Panasonic DMR-EH75VS DVD Recorder / VCR Combo with 80GB Hard Drive, HDMI, SD Card, and DV Input

I have been holding out on buying a DVD recorder until one came out with VHS, DVD, and a hard drive (HDD). This unit finally delivers! It definitely has some cons, but this unit is the best you'll get if you want to record onto a hard drive first, edit out the commercials, and then transfer to DVD. The advantage to this method is that you can record say 2.5 hours in SP mode (2 hr mode), edit out a half hour of commercials, and then transfer to DVD. If you have to record directly to DVD before editing out the half hour of video, you would have to use a longer recording mode and therefore reducing the video quality.

Some of the things that can be improved upon:

- Consistency of auto-chapters: When copying directly to DVD, I've gotten chapter stops at 5 minutes and 8 minutes. When copying to the hard drive, there is no rhyme or reason. Why is this not consistent?

- Chapters are not maintained when copying from HDD to DVD in different recording... Read more

I've been using the DMR-EH75VS recorder for about four weeks now and I love the quality of the picture, the ease of copying from HDD to DVD, and the quality level of VHS transfers (recorded LP) to HDD or DVD. This is with the unit connected to a 20 year old Sony Trinitron television with an RF Modulator. I've also used the fire wire connection to connect my Sony MiniDV camcorder to transfer footage to DVD and it worked beautifully. I would give the unit 5 stars if the manual were better and if I had successfully installed the included feature of the TV Guide listings.

First about the manual: I work as a television editor and even I had trouble with the manual. The terminology is vague and the procedures often assume a level of knowledge that is unrealistic. The glossary should make up for the terminology problem, but does not. I did email questions to Panasonic and received satisfactory answers, but the manual should be self-explanatory.

Regarding the TV Guide... Read more

Several people have written excellent reviews of the Panasonic's ability to edit and record TV, in addition to VCR-DVD archiving, and I suggest looking at those reviews below. I would just like to add a few comments on my, so far limited, experience with this deck.

-HDMI upscaling is very good, and in my opinion is as good as my stand-alone Toshiba DVD player with HDMI upscaling. In addition, all video is upscaled to the format of your choice, and is a nice feature. Because of this, I found video playback of recorded shows to be of excellent quality. Very close to actual broadcast, if not the same on certain channels.

-TV Guide setup was simple, and asked for your postal code. The deck takes around 24 hours to get guide data, and I recieved 2-3 days of programming after about 18 hours. You must also periodically place this unit on standby in order to recieve updated TVGOS content, which is sent over the cable during late evening, and early morning hours, from my... Read more