Everything you need: unbiased reviews, product specs and great deals.
|
Panasonic DMR-EH75VS (80 GB) DVD Recorder / VCR / HDD RecorderThe Panasonic DMR-EH75 is the perfect all-in-one system. With one easy connection you have a DVD player, DVD recorder, a VCR and DVR all in...
Read More
The Panasonic DMR-EH75 is the perfect all-in-one system. With one easy connection you have a DVD player, DVD recorder, a VCR and DVR all in one unit. DVD recorder: Record and play back your favorite shows and movies. The DMR-EH75 uses MEPG-2 compression for up to 8 hours of video on one disc, and uses single-layer DVD-R and DVD-RAM (recording up to 4.7 GB) for DVD recording. DVR: Browse and record shows directly to the internal 80GB hard drive with TV Guide's on-screen Electronic Programming Guide. SD card slot: Share your favorite moments with friends and family by simply loading your SD card into the built-in slot and transfer to the hard drive for viewing on the TV or burn it to DVD. VCR: Is your VHS collection collecting dust? Easily transfer those tapes to DVD with features like VCR refresh dubbing with advanced DNR, One-touch 2-way S-VHS dubbing and easy quick start for recording.
Minimize
|
|
19 Reviews from Shopping.com
|
No problems so far
| Author's Rating: |
|
Pros: Record/playback quality on HDD; versatility; TV Guide feature without subscription; reasonable price for feature set
Cons: Switching drives slow and cumbersome. No HDTV tuner.
The Bottom Line:
Good features, should hold up well until Blu-Ray/HD-DVD machines (with big HDD) become mainstream. Doesn't require TiVo or Replay TV. Manual modes easy to use. All-in-one.
We bought the unit primarily for the hard-drive recording and DVD recording facilities, but it also replaced a VCR that was being used both for playback of old tapes and time-shifting. Thus far it has performed without problems. Hookup was well documented, simple, and logical. The manual recording mode is easy to use and performed accurately. The TV Guide-based recording mode is easy to use and has performed correctly the handful of times we have used it. Dumping a program from HDD to DVD has functioned properly when used. Quality of HDD recording/playback is excellent.
Menu navigation is a bit odd here and there (still can't figure out how to page forward within the TV Guide list by hours or days at a time horizontally, or by pages of channels vertically), but easy to remember and reasonably intuitive. The auxiliary "TV control" buttons on the remote function as expected for our Sony television once the necessary code was entered. The documentation is not wonderful (could use a quality index) but thus far the required information has been there when needed.
Nits: Could use a larger HDD in order to have more capacity for high-quality recordings. Would be exquisite for time-shifting HD programming if it had an onboard HD tuner, but that is admittedly unrealistic for $400 or so.
Would be nice in HDD mode to have a fast-forward somewhere between X2 and X10, but X200 is very welcome when needing to bypass long stretches of content.
Takes a while to load/refresh TV Guide info. Doesn't seem to hang onto that info if you have a cable glitch.
Switching between drives seems to take a long time.
Copying from HDD to DVD takes approx. 1/4 of whatever the actual recording time is, which seems like quite a bit.
Update after more use: Programming failure did occur when there was a cable service outage (Comcast) and the TV Guide info apparently "disappeared" and was not restored in the unit by the time the programmed recording was to start. This would seem to imply that for "important" recordings the manual method, i.e. by time and date rather than via the TV Guide menu selection, would be more reliable.
Back to all reviews
