Panasonic DMR-E50 EBS Review

Overall Rating

Component video output
Good DVD player
Easy to use..but not intuitive
High Quality (low compression) recording, 1hr = 1 DVD-R Disc
NTSC Progressive scan
3 S-Video or composite inputs
"Time Slip"
Plays most round shiny things that will fit in it's drawer.
Good well set out remote (also controls TV)

Not PAL progressive scan
No component inputs
No coaxial digital audio output
Only records in stereo
Manual reasonable but not great
A little flimsy
High and Maximum compression recording are terrible quality
DVD-RAM media has limited compatibility

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.

Members' Comments onculfy's Review

• culfy on 1st Mar 2004

  Recording from Mini DV to DVD is a little disappointing, even using maximum quality and a S-Video cable there is a small loss in quality from the original to the DVD-R. Perhaps an IEEE1394 version may be better...dunno, that\'s the DMR-E60. Anyone else know???
  Only other thing is it only records in 4:3....I think, can\'t promise that though!
  Still don\'t have the DVD-RAM discs so haven\'t played too much with recording. It\'s still a good DVD player though as well as a recorder. 10/10 for being an all-rounder.

• culfy on 9th Aug 2004

  Longer term annoyances: TV tuner not as good quality as I would have hoped; not the best at playing CDs (it's not a CD player though is it?).
  Good things: DVD RAM recording is awesome but not overly flexible (anyone know how to rip a DVD-RAM to HDD?); Flexible Recording is great. Tell it to record a program to fill the rest of the disc (or the whole disc) in a particular time and it will adjust the bitrate accordingly.

• pewe on 11th Nov 2004

  Copying DVD-Ram to disc or other media is as easy as any other DVD, providing you have a PC DVD-RAM drive (about £80 from many suppliers). Using DVD Shrink (search the internet) you can even reduce the 9.4GB Ram to a standard DVD or split it on to 2 standard VDVs.

• pewe on 11th Nov 2004

  Copying DVD-Ram to disc or other media is as easy as any other DVD, providing you have a PC DVD-RAM drive (about £80 from many suppliers). Using DVD Shrink (search the internet) you can even reduce the 9.4GB Ram to a standard DVD or split it on to 2 standard VDVs.

• culfy on 19th Nov 2004

  Thanks there pewe. I hadn't thought of that. I figured it just wouldn't work. The thing I'm really having trouble with is taking a snippet such as 2 minutes of news from a DVD-RAM. Any ideas?

• entropycity on 9th Dec 2004

  I am pleased that you rate the E50 so highly. Until I had bought a (Humax F2 Fox) set-top box, I had no problem in recording channels 1 to 5 (terestrial) Now that I have the Humax I have no problem in recording these 5 channels....but no more! I am totally unable to get the E50 to 'see' the new channels despite checking and rechecking the scarts and AV cables. What am I doing wrong? How can I record from BBC4 for example?
  
  Any help most welcome
  
  Thanks,
  
  Geoff Todd