without high-speed dubbing you are stuck with a dubbing time equal to the length of your recording. Panasonic recommends that you set that option to off unless you know you want to dub a program at high speed. They don't say why. Even though this wasn't the primary reason to buy this recorder for me it really seems to do the job and would be great for converting VHS tapes to DVD. Finally, don't forget to finalize your DVD so it will play on other devices. There is a prompt for it so it really isn't a problem.
As a follow up to my primary review, I am loving the recording of TV programs on the hard drive. I record and watch movies that I would never have bothered with because of the commercials. The TV GUIDE makes it very simple (push one button)to record. With the on screen menus you don't even need the book to use this function. The normal (SP) speed gives you 44 hours of recording time and I can't tell the difference between it and the orginal TV program in picture or sound quality.
Overall, this device has exceeded all of my expectations.

The EH50S is my second Panasonic DVD recorder, the E80H I got 18 months ago worked so well that I decided to buy a second unit for my other home.

I won't repeat the comments you can read elsewhere, but I will discuss the couple issues that have not been mentioned before.

If you plan to perform editing on this unit (such as editing out commercials before archiving to DVD), you will need to do a lot of fast-forward/fast-backward/pause/play maneuvers to skip over the unwanted parts. In the EH-50S, each press of the fast-forward will take you to a higher speed, and there are a total of 5 levels (2x,10x,30x,70x,200x). Naturally, you want something faster than 2x or 10x while searching forward/backward (30x and 70x are good choices) to seek out the commercial breaks to edit them out. The typical key press is to hit fast forward 3-4 times successively to get to the higher speed, and hit play/pause when the unwanted part begins/ends so you can locate the specific points to begin/end editing.

That is where the problem with this unit lies - when you press fast-forward/backward multiple times successively, it queues up your key presses and it can take over 6 seconds after the last key press to get to the speed you want. It will not execute any other command such as play/pause/stop until it is finished with the queued commands. So it is a guarantee that you will always overshoot the point you want to stop if you engage high speed search. 6 seconds may not sound long when you read this, but if you are in 70x speed, even 3 seconds is overshooting the stopping point by 3+ minutes of programming, I can assure you that you will swear at this recorder more than once per edit. As a result, if you edit often, you do not want this recorder (Interestingly, the old E80H, with the latest firmware, provides almost instantaneous responses). Unfortunately, Panasonic never released a newer version of the EH50S firmware since its release.

This problem is not related to the new hard-drive "sleep mode", as the drive is already spinning at full speed when you edit. I work in computer hardware/software for 20 years, I believe it is the result of poor firmware design. Hard drive sleep mode as a way to improve durability is a marketing gimmick, its true value lies in reduced power consumption and heat generation. A typical consumer-grade hard drive provides a 600,000 hours of mean-time-between-failure (MTBF), that is 68 years of 24x7 non-stop operation! You have other problems to worry about if you are still using the unit in 2073. (The commercial grade drives is in the 1.4+ million hour range, but surely that's not what Panasonic put in the unit).

In LP mode, very fast motion of contrasting color objects (like a person dancing in colorful clothing) can cause an image breakdown: the affected area turned into big blocky shapes. This is rare, but the problem was not in the older model. The LP mode in the EH50S is supposed to equal the SP mode quality in the E80H, but it is perhaps only true in programs with little transitions. With sports program, LP is useless. You should only use LP mode for something that you don't plan to archive. I definitely consider this the second show-stopper for this recorder.

On the bright side, the dubbing speed is very fast. In LP mode, it can dub a 60 min video in less than 2 minutes (assuming you have the right disks), which is up to 8 times faster than the older model. It also allows you to view regular program during dubbing, while the E80H forces you to watch a blue status screen until dubbing completes (which can take a long time depending on the length of the dubbing materials).

Panasonic took some cost cuting in the EH50S, the control on the units is fewer than in the older model, the display is cheaper and less sophisticated. The brush metal overlay on the older remote is gone, replaced by a full plastic design. But the unit also costs a lot less, so you get what you pay for.

I have cable without a cable box, TV Guide works as advertised.

The recorders is sensitive to power interruption, it displayed a U99 failure message intermittently after a power outage. I reformatted the hard-drive and the problem disappeared. In this respect, it is no different than a computer.

Overall, the flexibility to archive to four disk formats is a big plus for me. I hope Panasonic will release a firmware update soon to fix the image breakdown issue and improve the response of the fast forward/backward keys, as well as the general key press responses. If they fix these two issues, then I would recommend the recorder wholeheartedly. In the current state, I believe the EH50S is a couple steps back from designs that is two generations older, which is a huge disappointment.

However, if you rarely edit and just use the unit to record/time-slip programs, then you shouldn't be concerned about the slow key-press responses.

If you edit, I give this recorder 1-star, you will learn to hate the EH50S, so look elsewhere. If you don't edit and records at SP or higher speed, I give it a 5 star.

I bought the EH50S because of the positive experience from the older E80H. Now with the sluggish EH50S, I will not buy another Panasonic recorder unless they can prove that the future model is indeed better.

After the release of the EH50S, Panasonic came to a screeching halt in releasing new hard-drive-based recorders since early 2005. It became the only new model with a hard disk drive, a far cry from the previous lineup (their two higher end models are of the previous generation). I wonder if Panasonic realized the flaws in the EH50S and is delaying the release of newer and higher-end models.

I agree with most of the things in the reviews, I will just address a few differences:

1.- TV Guide works without a Cable Box (that's what I have and it worked fine, but it does take about 20 hrs to download and may require extra fiddling with it...mine told me there were 4 different downloads so please tell me which one is your cable company...after that I had to wait another 3-4 hrs) but after that it worked as advertised. Organizing the channels in the order I want takes a while. Check with your cable company if the TV guide thing is a must for you...it makes life easier, but you don't really need it if you know when your favourite TV shows play (use your computer and the internet ... not big deal)

2.- It's a somewhat complex (compared with a toaster) machine, so obviously the manual es extensive...but if you finish Highschool and read carefully you should be able to figure it out...I don't understand the reviewers that complained about it...yes the manual could be better, but it's not advanced calculus!!

3.- My $35 DVD player has much more options to play a movie than this thing, that was a let down. I can't "zoom" for example, it's not as easy to call the movie menu or to advance to a particular scene. It takes a few more buttons to turn own the subtitles or change the language/sound on a movie...but I guess otherwise the control would be too big...but still, it could have been made more efficient...so it is really geared to record stuff.

4.- I tape TV programs mostly, 'cause I am never there when they play live, I don't dub VCR tapes to DVDs or mess around with pictures or MP3 (those I do all in my computer) so I don't know how those features would work for you. But if you want something that tapes from your TV, the Hard Drive really delivers, you can record over 100 hrs of TV shows (so if you are gone for a couple of weeks it's great, my VCR stops at 8 hrs tops!) But really that's all I got for $350, so all and all I'm still not sure it was worth the money.

5.- Delivered very fast from Amazon

This product works exactly as the manual says it will.
It is a superior dvd recorder. The editing capabilities are fantastic. I have Cox cable and my Panasonic dmr-eh50s works without need for a cable box. I did take the time to delete all of the channels I never use, tho. This way my "TV Guide" only shows me the channels I usually watch.

Here are some of the things you can do with this dvd recorder:
* Record your favorite shows by selecting them or by just telling the recorder to do it every time the show comes on that channel. Play them back when you feel like it. Erase them when you feel like it.
* Record your video tapes (or dvd's) to the hard drive, edit them if you want, then write them out to dvd. You can erase any portion of any recording. This is great if you have recorded scenes you dont feel you want to save for posterity. If you want you can re-arrange the sequence of the scenes. Just use the editing to denote the beginning and end of each scene (make it a "chapter"), then create a "play list" where you decide the sequence of the chapters to be output. You can combine scenes from various video tapes into one "play list" and in doing so create a unique dvd. For example, if you have several tapes from over the years and you would like to create a dvd that just shows significant events for one of your children, you can create a dvd that is devoted to summing up that child's experiences.
* you can store still pictures from your digital camera or from your digital disk onto the hard drive, then create a dvd kind of like a slide show, even adding YOUR OWN MUSIC. One of my friends did this, choosing favorite pictures from their marriage and playing their favorite songs in the background. It was an anniversary gift that they will truly treasure.

When you buy this product, be sure to get an extended service contract, either from Panasonic or from a reputable source. If this product ever needs servicing, the price could be high (almost as much as the purchase price) and you will be so glad you bought the service contract. Bernie's will sell a 5 year extended service contract on this product for a one time fee of about $100.
I would buy this product again in a heartbeat.

I've had the dmr-eh50 for about a month. So far so good. It works wonderfully with my cable; basic cable with no cable box (Cox). The TV guide downloads nightly about the next 2 days of information, and makes it a breeze to schedule recording of shows or events for one time or schedule it to occur weekly. Play back is very simple. I do suggest downloading the manual and reviewing it, it does point out that the dvr does not work with satelite. I did wire it differently than the manual suggest, using a splitter to enable my old vcr to also still record shows. If the TV guide is not setup, it really makes the dvr harder to use. I left the machine off overnight. The next night I was able to play with the machine while reading the manual. Got used to the functions quickly. Then I reread the manual a few nights later and picked up things I previously missed. For the money, this is a great box. It would gotten a 5 star rating if I could record 2 shows at the same time.

I bought mine yesterday at Circuit City. The price was marked higher than the website, but they honored the webprice. I also bought a pack of DVD-RAM to try the advanced features over DVD-R and -RW. I later found out that a free DVD-RAM comes with the product. The comments below are not meant to be comprehensive as I have only had the unit for 24 hours and am still learning to use it.

I set everything up relatively quickly. The options are to use the device connected to cable (analog cable) or to use the device with your supplied cable box (digital cable.) Without the cable box, you cannot access premiums channels and on demand items, just basic channels. I tried it both ways. While using the device as the cable tuner, it works as expected, but without all the channels. While connected to the cable box, channel selection is delayed due to the unit having to echo the remote signal through the IR Blaster attachment. In essence, I change the channel on the device and it then changes the channel on the cable box. Scrolling through the menu on the channel guide is also slow due to this. It may be best to think of the device as a VCR without the ability to record and watch TV at the same time. You can record and watch a previously recorded show at the same time, but not live TV. Also you cannot "pause live TV", you have to start recording and then start a delayed palyback to achieve this effect. In all I am happy with the purchase, but I seem to have gotten confused in my research and failed to keep all the features of other products seperate. This product is not a TIVO, but it also does not have a monthly fee.

Pros:
Easy to record programs
Thorough instructions
Great picture quality
Good recording capacity

Cons:
TV guide sluggish while connected to cable box
Can't record and watch something else, while cable box is in use.
Has cheap appearance.

My father purchased one of these units for Christmas and I helped him set it up. I want to clear up something another reviewer said about not being able to use the TV Guide if you don't have a cable box. Don't listen to this person as they obviously have no clue what they are talking about. This unit WILL download the TV Guide whether or not a cable box is present. There are setup instructions if you do or don't have a cable box. The unit will also work with analog or digital cable but won't receive the TV Guide if you have Satellite. You do have to leave the unit off for 24 hours for it to do so but unless your cable company doesn't send out the information, it should download. As for the rest of the unit, the only couple complaints I have is that words can be difficult to read on the white background when you hit the "info" button. It also would have been nice if the unit had 2 TV tuners so you could watch TV on one channel while recording on another. The picture quality on standard cable was greatly improved by this unit's S-Video output as well which was an unexpected surprise for my Dad.

Pros:
Easy to set up
Useful TV Guide
Easy to record to HDD
Can Improve Picture Quality If S-Video Is Used
HDD record quality is very good.
DVD playback is perfect.


Cons:
Manual isn't always clear.
Some on screen lettering is difficult to read.
You may have to manually rearrange the channels in the TV guide as they downloaded in the wrong order.
Takes 24hrs of standby to intially get the TV Guide.
A few channels never showed up correctly in the TV Guide.

I am getting excellent results with this DVD recorder, but it takes a couple of weeks to learn all the features. The instruction book is relatively poor, the description of the features is vague, and the language is strange.

The book doesn't tell you enough about which DVD formats you should use. I have read it several times and I still don't know the exact difference between DVD-R and DVD+R. Panasonic seems to push DVD-RAM, but this format is not compatible with my
Samsung DVD player.

The unit works fine, but it takes a very large amount of patience to understand how to operate it. I have a feeling that the competitive units from other companies are probably easier to operate.

Contrary to other reviews, I never had any trouble at all with the built in TV Guide.

I bought this particular DVR as a gift for my fiance. We were excited about the possibilities of watching shows on our own time and burning DVDs of our old homemade video tapes. We'd heard some stories about TiVo starting to erase programs from people's hard drives, so the TVGuide system seemed like a good option and free to boot.

Unfortunately, we never got to enjoy our DVR. I set it up as instructed when it arrived. (You may want to note that setting it up for cable requires purchasing an extra set of A/V jacks.) We left it for 24 hours. Turned it on, and the guide informed us that "the search for data has failed." I did what I figured was the sensible thing; I called customer service. Little did I realize this would only make matters worse.

Everything people have said here about problems with Panasonic customer support is true. Wait times range from 20 minutes to an hour, and first you have to go through an automated system which - through the wonders of voice recognition technology - will probably take you to a different menu every time you call. I was told to connect the machine in a way that left my cable unable to work at all until I put it back as it had been. I was given case numbers that, when I gave them to someone else next time around, made them think I was calling about a phone. I dealt with a person who couldn't seem to take down any number I gave her correctly. I was sent to the Panasonic website to find a download which I could not locate. When I told the rep it wasn't showing up, she had me navigate to the exact same page through the exact same links again. The worst part was when I finally asked to speak to a supervisor who knew the machine well. I was told someone like that would be in at 10 the next day and would call me. I waited FOUR HOURS to account for the fact that I didn't know what time zone they were in. No one called. When I finally called them and asked again for a supervisor's help, I was told "Oh, supervisors don't do tech support."

The last I heard from Panasonic, they were sending my information to TV Guide and expected them to get back to me in a day or two. That was several days ago, even accounting for weekends and the holiday. TV Guide does not have any customer support number for their DVR guide service on their website and the number for them which Panasonic gave me just connects me with a recording. I have come the conclusion that no one will be calling me back.

To be fair, I tested out the recording to the hard drive and DVD and that seems to work fine. I could just keep the thing as a simple DVD recorder, I bought it so they I could both burn DVDs and record programs without having to sit there and press record myself. What I can do with the machine now is not what I paid for and Panasonic tech support was disappointing, to say the least. So the DMR-EH50S is being returned and Panasonic is no longer getting my business. Your results may well vary and if you're one of the happy people who actually gets the TV Guide to work exactly as it's supposed to, you have my congratulations. Just keep in mind that if you should have any problems with the machine, Panasonic tech support is probably not going to be able to help you.

I got this thing a few days ago based on its excellent features and warranty--the best of any unit I looked at.

After 2 extremely frustrating days of trying to get it to download the TV Guide data (I thought due to the dismal manual) I finally called customer service. After 57 minutes on hold, I finally got someone who knew less than I did and whose idea for a fix was less than credible.

As a last resort, I called my cable company (Bresnan/ATT) Guess what? They block TV Guide signals from loading so I will be forced to rent their DVR for ten bucks a month. So CALL YOUR CABLE COMPANY BEFORE ORDERING THIS UNIT!

Other than the confusing manual, my main complaint from the brief time I had the thing is the fact that there is no coax out for a home theatre system, forcing you to buy an expensive optical cable--which I'm now stuck with.

A couple stumbling blocks to look out for:

1: The TV Guide system only works if you use a cable box.
2: TV Guide does not work with satalite
2: Some HD cable boxes are incompatible with TV Guide
3: You must connect the cable box to the IN3 inputs on the DVD recorder to get TV Guide to work--this is fairly obvious, but there is some contradictory info about RF cables.
5: The input selector button is not really mentioned, but you'll need it to tell the unit where the signal is coming from. It's on the top left of the remote.

And one final note: DVD recorders are really complicated. Even if the manual had been the picture of clarity, there are numerous settings, options, compatibility issues, etc. that you have to deal with. If you just want to record a few TV shows, do yourself a favor and buy a VCR.