Panasonic DMR-HS2

I bought the Panasonic DMR-HS2 last year to tape the Olympics and never looked back since, it replaces the VCR completely plus gives more than ever imagined.

Setup:

Easy, it plugs to TV via a scart then you stick the Sky box. With 4 av ports, I use it with Sky and VCR, It might be a bit spaghetti incident behind the tv stand but that's what you get with many boxes.

Best use:

With Ext Link on AV2 it will auto record all auto view programs on Sky, so no Sky Plus is needed. It will also record on manual mode what you see on screen, very useful if you record from interactive services, like I was during the Olympics.

Even with the small HD space I never run out of space on the HDD, I dub the contents or watch them about once a month. Using LP mode you get better than VCR quality, so you will not miss that second part of what you watched last week but if you prefer to keep a movie then SP is better.

One bug found:

Only bug I found is that it looses the picture on the second program it records if it is exactly after the one recorded first. I think it takes time to recycle the auto view.

Authoring what you recorded, you need time to edit the titles with the use of the remote control, something that can take some time, then leave the HDD to DVD dub run real time (I do it overnight) and then finalise the dvd in the morning.

Not the best but I will not buy a more expensive machine than this for improved authoring.

I have acquired one of these new Panasonic DMR-HS2 DVD Recorders because of what they are capabe of. Being able to record my old vids and sat programmes onto a hard drive, then down to a dvd-r disc is great news.

sure, there are many areas in which this player could be improved but it just reminds me of the first video recorders and what they meant to me when they first come out.

expect to pay at least 500 squid for a mutli-region player right now.

Okay, first things first...why did I buy this machine?

In short I wanted a DVD recorder for several reasons, mainly:

Archive of videos (home and VHS only titles)

To get top quality recordings (what's the point of recording Sky digital onto VHS?)

To edit and create my own compilation DVDs (Simpsons, Cold Feet etc)

So does it do all this? YES...and some!!

Brief look at the Features:

DVD-R

DVD-RAM

Timeslip

DV in

RGB in & out

1 hour on 4.7GB at XP

2 hrs at SP

4 hrs at LP

6 hrs at EP

Up to 52 hours on the HDD

FR mode

Initial thoughts:

The box arrives, this sucker is nice and heavy...gives a great feeling of money well spent...always a good start.

Out of the box, hmmm mirrored front (a bad to keep clean, but looks swish IMO) really feel the quality now...this looks like a nice bit of kit.

Plugs in nice and easily, whip the video and DVD from under the TV...put in the new DVD recorder - nice.

Finally getting to use it:

Have looked at the manual briefly, will probably pick it up when I'm stuck...very easy to use, simple menu systems, select what you want to have all the options on (DVD or HDD) and from there you get loads of options, it displays how much space is left at the current recording quality - which is handy!

I bought the cheapest of cheap disks, so was a little worried about if they would work ok, I needn't have worried...so far no problems, I picked up DVD-RAM disks (9.4GB) @ £5 each and 100 DVD-Rs for £60...so far 15 disks and no coasters!

Quality wise I am stunned, this is the best money I have ever spent, the XP mode shows no degredation at all, even in SP mode I was hard pused to notice any quality loss, only after recording onto the HDD at SP, transfering to DVD-R at SP then playing back that DVD did I notice a few artifacts...and those could have been the broadcast!!

Editing is simple, select the program to edit and with the great menu system insert start & stop times, this edit can then be used for either playback (leaving out adverts for example) or transfering to DVD-R. Skipping adverts is so easy it hurts, timpslip is a great feature and will prove to be something I will use to great extent...just press the timeslip button and go forward (or back) to anywhere you want...cut out those ads, timeslip forward 4 mins...want an instant reply of that bad tackle, timeslip back 1 min...another example is I record usually a couple of hours of sky, seen the Simpsons about to start...timeslip 30 mins - takes 5 seconds & the next one is starting!

The other night, a film was starting, but it was too late to watch, so I started recording...whilst recording (onto the HDD) I played the Sopranos from the HDD (recorded the night before), no complications, simple to use & no loss of performance, I'm often looking to see if what I am watching is live or recorded!!

FR is a great feature too, it calculates the best bitrate for the space therefore not wasting disk or compromising on quality, example, film is 90 mins, XP is 1 hr to a disk SP is not as good quality but would leave 30mins waste of space, set FR to 90mins and away you go, let the recorder do all the math!!

I used FR also when transfering some of my VHS videos the DVD, I calculated 3 hours 45 mins onto a DVD and the picture quality looks better than the originals! Don't ask me how, the filters and boosters must do some good work, but when playing back before the videos were really ropey, on the DVD they almost look like brand new tapes (if you know what I mean!!).

The downside:

It's not all rosey though, my DV camcorder will work - but I don't get all the funtions (it's supposed to stop & start the camcorder apparently), so I have to do that manually. The titles are inputed very much like XBox & PS2...selecting each letter from an onscreen alphabet...a keyboard would have been nice. On the quality of recording I couldn't see me ever using EP, it's like a VHS LP (yuck!) and LP left a lot to be desired for the footy, but looks okay on other types of recordings.

Overall:

A great product at a great price, the quality is excellent, the features stunning & I highly recommend it to you all, and at £599.00 you can't go wrong.

A very good but expensive way to put the VHS away.

that's what I awaited for a long day.

40GB Harddisk is enough to put a lot of things on it. Whatever I want to have in future, writing DVD-Ram or when collegues want to watch it too put it on DVD-R.

JUST GREAT!

This machine Panasonic DMR-HS2 has a HDD and DVD drive/recorder built in.

The recording sequence is to record your information to the HDD and if required burn it to the DVD disc.

Works great from free to air information but the above sequence does NOT work when recording from DVD movies because of the built in Macrovision protection. This short fall makes it one very expensive machine to record TV shows.