Panasonic DMR-E30 EBS Review

Good Points
Flexible recording is great for fitting a film on a dvd-r. the timeslip functionis also great and the box manages the RAM media to always up all of the disc. Good range of I/O connections

Bad Points
Bit slow to start up. Ram media prices can be expensive but some cheap brands now available for as little as £2.50 a 4.7G disc (blankdiscshop.co.uk). I've found that DVD-R's I've created wont play on some DVD player (Naiko). Ths box is also not multi region but can be upgraded at a price and no macrovision hack do far for it. Remote has NO eject button or one touch record timimg although base unit has. ALso no zoom facility, although good range of audio outputs.

General Comments
I quite like the box and with the price of RAM media dropping it becomes very affordable. It's a bit of a pain that theDVD-R's I make are not always compatbile with other DVD players..this makes it difficult to pass on copies to friends. Also the RAM media wont read on other DVD players so it's all a bit frustrating. As a personal use box for recording the telly it's great. The flexible recoding with calculate the quality required to fit all of the time to the disc. It has fixed times as well eg 1,2,4 or 6 hours a 4.7Gig disc. It's a slow starter which is a bit of a pain if you suddenly want to record something..I normally leave it up and running while I watch the box incase something comes up I want to record.