Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS

I bought a DMR-E50 12 months ago & within 2 months it had to be replaced as it was not reading the RAM disks or any unfinalized disks that I still wanted to record on. Panasonic did replace the recorder but this 1 is doing exactly the same & my warranty has just expired by a few days so I will now have to pay for the repair myself or use it as a £300 player. Not good getting the same problem from 2 recorders within 12 months. A good recorder whilst it worked but I would recommend that people !!!DO NOT!!! buy Panosonic. P.S. I use verbatim DVD-R disks (they are meant to be 1 of the best in the world) so its not the fault of using poor disks.

After having the Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS for some time now I can say how pleased I am that I bought a Panasonic instead of some of the others on the market

The Panasonic DMR-E50 is a great entry-level DVD recorder. Ideally suited for recording digital broadcasts. Simple to use, thanks to powerful, yet logical menus. Ideal for connecting to a source (such as a sky digibox) where there is only 1 RGB output, as the DMR-E50 will pass-through this signal when in standby. Time slip is absolutely great, allowing you to start watching a programme that is still being recorded (DVD-RAM only). My main regret is not spending the extra money needed to buy a model with a hard drive in it, as without this editing options are much more limiting. Still, it is a great starter deck for those wanting to replace their VHS recorder with something better suited to digital broadcasts. Think carefully if you are buying this deck to archive a large amount of existing VHS to DVD-R and plan on using the Flexible Recording (FR) mode, as there appears to be a "feature" when recording VHS > DVD-R in FR mode, where an extra track is sometimes created, causing a glitch in the recording on track transition and leaving you with a wasted disc (my recorder has been replaced and still exhibits this flaw, leaving me with a whole pile of wasted media). I have used TDK DVD-R discs and (aside from the issue with VHS > DVD-R) I have found them to be reliable (2 failures out of 100+ discs used).

It's the best of all worlds with a TIVO and the Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS. My son said it all, "Dad we have awesome technology". I like recording everything using the Tivo, then recording on DVD selected shows and documentaries, to relieve Tivo of needed HD space. It's the best of all worlds! I also bought the Panasonic 5 DVD/CD Player so everything recorded on the DMR-E50 works well together. I love the feature of the front Panasonic (L2) inputs for my new Sony DVD Handycam. I can now start to save money buying 2 30min DVD-RW's and recording the family information on the DMR-E50, instead of buying many 30min DVD-R's for the camcorder. What can I say, a few minor let downs with the DMR-E50, but for the money, I am a happy camper!

I do not understand the Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD Recorder, for some reason music levels overpower speech such that speech is almost impossible to hear.

It is not the DVD, nor the scart plug as i have changed both.

Even recording from the TV is a minor problem with sound levels and in order to hear correctly it is necassary to play back on only one channel.

I was looking forward to useing this Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS DVD recorder to collect my favourite movies on DVDs and be able to play them in my laptop when travelling or in a standalone DVD player in another room. Unfortunaly this cannot be done so I am very dissapointed.

Fiddly and difficult to use also, more complicated than most VCRs.

Image quality is fine for SP and XP but recording cannot exceed 2 hours. LP quality no better than standard VCR.

Bought my Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS DVD Recorder from a catalogue because its easy to "try before you buy". The main thing for me is picture quality which was very good and good in 1 hour and 2 hour modes,ok ish and poor in 4 and 6 hour modes.So what is the use of haveing a recorder that can only record for 2 hrs with a decent picture??

The reason i can say this is i also ordered a JVC S-VHS video recorder and compaired them together.The picture quality on the video was the same as the 2 hour mode on the DVD. 2 hrs recording with the DVD,4 hrs recording with the tape. DVD £350 , JVC s vhs £130. No contest, i bought the s-vhs which should last till the DVD formats sort themselves out and they can record longer with a good picture

OK I'll be honest, I only just got this Panasonic DMR-E50 machine and haven't done a lot with it.

I've managed to set it up easily to play DVDs and the tuner is an absolute piece of cake to tune in. In automatic mode you just press go and it finds all the channels it can. The auto fine tuning is also good, I couldn't improve on it manually.

Playing DVDs it does an excellent job, OK for the same money there are better dedicated DVD players but considering it's a recorder too it is more than adept. PAL Progressive scan would have been nice, as would a DVI port.

Sound wise it seems as good as any other good low to mid range DVD player, it doesn't seem to colour the sound at all and generally gives a good immersed feel to the movie. I haven't even tried a CD in it, I haven't found a DVD player that plays CDs well enough to consider it worth my while trying. Having said that, considering the all-round nature of this machine I guess I should probably have a listen. I'd expect it to be no better than the average DVD player which is rarely anything to write home about and more often than not lacklustre and horribly coloured.

It has 3 sets of AV inputs comprising S-Video, composite video RCA and coaxial stereo RCA which are more than enough for your recording needs. 1 set is front mounted allowing easy access for a camcorder and the like. The DMR-E60 also has an IEEE-1394 (Firewire or i-Link) connector and an SD Card slot which I quite like the idea of, being a computer nerd, I wasn't convinced it was worth an extra 1/3 of the asking price though.

I have recorded a couple of DVDs from Mini DV and their quality on the second level of compression is good. This allows 2 hours on a DVD-R which is reasonable. The quality at it's lowest level of compression is fantastic but only allows 1 hour of recorded material per DVD-R. DVD-RAM are available in the 9.4Gb version and hence has twice the capacity of DVD-R. Many features of the recording system are only available on DVD-RAM which is a shame. I'm not entirely sure what these bits are as I haven't yet got my hands on a DVD-RAM disc to play with. The manual doesn't really explain what things are...just how to do them!

It has some great features such as "Time Slip". This is Panasonic's name for being able to watch the start of a program you have recorded (say the beginning of the movie you'd set the timer to start 1/2 an hour before you got home) while still recording the rest of the program. Theoretically you can catch up to real time if you fast forward through the ads! Hence the name Time Slip I guess. A great feature whatever it's called.

Once I get a DVD-RAM disc I'll be testing all sorts of options on recording and will post back as comments below.

So far my experience with this unit has been all good.

The Panasonic DMR - E50 EBS is a well designed and easy to use recorder. Can store up to 6hrs on a DVD-R or DVD-RAM in EP mode with virtually no perceivable loss in picture quality.

The functions available while recording on DVD-RAM are comprehensive. They include Time-Slip which allows you to playback what you are recording with a 30 second (or more) delay. This is great for confirming what is being recorded but has limited use otherwise. Since the playback process is independent of the recording process, it is easy to play a previous recording while you record a new track or play a track which has been recording for some time, even before it has finished. Recording on DVD-RAM also offers other features such as erasing a track and re-using the space, partially erasing a track, splitting a track and building scene driven menus.

DVD-R discs are easy to use. Tracks can be added until the disc is full. Disc and Track titles can be entered to later provide an on-screen menu. You then "Finalize" the disc so that it can be read on other DVD players. My cheap old DVD player plays the discs without any problem but my PC based DVD player will not - This is probably a software/firmware driver issue.

The only criticisms are the cheap plastic looking Remote Control and the inability to record on DVD-RW discs. Otherwise, a great piece of kit.