Customer Reviews

Panasonic DMR-ES40VS VHS / DVD Recorder Silver

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

First the negatives: Built in copy protection prevents one from, say, sticking in a Disney VHS tape and attempting to create a copy from that onto DVD. Also, dubbing wide screen aspect formatted videos dumbs them down to pan and scan, presumably to satisfy the movie industry. When you insert VHS tapes for one touch dubbing, you cannot "pause" the recorder. That functionality is not present unless you use the external inputs.

That being said, the image quality takes my breath away, and appears to improve videos that are substandard. I surmised and anticipated correctly that an effective workaround to copy protection could be to instead utilize the recorder's electronic component inputs, namely the three input RCA pin jacks that are standard (yellow for video with red and white for audio) on many stereo and video components. We have lots of Mr. Wizard episodes, Dr. Who stories and much educational material taped off broadcast TV years ago that should do nicely as they do not carry inserted "copy protection" like today's prerecorded commercial tapes.

In my first test with the newly purchased unit, I created a personal DVD compilation consisting totally of Beatles "Ready, Steady, Go" British television appearances followed by the Japanese Budokan concert from several laser discs. The laser disc transfers do very well. There appears to be no conflict with copy projection kicking you out as occurs in prerecorded tapes inserted into the unit for dubbing.

I next dubbed a Japanese import laser disc of Disney's movie "Song of the South." As many of you know, Disney has refused to release that children's movie in the American video market. The transfer is outstanding.

I have dubbed off camcorder footage, but could not use the DV input as my particular Canon camcorder uses a different jack. So, I used the RCA pin jacks. Outstanding image quality.

I pored over the excellent instruction manual for a number of hours to acquaint myself with what this recorder does. It is laid out well but takes time to review at first until you become familiar with its layout. That was a good investment in my time to address my learning curve. I haven't yet mastered chapter thumbnails. Others have reported that the Panasonic keeps stopping when the video changes. That appears to have been corrected. When dubbing via the input jacks, you can keep the recorder in pause mode for several minutes to allow you to switch source media of edit past unwanted footage.

I am ecstatic with the possibilities for making these precious video moments more accessible, perhaps preserving them for another few decades before the medium transitions yet again.

I'm also pleased that I had declined to dump my large collection of laser discs. There is so much material on certain of these discs which has yet to be marketed in DVD format and some may never make the cut.

Enjoy!

Bruce

The unit worked fine for me until I discovered that it won't play DVDs recorded on other devices. I tried DVDs recorded and properly finalized on both my IBM computer and my friend's Sony recorder. I used the proper media and tried several different brands, but all I got was "ERR". I took these same DVDs to a retail store and they played fine on every brand of player, except for the Panasonic recorders (DMR-ES20 and DMR-ES40).

This is a new model and it clearly has a hardware or software problem. I'd stay way from it if you plan to play anything recorded by any other device (like home movies from family members).

I purchased this unit after a little hesitation from the initial online reviews. I wanted the flexibility of transferring VHS tapes to DVD and my camcorder. I own a Toshiba TIVO DVD recorder unit (TX20) which is excellent but tedious for transfer of tapes.

In short this is very good DVD/VCR recorder unit except for some quirks. The VCR portion is like any other VCR. The DVD recording quality is excellent for XP (1 hour) and SP (2 hour) and better than most for the EP (4 hour) mode. EP on the Panasonic was as good as high quality (2 hour) mode on my Toshiba unit. Pixelation and image blurring is a problem with both for fast moving images in this mode when recording from TV sources. With VCR sources, image quality suffers in EP mode from old VCR tapes and is better with SP mode. I have not experienced DVD compatability problems. DVD's made with the ES40 play on my Toshiba player. DVD's I have made on my Toshiba and on my Dell using Nero 6 and a Plextor burner work fine on the ES40. I also have not experienced any unit lock ups that have been reported.

The one button recording is fairly simple to record from VHS to DVD and vice versa. However editing features are tedious and nearly indecipherable from the owners manual. The owners manual is about as readable as a federal income tax worksheet. The unit cannot insert chapters easily for DVD-R discs. The trick to this machine is learning how to record and finalize as well as add names to the disc and chapters which is not easy. As with many DVD recorder units, it does not remember where you last stopped a DVD if you turn the unit off so you have to go through the intro screens again and the scene index to get to where you left ff (my toshiba has the same problem).

Conclusion: If you can get past the not-so-user friendly interface this is a good unit to purchase if recording quality is important to you.

First off, let me say that DVD recording technology is amazing. With a little effort, you can create your own DVD library from old videotapes, directly off the TV, etc. That's the good news.

Now for the bad news. The Panasonic DMR-ES40VS has the following problems/flaws (At least I have experienced them with mine) or is missing features.

No High-speed dubbing? Either I haven't found it, it doesn't have it, or it has this feature but forget to tell the user how to get to it. Therefore, anything you record, you have to record in real time. Meaning a 2 hour videotape must run for 2 hours. If the Panasonic does have this option, they don't display it in their meager owner's manual. I've been thru that thing 50 times and haven't seen it.

The recorder locks up on me about once or twice a day. When it does, I turn it off (as tech support told me to do). Often, that locks up on me too, so I have to unplug the power at the wall. It always begins working again, so I'm thankful for that, but it's a ridiculous situation. It reminds me of the computer crashes of the early PCs in the late 1980s.

You can only set your own chapters with -RAM discs. I went out and bought 200 DVD-R dics. They record great, but this unit doesn't allow you to insert CHAPTER breaks on any discs other than -RAM. Therefore, it's back to the old fast-forward, like the old VCRs. I can't believe someone couldn't have figured out a way to enable "custom" chapter breaks. If you're not familiar with this, it is probably the biggest problem and is truly a dealbreaker. It means, unless you solely buy DVD-RAM discs, if you record a 2-hour family picnic, you won't be able to "earmark" your favorite 5 or ten scenes. You must fast-forward thru 2 hours of film --- EVERY SINGLE TIME!

Meager owner's manual and instructions. I'm a technical writer, and I'll admit, it would be very difficult to fully document all of the mechanics of this recorder. But their index is only 2/3rds of a page. Troubleshooting is incomplete and gives patronizing fixes like "Check power cord." Come on. I think most of us are a lot smarter than that. I think Panasonic could have easily supplied a navigatible system DVD that would have walked the end-user thru each operation.

Problematic other features like:
- No eject buttons on remote control (for VHS or DVD). All of my other DVD and VHS players have them on the remote also.

- No counter when you are recording. Supposedly, there is a way to enter several commands and go thru multiple menus if you want to decipher this. Why couldn't they have just put it on the unit like my old VCR? It couldn't have been that difficult since that technology has been around since the early '80s.

Overall, I'm happy that I have a device that can record to DVD. But, consider yourself warned, they are still working the bugs out on this model. If you're desperate to get a DVD recorder (like I was) you might be happy with this one. But if you can wait, you might want to put off getting one until the next generation. I'm assuming next year's models won't lock up every 6-8 recording hours.

EDIT (February 4th, 2006)
TWO new disturbing developments with my Panasonic DVD recorder:

a) The DVD recorder has started "eating" some of my VHS tapes. These tapes were previously in decent (or new) condition, but in this Panasonic DVD recorder, they locked up or the tape spooled off the reel. Luckily, nothing irreplaceable yet, but it's rather upsetting.

b) I do a lot of my VHS tape to DVD dubbing at night, after I go to bed. Since some of these tape to DVD transfers take several hours in real time, I find that it's more efficient to wake up in the morning, after the main dubbing has occurred, then "finalize" the DVD. This saves me from sitting around for hours waiting for the transfer process. This system usually works well, but I've found in the last two weeks, at least 4 times, when I attempt to FINALIZE the DVD with the movie(s) on it, the DVD recorder will lock up. Obviously, I'll attempt it several more times, but I've found, if the Panasonic locks up on the first Finalize try, that DVD will need to be scrapped. It only costs me about 35 cents in DVDs (each time), but because of the Panasonic's real-time only dubbing, I lost the entire night's taping. What's worse, concurrently the VHS player half has starting "eating" my VHS tapes so, if the DVD transfer didn't work, what was on that VHS tape originally is lost forever.

I just wanted everyone to be aware of these two additional problems.

First the good news: when it worked properly, the quality of DVD's dubbed from old VHS tapes was great.

Now, for the REST OF THE STORY...

I am a law enforcement officer in NC and bought this product for just ONE reason and ONE reason only: to dub all of my old VHS home movies onto DVD.

I wanted a machine that was easy to use, i.e. with the push of 1 button, and based on a Consumer Reports recent review of the Panasonic DMR-ES30, I went to get one.

The ES40 was on the shelf so I figured this was an improved model, so I purchased it instead.

What a disaster!

1. The directions are terrible. The process called "finalizing a disk" (WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR DUBBING FROM VHS TO DVD) is not included in the section about dubbing from VHS to DVD. You find it buried elsewhere in the manual. You CANNOT play your dubbed DVD on another player WITHOUT "finalizing" your dubbed disk.(By the way, GOD bless those of you who are trying to read this manual for other purposes!)

2. Most of my dubbed disks would NOT finalize, therefore I wasted almost 2 hrs per disk, and with the amount of VHS tapes I want to dub, life is too short to waste on this sort of nonsense. Dubbing is done in real time so you're either going to have to sit in front of the TV monitor or do it overnight, but when you can't finalize your disk you've wasted all that time.

3. One nice feature that is buggy, also, is that Chapter Markers are put in place onto your DVD whenever your VHS tape changes scenes, or at least that's the way it's supposed to work. However, this isn't always the case. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Potluck. Otherwise you're gonna be stuck having to fastforward through your DVD to get from scene to scene, which is another time-wasting event.

4. Some disks would not finalize because it said "there was not enough room to finalize". In other words, I recorded too much on it!! Why in the world is there not some sort of automatic function that would stop the dubbing so you could have enough room left to do whatever has to be done for finalizing a disk? So, you're stuck guessing how much is too much. I just started doing only 1.5 hrs or so, but what a waste of disk space.

5. For those disks that did finalize, the machine TOTALLY froze up after finalizing, and I could not remove the DVD unless I unplugged the unit and let it reset itself. This happened 100% of the time.

6. Customer service at Panasonic is terrible. The wait time alone was up to 1 hr, and then the poor rep on the other end didn't have a clue or passed the buck by saying it was "probably the media, i.e., the brand of DVD disk, I was using. Yeah, right. I tried Verbatim and Sony discs and I still get the same frustrating problems.

I finally got fed up with this machine and took my unit back for a refund at my point of purchse. The ONLY ES40's on the shelf were RETURNED units!!!!!!! Does that tell you something, too?

Therefore, buy this unit at your own risk and be prepared to put up with alot of unnecessary, time-wasting problems.

I talked with a couple knowledgeable salespeople and read many online reviews of DVD recorders last fall before deciding to go with Panasonic. I ultimately decided to get this DVD/VHS combo recorder last November at Costco, because I wanted a setup that would allow me to transfer from VHS to DVD in a small space. The salespeople I talked to highly recommended Panasonic, saying it was basically the only company that made reliable DVD recorders. All the others tended to break and get returned for some reason.

The good:

Its VHS-to-DVD and DVD-to-VHS transfers work well. No complaints. The video and audio quality is good, depending on the recording mode you choose. It plays DVD rentals well, also, though it lacks a few of the controls you can get with dedicated DVD players, such as audio enhancement selection during play, instant on/off with subtitles, different POVs during play (I only saw this feature enabled on 1 DVD I have). Those are niceties. The essential controls are there.

It records TV programs well, also. No complaints there either.

If you want maximum flexibility and want to use recordable DVDs the same way you would a VHS tape, then I'd recommend you use DVD-RAM discs with this model. The recorder offers the ability to delete tracks, edit tracks you've recorded, and set chapter points, but only if you use DVD-RAMs. You can get DVD-RWs for it, but your options become more limited. You cannot edit tracks or set chapters on RWs. You can delete tracks, but unless you delete the very last track you recorded, you don't gain any space on the disc.

On DVD-RAMs, if you delete a track, you regain the space it used, for further recording. You can also edit chapters, merging them, or delete chapters you don't want. This is a useful video editing feature. If you're only interested in one part of a show, you can set a chapter point before and a chapter point after the part you want to keep. Then you can go into the chapter editor and delete the parts you have "marked off", leaving only the part you want to keep. I read a previous review from someone who said they used this to get rid of TV ads in their recordings. Yep, you can use it for that, too. I have no idea if deleting chapters actually frees up space on the disc. Overall the flexibility it offers is nice to have.

Whenever you put in a DVD you've recorded, you can bring up a menu of thumbnails with track titles. You can "arrow" around to the track you want, and play it. Very easy. The DVD recorder picks an arbitrary point in the program for its default thumbnail. It offers a nice facility if you want to change it. You can change the title as well, though the way you go about doing it is kind of clumsy and laborious. I don't consider this a big minus, since it's hard for me to imagine a more effective way of doing it, short of hooking up a keyboard.

A nice feature it has, to compensate for the difficulty of setting titles, is if you schedule a program, you can set the title of the recording right when you schedule it (only applies to DVD recording). Very nice for things you record weekly.

By the way, the manual does not explain how to schedule weekly programs. The way you do it is when you enter the screen where you set the channel, the date and the time, etc., when you get to the date, hit the "down" arrow, rather than up, on the remote. You'll see selections for "Weekly Sun.", "Weekly Sat.", etc.

The bad:

In my opinion the best parts of this unit are the DVD and VHS recorder drives. So far they've both worked flawlessly, as have the track management features. Something went wrong though when they designed the other parts.

The one consistent problem I've had with it is its program scheduler is unreliable. Sometimes when I set it up to record a program, it does it. Other times, for some mysterious reason, it doesn't. I can never predict when it'll work. Perhaps the unreliability comes in when recording to DVD.

The first unit I bought lasted for 4 months and then it died. The first symptom that something was wrong was the clock had reset itself 2 hours fast. I was able to turn it on after that, but could get no video output. The VHS and DVD drives worked. The LED display worked. But something was clearly wrong. I took it back to the store in February and replaced it with a display model. It was all I could get. Apparently this model was being phased out. So far the replacement has worked, but it has a tendency to "weird out". Perhaps it's just this model. I unplugged it when I went away on a trip. When I plugged it back in, the clock set itself 6 hours fast, and the unit started exhibiting other odd behaviors. The VHS and DVD drives worked fine, but the "control logic" for the unit (I'll call it) was acting strange. It seemed to clear up when I went into "Setup" and reset some options. I expected that since it had been off for so long that all options would've reset to factory defaults, and that nothing would be scheduled for recording. It was six of one and half-dozen of the other. All scheduled recordings were still there, but the "Setup" options had either reset to factory defaults or had become mysteriously set to options I had never selected. When I went to rent a DVD, it told me that the parental control setting was too high to play. I hadn't seen it do this before. I tried to change the setting but it wouldn't allow me to do so, asking for a password I had never set. I had to look in the manual to learn how to bypass this (which worked), and I was able to reset the parental controls. After being back 3 weeks the unit hasn't really malfunctioned...yet. I'm hoping it'll last a good long while.

In short, the unit's VHS and DVD drives work great, but the firmware that manages the unit's functions is buggy. Hopefully they'll fix this with their next model.

I am VERY pleased with this product. After finding out that Consumer Reports rates Panasonic higher than all other brands in almost every category, I decided that this was definitely the brand to go with. I'm still learning about all its features, but so far am quite impressed.

Just a heads up to those considering this product, you are able to do alot more if you also purchase DVD-RAMs instead of R or RW discs. (One free RAM disc does come with this product.) With the RAM disc, you can add titles to recorded programs, create chapters in something you have recorded, delete chapters, combine chapters, etc. (I have recorded some TV movies and have been able to delete the commercials by creating chapters). The Chase Play feature (watching a program from the beginning while it is still recording) is also only available with the RAM discs.

I originally purchased an Emerson DVD recorder, which was quite a bit cheaper. Naturally, you get what you pay for. The Emerson worked fine, but did not have the features that the Panasonic does. I also did not like the Emerson remote control, as it was hard to find the buttons you needed. (i.e. the arrow buttons for the DVD menu were mixed in with the channel buttons, all buttons were the same shape and size - difficult to distinguish). The Panasonic remote has a lot of buttons, but its not intimidating if you take the time to scan the instruction manual.

VCR to DVD dubbing and vice/versa is very simple - just select which you want to do and hold down the button for three seconds. One negative to this is that you cannot pause recordings to cut out unwanted material and the full disc will be copied unless you monitor it and stop it where you want to stop recording. However, on VCR to DVD recordings, if you use RAM discs, this wouldn't be an issue since you can edit as desired.

Another positive feature is that this player will both read and record all types of discs: +R, -R, +RW, -RW, and RAM. You do have to finalize any DVD that you record before it will play on other DVD players (you do not have to finalize it to play it on the Panasonic). I cannot attest to the statement in one of the other reviews that it does not play discs that have been recorded on other players - but perhaps those discs had not been finalized? In any case, I've had no trouble playing any discs which I have in my home library.

Very simple to use.
One button transfer from tape to dvd (or dvd to tape)
Finally a VCR that is easy to setup and run...I've been waiting 20 years for this (easy to schedule recording).

Not sure about the other two reviews earlier. The DVD Ram is a disk that you purchase just like you do with DVD_R, +R and RW

It is so easy to use that I went back the next day and purchased a second one for the bedroom TV.

Finally a remote control that is very simple...not like sony which has twice as many button.

I have found this unit to work very well. The instruction book
can be a bit confusing, but this is a complex machine doing
a complex job. READ (do not browse) the instructions. Keep the
booklet handy until you are familiar with the machine. I am
having excellent results with 'Sony' and 'Memorex' DVD+R discs.
DVD-RW, DVD-RAM will not play back on other machines. That is
because many other DVD players are not designed to read those
forms of media. They will play fine on this unit. You MUST
finalize the disc. The screen will prompt you to hit the "enter"
button when this is done. If you don't, you will have to unplug
the machine and let it reset. User error, not machine error.
2 hours of information does fit on a 2 hour disc. If however
you insert to many chapter breaks you will get "unable to
finalize" message. Again user (not machine) error. Each chapter
break burns up space on the disc. I don't recommend the other
record modes. I also don't recommend 6-8 hrs on VHS. Simply
reduces the image quality too much. It will not record copy
guarded material and it is not supposed to. If you have old
tapes that are important to you, or old VHS movies that are not
available on DVD and you want to save them. This machine does
that. When finalizing the disc, keep it simple. You won't be
able to access specific scenes with out chapter breaks, but
the "next" button bumps the disc forward about 5 minutes, or
fast forward to a selected scene. This still beats video tape.
Over all play and record quality on this unit is excellent
for both DVD & VHS. Sound quality also excellent. The lack of
high-speed dubbing...Well you are going from VHS to DVD. That
is like expecting high-speed from vinyl (or 8-track) to CD.
There are limitations to the source media (video tape.

We bought this item about two weeks ago, mostly to record all of our old family birthday movies onto DVD's. I learned a few things right away, which I thought would be worthwhile to share. First, I had a little bit of trouble setting it up right at first, but eventually my wife came to my rescue. I had better luck using the setup function explained on page 16, I guess the automatic setup only works the first time you plug it in, and doesn't show up ever again. A few things I have learned about using recordable DVD's: first, only the DVD-R and DVD+R are compatible with nearly all DVD players. The DVD RAM disc that comes with the machine works great, and is re-recordable up to 100,000 times, but you can only play it on a machine that can handle it. Right now, there are very few DVD players that can play it (mostly they would be the DVD recorders), so if you were to record something and then you want to play it on your laptop DVD player, it won't run. Second, the DVD+R discs are supposedly a bit better for recording quality, but many more DVD player manufacturers are building their machines to be compatible with the DVD-R discs. So, for the future, I elected to go with the -R discs for the home movies. I also considered using the RW discs, but decided against it, for fear something valuable would accidentally get erased.
Something else I learned recently relates to the recording time. My VHS tapes last a bit longer than 2 hours. The one I just did is 2 hours, 37 minutes total length. So, it won't all fit on one DVD. It's too long for SP mode. I didn't want to record it in EP mode, because I was afraid of losing too much in video quality (which isn't all that great to begin with). So, I ended up with part of the tape (37 minutes) on a second DVD. Which won't fit into the single-DVD case. Which then makes for a second case. More expense, and more storage space, and so on. A real bummer. AHA! A solution! Flexible recording! On page 25 of the manual, it explains that when you have a source that lasts more than 2 hours, the machine can automatically compensate for the lack of space by slowing the recording speed so that the program fits perfectly on one DVD. Only one problem-- you cannot do this with the VCR in the machine, as it will only record to DVD using the "one touch" system, which doesn't do "flexible recording". So, we ended up using our old VCR, plugged into the input on the front of the machine, and it worked very nicely. One VHS tape, onto one DVD. Most of it is in SP mode, and then it switches to EP mode to get the rest of it to fit right at the end.

Like I said, we have only had it a couple weeks, so I cannot speak to reliability, but so far, it has been very good. I only gave it four stars, since I don't have very long experience with it yet.

I will plan to write another review after we have had a chance to use it more, but at this point, it has been well worth the money we paid for it.