Customer Reviews

Panasonic DMR-EZ27K Up-Converting 1080p DVD-Recorder with ATSC Tuner

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I bought this from Best Buy not Amazon.

Things I like:
1) Scheduling for recording programs is pretty intuitive
2) Creating the DVD top menu is easy
3) Playback of DVDs with HDMI cable is very sharp with upconversion
4) XP (1hr) and SP (2hr) are very good...better than VCR quality
5) Has Flexible Recording mode (FR) which you assign the hours to record.
6) To my surprise, when I record a 16x9 broadcast on a +RW, it actually plays in 16x9 on my TV. It's not supposed to per the manual.
7) Although not advertised, it has a QAM tuner. Will deciper any HD/digital channels from my cable connection. The quality isn't as good as the built in QAM tuner on my TV though.
8) Remote layout is good and feels sturdy.
9) Can use TIVO like features if recording using a DVD-RAM.

Things I dislike:
1) LP (4hrs) mode is very pixeling when played back on my 56" widescreen. Way worst than VCR quality. I don't even use this mode. EP (6 or 8hrs) is practically garbage. My old reliable VCR could tape 6hrs which was good for a week of shows. Now since I only use the 2hr SP mode, I have to keep remembering to switch out my DVD+RWs and label them. A big hassle, which I'm not sure outweighs the benefits. Very bad if you have to tape 4 hours or more during a day...i.e. a long sporting event.
2) If I set the recorder as hooked up to a 16x9 TV, which it is, and I record a 16x9 broadcast, it plays fine on my HDTV. However, if I play back the recording on a 4x3 TV, the image is scrunched into the 4:3 TV making everybody appear narrow. No setting on my 4:3 TV or DVD player can change how it appears. Can't get it to go widescreen on the 4:3. If I set the recorder as hooked up to a 4x3 TV, then it will play back okay on a 4:3 but won't go 16x9 on my HDTV. Ugh.
3) The QAM tuner when auto programming channels isn't intelligent. It will pick up every digital channel going through the cable feed, whether encrypted or not. Thus, you'll end up with about 100 digital channels that are encrypted and you can't view (blue screened). You have to manually deleted these channels from the recorder, which after doing about 10 took way too long and I stopped. Slow channel changing.
4) No Open/Close button on the remote.
5) Cable signal quality on analog channels through this tuner isn't the greatest.
6) I have a Samsung 1080P DVD Player and when playing back recordings with the Panasonic, I can't get my "instant replay" or "instant skip" features to work on my Samsung.

7-15-07 UPDATE:
Two weeks after purchasing this recorder and 1 week after posting this review, my digital (HD) channels disappeared from the unit. Resetting or re-auto programming the channels didn't work to get them back. I called Panasonic tech support who's supposed to send me a firmware update for the unit. Supposedly, I'm not the 1st to report this issue. The firmware update isn't on the panasonic website though. This now lowers my rating to two stars. If the firmware doesn't fix the issue, I will update this.

7/30/07 Update: Well lame-o Panasonic finally mailed the firmware update about 12 days after I first called them even though they promised it with 3 days. The firmware update has brought back my digital channels. I'm crossing my fingers that they will continue to remain. The firmware update's biggest feature, however, was that it made the LP (4hr) recording mode much better. Before, I couldn't even tolerate the quality of the LP mode because there was too much pixelation. With the firmware upgrade, it's actually tolerable...at least when watching a regular TV show. I have to test it on a sporting event before I give my final opinion. I'm taping the Giant's game tomorrow (in case BB ties HA) so I'll let y'all know later.

8/6/07 and FINAL Update:
Well, I lost my digital channels twice since my last update. Once after the unit froze on me...another time for no apparent reason. I have to goto through the tedious 10-15 minute process of reloading the firmware update and the the long auto-channel setup to get my digital channels back. I have no faith that my digital channels will remain indefinitely. There seems to be quite a few bugs in this unit. I called Panasonic Tech Support and they told me to ship the unit back for their Techs to inspect and repair. Although the shipping and repair is covered under the warranty, I've already paid this unit in full and will be out of a recorder for at probably 3-4 weeks if I went this route. Unfortunately, I've owned this thing over 30 days and can't return it anymore. I'm crossing my fingers that my digital channels won't mysteriously disappear anymore or that Panasonic will come out with yet a better firmware upgrade....but I'm not holding my breath. It's been very disappointing that this unit has a lot of glitches.

Finally, DVD recorders with ATSC tuners have arrived. For those of us who receive our TV over the air, and who want to (a) upgrade to digital (b) replace an old VCR and (c) reduce component count, they seem like the perfect solution. I bought the DMR-EZ27K with high hopes.

Well, I'm a bit disappointed. On the good side, the unit has an excellent digital/analog tuner that has no problem pulling in local stations via my rooftop antenna. It downscales digital broadcasts to 480i over the S-Video output. As I understand it, it also downscales digital broadcasts even when using the HDMI output, i.e. it doesn't pass the broadcast signal through unscathed. However if you are using the HDMI output, you probably have a TV with an ATSC tuner in it anyway, so this seems like a minor quibble.

Also on the good side, it plays just about every 5-inch silver disc format out there, including DivX. I tried the DivX functionality and it worked very well.

The unit makes excellent quality recordings off-air and has a clever feature that fits the recording to the disc space available, maximizing quality.

However, the unit has problems. Here's why I'm not planning on keeping it:

(1) Changing channels is incredibly slow - about 5 seconds. This becomes quite tiresome.
(2) There is no electronic program guide. You have to set the recording manually, VCR-style. There are other DVD recorders which have EPG for about the same price.
(3) Chasing playback only works with DVD-RAM discs. They are very hard to find, so I haven't been able to try out this feature.
(4) Many (idiotic) broadcasters broadcast in 16:9 constantly. When the program material is 4:3, they put black bars at the sides, so there's a huge bar all the way around the picture when watching on a 4:3 TV! This DVD recorder offers no zoom to deal with this - you are stuck with a postage-stamp-sized image in the middle of your 4:3 screen.
(5) The unit has frozen up on me, requiring a power cycle.
(6) Sometimes the channel being shown and the channel information are out of sync. This happens quite often if you are trying to change channels faster than the unit. And this happens a lot (see (1)).
(7) There seems to be a bug in the firmware which causes the 5.1 mixdown to switch modes unexpectedly. Sometimes it will be a genuine stereo downmix, and other times it won't be. This leads to strange audio artifacts.

This is all rather unfortunate, because the concept of a DVD recorder with an ATSC tuner is great. My impression is that these early units (and this may apply to other manufacturers as well) are a bit half-baked, and that the next round will be better. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It being a Panasonic product, I had high expectations from this DVD recorder and waited few months for it to come to retail stores. I was expecting the digital tuner to be HD tuner, however it only display pictures in 480P (EDTV) format. If you want a really good HDTV tuner, then go for a dedicated external tuner like Samsung DTB-H260F.

Overall it has not meet my high expectations. Here are some of my findings:

1. Although the Digital tuner is rated as 480p (EDTV), picture quality is definitely not as good as commercial DVDs (also 480p). I would rate the picture quality of Digital channels (HD broadcasts), somewhere in between analog channels and DVD quality.
2. Quality of DVD recordings is pretty good and sharp. As I said earlier, not as good as DVD quality, but much better than a Analog broadcast.
3. I have a Canon MiniDV camcorder and could not record my miniDVs to DVD using built-in firewire interface. Recordings would stop intermittently without finishing.
4. Non Random mode for playing MP3 files.
5. Product build quality looks good overall and supplied remote is good too.
6. A Sample DVD-RAM media would have been good to include, to test those advanced recording features.
7. Unit is bit pricy and the price difference of $50 between models EZ17K and EZ27K is not justified.

This product quit working 20 days after it was received, will not show on TV and the DVD door will not open.

0 Stars if amazon offered that choice
fortunately amazon took it back
the unit froze during recording with a good commercial dvd blank (memorex) which is advertised on the amazon site.
I did everything that the manual stated and then called panansonic, the tech department told me the unit needed to be returned;
I can see from postings that other people have had this problem,
The unit goes into power cycle every two minutes and then goes off and on and recylces; according to the manual this is supposed to be self correcting; after 2 days it did not correct; the drawer would not open to eject the disk.
Something is wrong with their software.
agree withn other comments regarding the long delays in firing up
had pioneer recorder for 3 years excellent but was unable to find one on line possible change of models or they decided to get out of the market

I was so hopeful to have the 2 devices I need (DVD player, HDTV tuner) in a single device, but it wasn't to be. As is the case with the DMR-EZ17 (no HDMI) and a recent LG recorder, this unit only outputs TV at 480p even though it has a digital tuner. This is a huge disappointment, and I'll definitely be returning it. Also, you can't play 4:3 content in 4:3 mode, unless you go into the setup and change the TV type to 4:3. Many recent DVD players seem to be like this, and it's stupid. There is a lot of 4:3 content available that I don't want stretched to 16:9. All players should have a zoom function that let's you increase the viewing area a small bit at a time. The Oppo 981 lets you. Then again, it costs about 2x what most players do.

As for the recording capability, I haven't tried it since I already decided I would not keep it. However, I have read that it records multi-channel audio in stereo only, another limitation. Why do they do this? Is there some legal reason?

I am quite happy with the unit, and I believe it performs as advertised. I use it daily with readily available ($5) DVD-RAM media and enjoy the DVR-like features including commercial skipping and playback while recording. There are also some cute functions like the ability to playback at 1.3X normal speed (works fine with news programming) and the video thumbnails for playback selection.

The tuner works well and tolerates a wide range of signal levels, though digital sub-channels take a couple of seconds to lock (vs. 1 second for analog stations). Also, I have had no occurrences of software bugs after I read the manual and stopped pressing buttons faster than it could keep up.

I would not recommend this hardware, however, if you only want to make an occasional DVD-R recording (there are less expensive units for that), or if you expect up-converted signals to rival HiDef (there are much more expensive units for true HD capability).

I have had at least 4 returns because of one or more of the followings: frequent freezing ups, incomplete programmed recordings, unable to eject. I continued the returns hoping to get lucky with the right one but after about 5 months of trying with amazon, bestbuy and circuitcity plus reading the reviews I decided to wait for better QC/ technology to catch up to our demands. Unless there are clear improvements, it is not worth your & family's precious time and effort.

Put a DVD in and hear it spin like a jet engine while you watch it! Its a shame because it has all the features I am looking for, but the unit is kinda crappy quality. The response of the device is really slow too. When you click on the remote buttons to change settings or channels there is a 3 second delay before the unit responds. It took me 5 minutes to set up and within 10 seconds I knew I was going to return it because of the disk noise. Its a shame.

Overall, I was very pleased with the EZ27K. The Recording quality was excellent, it did a good job of producing a quality playback picture, without very many artifacts, worked well even on sports. Excellent controls and capabilities in terms of labeling and chapters, pretty flexible on finalizing the discs, and reasonably speedy in this regard. Similarly the ability to scan forward and backward was very good, and there's some very high speed scan modes that I found unusual and nice to have. The only quibles I might have is that the remote, while competent, doesn't really make it easy in terms of getting subtitles up. Further, the unit seems to do well enough with regular DVDs, but some of the features are really DVD-RAM only. HDMI output worked well (1080p), and is a nice future-proof feature. Some complained about the channel-to-channel switching speed, I found that in general to not be a problem, it's not fast, but I've seen far worse. The tuner does seem to do a very nice job of finding all the available channels, setup was very easy, and it quickly found the right time and so forth. Quite possibly this is the best unit on the market in terms of a DVD recorder (without harddisk), at least until something comes along in Blu-ray or HDVD.