Panasonic DMR-EH50

After owning this machine for about 6 years now it has been a great player/recorder. The only thing I am upset about is why it will not read any Sd card I put in it. All pics are jpeg and I tried Kodak, Sony, I even went out and purchased a Panasonic 1GB SD card and it would not even read it.

HAVE HAD THIS UNIT FOR OVER 2 YEARS NOW, IT HAS HAD A HARD AND BUSY LIFE WRITING DVD'S FROM RECORDED PROGRAMMES AND CONVERTING MOST OF MY VHS COLLECTION TO DVD, THE ONLY PROBLEM I HAVE IS THE DISPLAY HAS DIMMED CONSIDERABLY, I HAVE DECIDED TO HAVE IT REPAIRED AS I AM TOTALLY DELIGHTED WITH IT'S PERFORMANCE

My Panasonic DMR-EH50 was £450 5 years old and almost faultless.

So easy to use. Excellent picture and sound quality from HDD & DVD from digital and analogue sources. Easy dubbing, easy to plug my camcorder in.

Has confused itself and frozen twice and missed a programme once

What a machine -it replaced an unreliable 2002 Philips DVD recorder and has proven usual excellent Panasonic quality. It gets used most days and still has recordings on it from years ago. I will probably buy a Humax 160GB freeview recorder to sit alongside this when the analogue signal is finally switched off -I hope that is as reliable and easy to use!

I will not by Panasonic again. Of course there are other unreliable products/manufacturers but if £250 is not enough for the manufacturers to make a reliable product, then make a proper product and charge more. One reason people are prepared to buy a dearer product is that they assume it is going to be reliable.

Why on earth would any sane person spend a lot of money on a product that only lasts 18 months, and which the manufacturer and retailer will not support?The Panasonic DMR-EH50 was good while it lasted, but it wasn't long enough (sounds like my relationships - er...).I have since spoken to several people whose Panasonic DVD recorders have failed within a short period. Sony or Pioneer seem much more reliable.

Ease of use. Flexible recording feature. Very good picture. Dubs and finalises much quicker than the DMR-E85h which I replaced with this. Also, has useful SD slot. A reasonable buy and reliable considering the hammering it gets!

Unreliable after about two years of moderate use. I only record shows and don't use many of the other features. Recently the unit has been very very slow in responding to commands.Sometimes a command will take 40 seconds to respond!

I believe that the HDD is failing.I also find that I must have the unit and the TV tuned to the channel I want to record.

If I set the timer to record channel 40 I must also set the TV to 40.If another scheduled recording on another channel is scheduled the unit will still record what was on channel 40I never got this unit to record multiple shows on different channels.If they are on the same channel then all is ok.

Maybe it's me and the setup but I don't think so.

Other than my repair bill which Panasonic say that they might help with, the system has been running great for just over a year and I will be getting it repaired as it has been a good machine with many features that my other DVD recorder is lacking in.

An excellent machine.

You may be wondering why, having given this machine nearly 10 for everything, my overall rating is a 5. Unfortunately the ratings do not include reliability and customer support.

I would not go back to anything other than a DVD recorder with hard-drive. The machine has been used day in, day out for nearly a year, and performed admirably for MOST of that time. After about 5 months of use, the "fast" high speed dub facility on the Panasonic DMR-EH50 "conked out", making some horrendous noises. However, as this still left the standard high speed dub (in reality not a lot slower than the "fast" version), I let the matter go. Unfortunately, just before the warranty period expired (luckily for me), the normal high speed dub also failed. I sent the machine to a local registered Panasonic repairer. After 6 WEEKS, and numerous to-ing and fro-ing of parts from the Panasonic technical support, the machine was eventually sent to Panasonic for repair. After just over a week I am still waiting for some feedback as to when they expect the machine to be repaired. The only plus is that Panasonic have said they will extend the warranty after I receive the machine back (whenever that may be), but they don't say for how long!

Anyway, enough moaning. I have converted many an old video tape to DVD, and most of my old video camera tapes too. The process is very straightforward, and (aside from the actual recording of the tape to hard-drive) very quick.

Being able to record whilst watching something else is great too. However, whilst recording you cannot edit anything.

Overall, a great machine to use. Unfortunately the shambles of the last 7 weeks has now tarnished what would have been a glowing review.