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314 of 318 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Recording of OTA HD Signals, But Not Perfect, June 7, 2007
My setup: HD antenna directly into the Panasonic's coax input, then connected via HDMI, coax and component cables to the back of my LCD panel (a Sharp LC37D62U, a 1080P panel with HDMI inputs).
The tuner in the Panasonic unit, while capable of receiving HD signals, cannot output a full HD signal, but only 480P. If you are looking for a unit to act as a full-on HD tuner, this unit is not for you, but if your TV already has an HD tuner, then this unit offers some cool features. Before I start though, I want to point out that the unit does "pass" a full HD signal - that is, when using my TV's own tuner with the Panasonic set to "TV" (on the "TV/VCR" selection), the TV receives a pass-through of the HD signal coming in over the air to the Panasonic. Other descriptions of this unit had me believing that it would pass-through a 480P signal, but this is fortunately not the case.
Cool Feature #1: Recording HD TV shows over the air. This is one of the first of a new generation of DVD recorders that can record an HD signal onto a DVD disc (although only at the lower 480P resolution). Despite the lower resolution, the picture looks great, obviously not full HD but far better than analog TV. I have recorded "Lost" and "House" and both shows look pretty good. While the unit appears to be able to record on every DVD format known, DVD-RAM format provides some advantages. Using a DVD-RAM disc and the HDMI connection to the TV, the TV switches automatically to a full wide screen picture. Setting the unit on its LP recording mode, I can record 4 hours of HD programs on one disc, and the sound is great.
Cool Feature #2: Chase play. After starting a program recording, you can start watching the recorded program before the entire recording is complete - skipping past commercials and so on until you catch up to the "live" point in the recording. This works only with DVD-RAM discs, but is pretty nifty. By the way, the DVD-RAM discs can (according to the Panasonic manual) be re-recorded up to 100,000 times, so they are ALMOST like having a hard drive in the unit.
Cool Feature #3: Disc navigator. This allows you to see all the programs recorded on a DVD disc on a single screen - you can then use this to select which recorded program you want to watch. Nifty! No more hunting through VCR tapes for the program you recorded you can't remember when...
The VCR output is also fine (although obviously much less impressive that the DVD output). I can't comment on its ability to output upscaled 1080P as compared to other DVD units with a similar feature, but the outlook looks pretty darn good to me, no noticable "jaggies".
Complaints: The auto-channel setup missed one of my local HD stations, instead tuning a secondary station being broadcast on the same signal. Annoying! There appears to be no way to manually select which channels are tuned by the unit. I have been meaning to call Panasonic about this, but haven't gotten around to it. Also, long-ish startup time (like 15 seconds). Sometimes the DVD output seems a little washed out, but this can be taken care of by re-adjusting the TV's color settings. Having to turn the unit off in order to have it launch a scheduled recording.
Overall, quite happy with the performance.
FYI, the first unit I bought (from Amazon) arrived DOA, but they were great about returning it and I had a new unit two days later. They even paid for the shipping to return the first unit. Nice!
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118 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pricey but delivers the goods, August 31, 2007
I bought this model yesterday after a frustrating week: my professional grade (but 4 year old) JVC bit the dust just when I needed to transfer a stack of tapes for a a client. I initially bought a Sony Sony RDR-VX555, which transferred tapes beautifully...but lacked inputs to get any decent quality from a cable box (unless you wanted to have a S-VHS cable sticking out of the front of your device). And even when it was hooked up to the cable box, the picture stuttered when recorded (or wouldn't record at all. Turns out Sony has a chip that 'protects' cable box signals...so it really is false advertising to have "record from cable box" on the item's box)
So I returned it and bought the Panasonic, which was almost $100 more. And I have to say it has been worth it so far. It plays DVDs beautifully and upconverts to my Samsung LCD HDTV like a dream: tested it with "Return of the King" and it looked like the TNT HiDef broadcast. I was able to hook it up to my TV via HDMI with to problems whatsoever (and I've noticed that Samsung is a bit touchy on that regard). And as I was also able to hook it up via Composite out, I was able to test the signal quality HDMI vs. Composite. Personally thought the HDMI was a lot sharper and the colors truer (the Composite signal added a lot of red to the mix).
Had some initial problems hooking it up to my cable box and called Panasonic (who really weren't much help...I figured it out while explaining the problem to them for the fifth time). Basically, I kept getting an error message saying that my TV wasn't accepting the DVI source for some reason. So I didn't get picture, just an error message when I tried to run signal from the Cable box to the Panasonic. I was worried for a moment, as the instructions for the Panasonic want you to run the cable into the DVD/VCR first and then output it to the cable box (which caused a huge breakdown in picture quality and doesn't work for most of the channels). So I was afraid that the Panasonic would also prove to be incompatible with signals coming out of a cable box directly.
Turns out that it was probably the TV not wanting the signal coming from two HDMI inputs or from the cable not wanting to output it essentially to two HDMI inputs (I had the cable box hooked up directly to the TV and the DVD/VCR hooked up to the TV, both through HDMI). When I unplugged the HDMI cable from the cable box, the signal miraculously appeared through the DVD/VCR. So basically, if that happens to you, just unplug the connection between cable box and TV when you are wanting to record a show
(this might be due to the pass-through capabilities of the Panasonic DVD/VCR, and supposedly the signal going to the TV from the Panasonic is going to end up being as good as directly from the Cable box...but I would rather not risk it, since my picture is finally doing great now that Time Warner figured out the problem after a year).
Right now I'm copying a VHS to DVD and the picture quality of the VHS to my TV is incredible: much better than it was with the old JVC. One nice feature I already noticed is that the DVD recorder automatically put in a break when it sensed a change between programs.
Recording off TV last night produced an excellent result and I'm sure that when this tape is over (in 1:30) I'll find the same (if not...I'll be back!)
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141 of 149 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Recorder, Great Copier, Not-so-Great Upconverter, May 16, 2007
If you are thinking of buying this for its "1080P Up-Conversion", Don't Even Bother! No big improvements here. Get the Oppo DV-980HD 1080p up-conversion DVD player instead if you are sticking with the DVD format. You'll get everything you are looking for. This Panasonic's Up-Converter gives plenty of ghosts, noise, and dragging. It drove me nuts! We had just purchased a Sony 46" 1080P 46XBR2 LCD television and we were expecting to get the promised HD quality out of this new Panasonic since our Costco Panasonic DMR-ES45VS went only to 720P/1080I. We figured perhaps the visual flaws were due to the lower resolutions. The TV works beautifully, however this Panasonic simply couldn't do the job of effectively bringing out that full HDMI-powered picture. We got better viewing out of our old 1997 standard TV and a 2001 RCA DVD player.
However, other than this, it does a fine job of copying non-commercial VHS onto DVD, even cleans up the quality in the process (just make sure to run a test on this to see if there are any visual flaws in the transfer; this happened with the machine we bought, and the prior Panasonic). As a DVD Recorder, easy to use and excellent quality. The only thing that bugs me is that you have to turn off the machine in order for a programmed recording to activate. The DMR-ES45VS that we bought at Costco allowed for scheduled recordings to happen regardless of whether the machine was on or not; a much better design. Anyway, when the finalization process is complete after either copying or recording, it plays in pretty much any player.
The Digital Tuner is a nice add-on, but it seemed to take a little while to load each channel when switching between stations. Not a big deal to me, but it bugged my wife understandably. Then again, we had analog cable instead of digital or HD-digital. BIG NOTE: No matter how much either a TV or DVD-PLAYER/TUNER claims to clean up analog singals, it will still look like garbage. If your getting an HDTV and/or DVD-Player/Tuner, make sure you get at least Digital Cable or HD-Digital. If you don't, all you'll get is extremely grainy TV. Yuck.
The Remote is just like the prior models, with one exception: when pressing the menu button during a movie, it does not go directly to the menu like the prior models. Instead it brings up a glaring box that offers "Menu" "Top Menu" and "Cancel". Personally, if I hit menu, I've meant to hit menu. A little too bothersome.
We never had any use of the SD card input, so nothing to say there. HDMI connection works great. So do the other connections. Also, it does take longer to load than the before-mentioned prior Panasonic, and it can be noisy sometimes.
Also, an odd side note. We bought the similar Panasonic ES45VS and hooked it up to our old 1997 TV, thinking it would pump better quality through it. Nope. The old 2001 RCA DVD player was much better for that type of TV. The Panasonic's de-interlacer messed with things visually and made horizontal lines appear anytime things moved. Just a note so others can avoid this.
Overall, as with prior Panasonics, this model does everything else well except the up-conversion. If this has everything else in it that you need, then do get it. If not, then get an Oppo or go Blu-ray.
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