Panasonic DMR-E100HS

I`ve had my DMR-E100HS sometime & having tried other recorders realised just how good this one is.

Inputs/Outputs are Composite, S-Video & RGB, as well as a DV & Aerial input. The tuner is analogue only so recording is best using the RGB input. When recording to Hard Drive or DVD-RAM you can playback the recording at the same time, or any other programme you have on either disk, you can also use all playback effects (pause, search, skip etc). There is no pause live TV, but you can effectively achieve this by simply pressing record immediately followed by play, there needs only to be a few seconds material between recording and playback.

My unit has a 80Gb hard drive, but I know some are supplied with larger, the drive fitted is a standard PC type, but if you replace it the unit will still format it to the size of the original, this is my biggest bugbear with the DMRE100.

There are 4 recording modes and flexible record, which makes a program exactly fit the space available. A nice feature is that as you change modes you are told the length of recording time available in that mode, this is much better than those that just give hard drive space, or worse percentage space which are pretty meaningless. Also when you go to erase a programme you are told exactly how much recording time you will free up, strangely though you cannot erase whilst recording.

Editing is well done & is frame accurate & the edits are unchanged when dubbed. The audio does fade out & in at edit points but this problem goes away once the material is dubbed. Programmes can be titled & the process used is the best of any machine I`ve seen.

Playback is great & has handy features like time skip (good for jumping past adverts), when a programmes end is reached the unit starts playing the next in the list automatically. Navigating the list of programmes is quick & you can jump straight to any using the numerical keys.

The DVD drive is a little finicky about discs, so its best just to use good quality ones, if it does have trouble with a disk it takes some time before it will let you eject it.

Overall this machine is not perfect, but is much better than the competition so bodes well for the later models.

I was really impressed with the Panasonic DMR-E100HS. But after only lasting 8 or 9 months, I was very disappointed. It gradually started doing things that I didn't recognize as going bad. I would hear a clicking/rattling sound coming from the unit. Everything still worked but the sound was annoying. I thought maybe it had been doing it all along and convinced myself of that. Then, it would take forever to start. It gradually got worst and I would have to unplug and plug it back up to get it to work. Finally, it just stopped working. Like I said, the closest repair shop was 254 miles away. I felt this unit, for the price, should have lasted a lot longer than it did. True, I should have recognized it was going bad and got a box and packaged it and shipped it off, but I can't help feeling like maybe Panasonic knew they had a defective product and put it out on the market anyway.

This Panasonic DMR-E 100HS is at the higher end, yet it comes packed with features that are best of breed and insofar as you are willing to sacrifice the basic TiVo package from other vendors, you get alot more in terms of features and a better value for the price. I did some reserch on the other models that include TiVO which is a very basic service enabling preet programming and decided that the features of this unit were a better deal.

I paid a lot of money for this Panasonic DMR-E 100HS DVD Recorder and received one hell of a state-of-the-art product. It does just about everything you could want from a DVD Recorder. My only negative commenst are that there is no 6 channel DVD Audio - only 2 channel and no on-line channel guide for direct TV Timer Recordings. Yes, the manual could have been written a little better but, after all, it is a complex machine although I found it relatively easy and intuitive to use without having to refer to the manual too much. Great remote control too.